Landscape and Gender in Italian Opera

The Alpine Virgin from Bellini to Puccini

Emanuele Senici author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:11th Aug '05

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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Landscape and Gender in Italian Opera cover

An unusual look at Italian opera in the nineteenth century.

Emanuele Senici offers a new and unusual look at Italian opera in the nineteenth century, focusing on operas which present Alpine virgins as the female protagonist. The book explores the connection between landscape and gender in opera, from Bellini's La sonnambula (1831) to Puccini's La fanciulla del West (1910).In this unusual study, Emanuele Senici explores the connection between landscape and gender in Italian opera through the emblematic figure of the Alpine virgin. In the nineteenth century, operas portraying an emphatically virginal heroine, a woman defined by her virginity, were often set in the mountains, most frequently the Alps. The clarity of the sky, the whiteness of the snow and the purity of the air were associated with the 'innocence' of the female protagonist. Senici discusses a number of works particularly relevant to the origins, transformations and meanings of this conventional association including Bellini's La sonnambula (1831), Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix (1842), Verdi's Luisa Miller (1849), and Puccini's La fanciulla del West (1910). This convention presents an unusual point of view - a theme rather than a composer, a librettist, a singer or a genre - from which to observe Italian opera 'at work' over a century.

Review of the hardback: '… a wide-ranging interdisciplinary exploration of a major aspect of Romanticism neglected in previous studies of nineteenth-century opera. … There is excellent material on the literary sources … This is a deeply intelligent study.' Musical Times

ISBN: 9780521834377

Dimensions: 234mm x 164mm x 24mm

Weight: 710g

368 pages