Les fêtes d'Hébée, ou, Les talents liriques: ballet

mis en musique par M. Rameau, et réprésenté pour la premiere fois, par l'Académie royale de musique, au mois de may 1739.

Die drei Pintos: komische Oper in drei Aufzügen

unter Zugrundelegung des gleichnamigen Textbuches von T. Hell ; der hinterlassenen Entwürfe und ausgewählter Manuscripte des Componisten ausgeführt ; der dramatische Theil von C. von Weber ; der musikalische von G. Mahler ; Klavier-Auszug mit Text.

Abu Hassan: Oper in einem Act

Gedicht von J.F. Hiemer ; Musik von Carl Maria von Weber ; vollständiger Clavierauszug vom Componisten.

Der Wildschütz, oder, Die Stimme der Natur: komische Oper in drei Akten

Musik von Albert Lortzing ; vollständiger Klavierauszug [von F.L. Schubert.]

Alceste: tragédie

de Lully.

Euryanthe: grosse romantische Oper in 3 Aufzügen

Dichtung von Helmine von Chezy, geb. Freyinn von Klencke ; in Musik gesetzt ... von Carl Maria von Weber ... ; vollständiger vom Componisten verfertigter Clavier-Auszug.

Daughter of Eve, "Femme Fatale", and Persecuted Artist: The Mythic Transgressive Woman in Oscar Wilde's and Richard Strauss's "Salome"

Historically, Salome was an unexceptional figure who never catalyzed John the Baptist's death. However, in Christian Scripture, she becomes the dancing seductress as fallen daughter of Eve.  Her stepfather Herod promises Salome his kingdom if she dances for him, but she follows her mother’s wish to have John beheaded. In Strauss’s opera, after Wilde's Symbolist-Decadent play, Salome becomes independent of Herodias’ will, and the mythic avatar of the femme fatale and persecuted artist who Herod has killed after she kisses John's severed head.  Her signature key of C# major, resolving to the C major sung by Herod and Jokanaan at her death, represent her tragic fate musically.

'That Puissant City': John Milton's Roman Sojourns 1638-1639

John Milton’s sojourns in Rome (1638-9) are attested by his comments in Defensio Secunda, by the minutes of the English College, by Latin encomia which he received from Roman academicians, and, not least, by his Latin letter to Lucas Holstenius (19/29 March 1639), and several Latin poems which he composed in the course of his residency in the capital city: Ad Salsillum, and three Latin epigrams extolling the praises of the virtuosa soprano, Leonora Baroni. Read together, these texts serve to reveal much about Milton’s participation in, and reaction to, the ‘Puissant City’, (History of Britain, Bk 2).

The present monograph presents fresh evidence of Milton's integration into the academic and cultural life of seventeenth-century Rome. It argues that his links with two Roman academies: the Accademia dei Fantastici and Accademia degli Umoristi constitute a sustained participation in an academic community paralleling that of his independently attested performance in Florentine academies (on which I have published extensively). It also investigates his links with Alessandro Cherubini, David Codner, Giovanni Batista Doni, and the Baroni circle hymned in three published anthologies.

Chapter 1: Milton and the Accademia dei Fantastici investigates the cultural climate surrounding Milton's Ad Salsillum by examining two of that academy's publications: the Poesie dei Signori Accademici Fantastici di Roma (Rome, 1637) and the Academia Tenuta da Fantastici a. 12 di Maggio 1655 (Rome, 1655), the latter celebrating the creation of Fabio Chigi as Pope Alexander VII on 5 April 1655. Read in a new light, Milton’s self-fashioning, it is argued, takes its place not only alongside Salzilli’s encomium in Milton's honour, and his Italian sonnets in the 1637 Poesie, but also in relation to other poems in that collection, and the academy's essentially Catholic eulogistic trend. The chapter also provides fresh evidence of Salzilli’s survival of the illness described in Milton’s poem by his epistolary correspondence with Tomaso Stigliani.

