19th century
A01=Melina Esse
agency
ancient greece
Author_Melina Esse
authority
bellini
Category=AVLF
classics
collaboration
composers
creativity
ensemble
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
femininity
gender
history
il viaggio a reims
improvisation
improvvisatrice
incantation
italy
lesbian
literature
melody
muse
music
musicology
nonfiction
norma
opera
orpheus
pauline viardot
performance
performing arts
philosophy
poet
poetry
rossini
salon
sappho
sexuality
spontaneity
stage
theater
virtuosi
women singers
Product details
- ISBN 9780226741772
- Dimensions: 6 x 9mm
- Publication Date: 06 Apr 2021
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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From the theatrical stage to the literary salon, the figure of Sappho--the ancient poet and inspiring icon of feminine creativity--played a major role in the intertwining histories of improvisation, text, and performance throughout the nineteenth century. Exploring the connections between operatic and poetic improvisation in Italy and beyond, Singing Sappho combines earwitness accounts of famous female improviser-virtuosi with erudite analysis of musical and literary practices. Melina Esse demonstrates that performance played a much larger role in conceptions of musical authorship than previously recognized, arguing that discourses of spontaneity--specifically those surrounding the improvvisatrice, or female poetic improviser--were paradoxically used to carve out a new authority for opera composers just as improvisation itself was falling into decline. With this novel and nuanced book, Esse persuasively reclaims the agency of performers and their crucial role in constituting Italian opera as a genre in the nineteenth century.
Melina Esse is associate professor of musicology at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.
