17th century
A01=Wendy Heller
androgyny
antiquity
Author_Wendy Heller
callisto
carthage
Category=AVLF
Category=JBSF
Category=NHT
cavalli
chastity
classical
classicism
desire
dido
diodorus siculus
drama
empress
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
erotic
female characters
female power
female vocality
feminism
gender
gender studies
messalina
monteverdi
music
musicology
mythological women
mythology
nonfiction
nymph
octavia
opera
opera women
ovid
pallavicino
performing arts
purity
semiramis
sexuality
tacitus
theater
transvestism
venetian opera
virgil
women
womens rights
ziani
Product details
- ISBN 9780520209336
- Weight: 771g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 12 Jan 2004
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Opera developed during a time when the position of women--their rights and freedoms, their virtues and vices, and even the most basic substance of their sexuality--was constantly debated. Many of these controversies manifested themselves in the representation of the historical and mythological women whose voices were heard on the Venetian operatic stage. Drawing upon a complex web of early modern sources and ancient texts, this engaging study is the first comprehensive treatment of women, gender, and sexuality in seventeenth-century opera. Wendy Heller explores the operatic manifestations of female chastity, power, transvestism, androgyny, and desire, showing how the emerging genre was shaped by and infused with the Republic's taste for the erotic and its ambivalent attitudes toward women and sexuality. Heller begins by examining contemporary Venetian writings about gender and sexuality that influenced the development of female vocality in opera.
The Venetian reception and transformation of ancient texts--by Ovid, Virgil, Tacitus, and Diodorus Siculus--form the background for her penetrating analyses of the musical and dramatic representation of five extraordinary women as presented in operas by Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Cavalli, and their successors in Venice: Dido, queen of Carthage (Cavalli); Octavia, wife of Nero (Monteverdi); the nymph Callisto (Cavalli); Queen Semiramis of Assyria (Pietro Andrea Ziani); and Messalina, wife of Claudius (Carlo Pallavicino).
Wendy Heller is Assistant Professor of Music at Princeton University.