Chapter 2: Milton and the Vatican argues for links between Milton’s Latin letter to Holstenius and a range of Holstenius’ published works: his edition of the axioms of the later Pythagoreans gifted by him to Milton, and his published neo-Platonic works. This is achieved by mutual appropriation of Similitudes in a series of Miltonic similes, the anabasis/katabasis motifs in a reworking of the Platonic theory of the transmigration of souls, and allusion to etymological details highlighted in Holstenius’ published editions. The chapter also reveals Milton’s alertness to typographical procedures and, by association, to Holstenius’ recent role (1638) as Director of the press of the Biblioteca Vaticana.

Chapter 3: Milton and the Accademia degli Umoristi argues for Milton’s likely participation in this Roman academy, as suggested by his links with its members. His three Latin epigrams in praise of Leonora Baroni, the only female member of the Umoristi, have hitherto been studied in relation to the 1639 Applausi in her honour. In a new reading, Milton, it is suggested, invokes and interrogates Catholic doctrine before a Catholic audience only to view the whole through the lens of a neo-Platonic Hermeticism (by echoing the phraseology of the sixteenth-century Franciscan Hannibal Rosselli) that refreshingly transcends religious difference. Crucially, the hitherto neglected L’Idea della Veglia (Rome, 1640) includes further encomiastic verse, sonnets to, and by Leonora, and details of the conversazioni hosted by her family at the precise time of Milton’s Roman sojourns. Milton may well have been a participant. The chapter concludes in an assessment of his links with the youthful prodigy Alessandro Cherubini, and of his audience with Francesco Barberini.

Chapter 4: Milton at a Roman Opera analyses the potential impact of ‘Chi Soffre, Speri’, which he attended on 18/28 February 1639, mounted by Francesco Barberini to inaugurate the recently completed theatre of the Palazzo Barberini. A detailed analysis of the opera's libretto, music, and theatricality casts a backward glance to Milton's Comus, and a forward glance to Paradise Lost. It also assesses Milton’s musical interests at this time, as attested by his links with Doni, and his purchase of works by Monteverdi and others.

Chapter 5: Milton’s English Connections in Rome develops the work of Miller and Chaney by investigating Milton’s co-diners at the English College in Rome on 30 October 1638, and by analysing his links between David Codner (alias Matteo Selvaggio), and the family of Jane Savage, Marchioness of Winchester, lamented by Milton in 1631. It also assesses his potential relations with the Englishman Thomas Gawen, who ‘accidentally sometimes fell into the company of John Milton’ (Antony Wood).

Long Story Short: the Belfast Opera

Libretto for opera composed by Neil Martin, performed in Belfast June 2016

Carmen: drama lírico en cuatro actos

38 p.

Petr Eben's oratorio Apologia Sokratus (1967) and ballet Curses and Blessings (1983): An interpretative analysis of the symbolism behind the text settings and musical style

The Czech composer Petr Eben (1927-2007) has written music in all genres except symphony, but he is highly recognized for his organ and choral compositions, which are his preferred genres. His vocal works include choral songs and vocal-instrumental works at a wide range of difficulty levels, from simple pedagogical songs to very advanced and technically challenging compositions. This study examines two of Eben‘s vocal-instrumental compositions. The oratorio Apologia Sokratus (1967) is a three-movement work; its libretto is based on Plato‘s Apology of Socrates. The ballet Curses and Blessings (1983) has a libretto compiled from numerous texts from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries. The formal design of the ballet is unusual—a three-movement composition where the first is choral, the second is orchestral, and the third combines the previous two played simultaneously. Eben assembled the libretti for both compositions and they both address the contrasting sides of the human soul, evil and good, and the everlasting fight between them. This unity and contrast is the philosophical foundation for both compositions. The dissertation discusses the multileveled meanings behind the text settings and musical style of the oratorio and ballet in analyses focusing on the text, melodic and harmonic construction, and symbolism. Additional brief analyses of other vocal and vocal-instrumental compositions by Eben establish the ground for the examination of the oratorio and ballet and for understanding features of the composer‘s musical style. While the oratorio Apologia Sokratus was discussed in short articles in the 1970s, the ballet Curses and Blessings has never previously been addressed within Eben scholarship. The dissertation examines the significant features of Eben‘s music. His melodic style incorporates influences as diverse as Gregorian chant and folk tunes on the one hand, and modern vocal techniques such as Sprechgesang and vocal aleatoricism on the other. His harmonic language includes bitonality and polytonality, used to augment the tonal legacy of earlier times, together with elements of pitch collections and limited serial procedures as well as various secundal and quartal harmonic sonorities derived from them. His music features the vibrant rhythms of folk music, and incorporates other folk devices like ostinato, repetitive patterns, and improvisation.

