The Oxford Handbook of Opera

What is opera? Contributors to The Oxford Handbook of Opera respond to this deceptively simple question with a rich and compelling exploration of opera's adaption to changing artistic and political currents. Fifty of the world's most respected scholars cast opera as a fluid entity that continuously reinvents itself in a reflection of its patrons, audience, and creators. The synergy of power, performance, and identity recurs thematically throughout the volume's major topics: Words, Music, and Meaning; Performance and Production; Opera and Society; and Transmission and Reception. Individual essays engage with repertoire from Monteverdi, Mozart, and Meyerbeer to Strauss, Henze, and Adams in studies of composition, national identity, transmission, reception, sources, media, iconography, humanism, the art of collecting, theory, analysis, commerce, singers, directors, criticism, editions, politics, staging, race, and gender. The title of the penultimate section, Opera on the Edge, suggests the uncertainty of opera's future: is opera headed toward catastrophe or have social and musical developments of the last hundred years stimulated something new and exciting, and, well, operatic? In an epilogue to the volume, a contemporary opera composer speaks candidly about opera composition today.

The Oxford Handbook of Opera is an essential companion to scholars, educators, advanced students, performers, and knowledgeable listeners: those who simply love opera.

Helen M. Greenwald is Chair of Music History & Musicology at New England Conservatory. She is the author of numerous articles on vocal music from the 18th -20th centuries and program notes for major arts organizations, such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, and the Metropolitan Opera. She is the editor of the critical edition of Verdi's Attila (Ricordi and the University of Chicago Press, 2012) and co-editor of the critical edition of Rossini's Zelmira (Fondazione Rossini, 2005).

Introduction
Helen M. Greenwald

PART I WHAT IS OPERA?

1. What is Opera?
Tim Carter

2. Genre
Emanuele Senici

3. Musical Theater(s)
Derek B. Scott

4. Operatorio?
Monika Hennemann

5. The Concept of Opera
Lydia Goehr

PART II WORDS, MUSIC, AND MEANING
The Libretto and the Score

6. Oft-Told Tales
Vincent Giroud

7. The Language of National Style
Marina Frolova-Walker

8. Musical Dramaturgy
Damien Colas

9. Versification
Andreas Giger

10. The German Libretto of the Early Nineteenth Century
John Warrack

11. Analysis
William Drabkin

Humanism, Verisimilitude, and Voice

12. Opera between the Ancients and the Moderns
Wendy Heller

13. Verisimilitude
Thomas Betzwieser

14. Voice
Michal Grover-Friedlander

15. Characterization
Julian Rushton

16. Meaning
Lawrence Kramer

PART III PERFORMANCE AND PRODUCTION

17. Divas and Divos
Hilary Poriss

18. Castrato Acts
Martha Feldman

19. Rehearsal Practices
Mark Everist

20. Acting
Simon Williams

21. The Chorus
Ryan Minor

22. The Orchestra
Alessandro Di Profio

23. Dance
Linda J. Tomko

24. Production Aesthetics and Materials
Katherine Syer

25. Costumes
Veronica Isaac

26. Regietheater/Director's Theater
Ulrich Müller

27. Historically Informed Performance
Mary Hunter

PART IV OPERA AND SOCIETY

28. Opera Composition and Cultural Environment
Marianne Betz

29. Patronage
Valeria De Lucca

30. Audiences
Georgia Cowart

31. Autographs, Memorabilia, and the Aesthetics of Collecting
Daniela Macchione

32. Politics
Marc A. Weiner

33. Religion
Jesse Rosenberg

34. Race and Racism
John Graziano

35. Gender
Alexandra Wilson

36. Exoticism
W. Anthony Sheppard

37. Censorship
Francesco Izzo

PART V TRANSMISSION AND RECEPTION

38. How Opera Traveled
Louise K. Stein

39. The Operatic Canon
James Parakilas

40. Critics
Paul Watt

41. Soundings Offstage
Thomas Christensen

42. Visual Media
Marcia J. Citron

43. Operatic Images
Helen M. Greenwald

44. Sources
Linda B. Fairtile

45. Reconstructions
Charles S. Brauner

46. Editing Opera
Patricia B. Brauner

47. Writing the History of Opera
Philip Gossett

PART VI OPERA ON THE EDGE

48. 1900-1945
Joy H. Calico

49. After the Canon
Robert Fink

EPILOGUE

50. Composing Opera
Jake Heggie

Index of Musical Works
General Index