Disembodying Myths in Ancien Regime Opera

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Music examples and illustrations
Preface
Lo scherno degli dei
Myth and derision in the dramma per musica of the seventeenth century
Jean-François Lattarico
Helpings from the great banquets of epic
Handel's Teseo and Arianna in Creta
Robert C. Ketterer
Envoicing the divine
Oracles in lyric and spoken drama in seventeenth-century France
Geoffrey Burgess
Addressing the divine
The 'numinous' accompagnato in opera seria
Bruno Forment
Iphigenia's curious ménage à trois in myth, drama, and opera
Reinhard Strohm
Spectatorship and involvement in Gluck's
Iphigénie en Tauride
Bram van Oostveldt
Bibliography
Contributors' biographies
Index

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The role of mythology in Ancien Régime opera

Throughout the Ancien Régime, mythology played a vital role in opera, defining such epoch-making works as Claudio Monteverdi's La favola d'Orfeo (1607) and Christoph Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride (1779). The operatic presence of the Greco-Roman gods and heroes was anything but unambiguous or unproblematic, however. (Dis)embodying Myths in Ancien Régime Opera highlights myth's chameleonic life in the Italian dramma per musica and French tragédie en musique of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Written by eminent scholars in the fields of music, literature, theatre, and cultural studies, the six essays in this book address important questions. Through what ideological lenses did the Ancien Régime perceive an ancient legacy that was fundamentally pagan and fictitious, as opposed to Christian and rationalistic? What dramaturgies did librettists and composers devise to adapt mythical topics to altering philosophical and esthetic doctrines? Were the ancients' precepts obeyed or precisely overridden by the age of ‘classicism'? And how could myths be made to fit changing modes of spectatorship?

Enlightening and wide-ranging on an essentially multidisciplinary development in European culture, (Dis)embodying Myths in Ancien Régime Opera will appeal to all music, literature, and art lovers seeking to deepen their knowledge of an increasingly popular repertoire.

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

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