Antonio Salieri's La calamita de' cuori (1774): Sources, Form, Context

Antonio Salieri’s La calamita de’ cuori (1774) warrants musicological attention for what it can tell us about Salieri’s compositional craft and what it reveals about the development of form in Viennese Italian-language comic opera of the mid- and late-eighteenth century. In Part I of this dissertation, I explore the performance history of La calamita, present the first plot synopsis and English translation of the libretto, and describe the variants between Carlo Goldoni’s 1752 libretto and the revised version created for Salieri’s opera. I have collated Salieri’s holograph score, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Mus. Hs. 16.508, with four copies having different relationships to it, and I propose a stemma that represents the relationships between these five sources. The analyses in Part II contribute to our understanding of formal practices in eighteenth-century drammi giocosi. My study of Salieri’s La calamita reveals his reliance on a clearly defined binary structure, referred to in this dissertation as “operatic binary form,” in almost half of the arias, ensembles, and instrumental movements of this opera. Salieri’s consistent use of operatic binary form led me to explore its use in drammi giocosi by other prominent composers of this time, including Baldassare Galuppi’s La calamita de’ cuori (1752), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Il dissoluto punito, ossia Il Don Giovanni (1787), and selected arias by Pasquale Anfossi, Florian Leopold Gassmann, Giuseppe Gazzaniga, Franz Joseph Haydn, Giovanni Paisiello, and Niccolò Piccinni dating from 1760 to 1774. This study showed that Salieri and his peers adhered to a recognizable tonal plan and set of design elements in their operatic binary forms, and that their arias fall into three distinct categories defined by the tonality at the beginning of the second half of the binary structure. The analysis presented here adds to our present understanding of operatic form in mid- and late-century drammi giocosi and shows that in La calamita de’ cuori, Salieri was following the normative formal procedures of his time.

Gdy słowo musi być posłuszne dźwiękowi. Librecista Ryszard Wagner i jego Pierścień Nibelunga

Wydział Neofilologii: Instytut Filologii Germańskiej

Sexism and Imperialism in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Puccini's Madama Butterfly, and Blitzstein's Regina: A Performance Study

This dissertation project comprises three major operatic performances and an accompanying document; a performance study which surveys aspects of sexism and imperialism as represented in three operas written over the last three centuries by examining the implications of prejudice through research as well as through performances of the major roles found in the operas. Mr. Eversole performed the role of Sharpless in the 2014 Castleton Festival production of Madama Butterfly (music by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa), conducted by Bradley Moore. In 2015, Mr. Eversole sang the title role in four performances of Mozart and Da Ponte’s Don Giovanni with the Maryland Opera Studio at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, conducted by Craig Kier. Also as part of the Maryland Opera Studio 2015-16 season, Mr. Eversole appeared as Oscar Hubbard in four performances of Marc Blitzstein’s Regina, an adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s 1939 play, The Little Foxes. These performances were also conducted by Craig Kier. The accompanying research document discusses significant issues of cultural, geographical, and sexual hegemony as they relate to each opera. It examines the plots and characters of the operas from a postcolonial and feminist perspective, and takes a moral stance against imperialism, sexism, domestic abuse, and in general, the exploitation of women and of the colonized by the socially privileged and powerful. Recordings of all three operas can be accessed at the University of Maryland Hornbake Library. They are: Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (the role of Sharpless) July 20, 2014, Castleton Festival production, Bradley Moore, Conductor Castleton, Virginia Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni (title role) November 22nd, 2015, Maryland Opera Studio, Craig Kier, Conductor Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, UMD Marc Blitzstein’s Regina, (Oscar Hubbard) April 8th, 8016, Maryland Opera Studio, Craig Kier, Conductor Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, UMD