Singing in Signs New Semiotic Explorations of Opera

Singing in Signs: New Semiotic Explorations of Opera offers a bold and refreshing assessment of the state of opera study as seen through the lens of semiotics. At its core, the volume responds to Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker's Analyzing Opera, utilizing a semiotic framework to embrace opera on its own terms and engage all of its constituent elements in interpretation. Chapters in this collection resurrect the larger sense of serious operatic study as a multi-faceted, interpretive discipline, no longer in isolation. Contributors pay particular attention to the musical, dramatic, cultural, and performative in opera and how these modes can create an intertext that informs interpretation. Combining traditional and emerging methodologies, Singing in Signs engages composer-constructed and work-specific music-semiotic systems, broader socio-cultural music codes, and narrative strategies, with implications for performance and staging practices today.

Gregory J. Decker is Associate Professor of Music Theory at Bowling Green State University. He holds the M.M. and Ph.D. in music theory from Florida State University and was the winner of the National Opera Association's biennial dissertation prize in 2013. His research focuses broadly on the semiotics of musical topics and other music-cultural associations in texted music from Italian madrigals to Baroque opera seria to Broadway musicals. He has presented research at numerous regional, national, and international meetings, including the Society for Music Theory National Meeting, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Handel Society, and the Nordic Musicological Congress, among others. His publications can be found in Music Theory Online, The Opera Journal, Intégral, and the collected volume A Cole Porter Companion (2016). At BGSU, he regularly teaches core undergraduate music theory and aural skills courses and graduate seminars in semiotics, musical topics, and Schenkerian analysis. He also serves as the coordinator of music theory.

Matthew R. Shaftel is Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Ohio University. He has previously served as Dean of the Westminster College of the Arts and the Grammy Award-winning Westminster Choir College. Shaftel also served as Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs at Florida State University, where he led the development of a signature general-education program, Liberal Studies for the 21st Century. He received three degrees from Yale University. Highly active as a teacher, scholar, and musician, he has published numerous articles and books, including a textbook published by Oxford University Press. His award-winning volume on Cole Porter, co-edited with Susan Weiss and Don Randel, was released in 2016.

List of Figures
List of Musical Examples
List of Tables
List of Boxes
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments

Introduction
Gregory J. Decker & Matthew R. Shaftel

Part I: Musical Constructions and Interpretation

Chapter 1: Twelve-Tone Serial Techniques in Dallapiccola's Il prigioniero as a Reaction to Fascist Ideology
Jamuna Samuel

Chapter 2: Science, Spirit, Sound, and Sign: Anthroposophy and Viktor Ullmann's Der Sturz des Antichrist
Rachel Bergman

Chapter 3: Motives and Motivations: Linkage Technique in Britten's Operas and Other Vocal Works
Michael Baker

Chapter 4: Sowing the Seeds of Loss: Permanent Interruption in Verdi's Otello
Edward Latham

Part II: Cultural and Conventional Signs

Chapter 5: Dance Music and Signification in Handel's Opera Seria
Gregory J. Decker

Chapter 6: The Romanesca as a Spiritual Sign in the Operas of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven
Olga Sánchez-Kisielewska

Chapter 7: Verdi's Dramatic Use of Tonality, Topics, and Recurring Themes: Two Analyses
David Easley

Part III: (Dis)Continuity and Narrative

Chapter 8: Unity and Discontinuity in the Act 2 Finale of Le nozze di Figaro
Matthew R. Shaftel

Chapter 9: Stormy Weather: Issues of Form, Deformation, and Continuity in Operatic Storm Scenes
Deborah Burton

Chapter 10: Song and Sign: Poetic-Musical Strategies in Wagner and Strauss
Arnold Whittall

Chapter 11: Postmodern Opera 101: Irony, Nostalgia, and Bifurcated Narratives
Juan Chattah

Chapter 12: John Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer: Straddling the Fence Between Myth and Realism
Yayoi Uno Everett

Index