Opera Acts: Singers and Performance in the Late Nineteenth Century

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Introduction: on not singing and singing physiognomically
1. Verdi, Victor Maurel, and the operatic interpreter
2. Real mezzo: Celestine Galli-Marie as Carmen
3. Photographic diva: Massenet, Sibyl Sanderson, and the soprano as spectacle
4. Jean de Reszke, the 'problem' of the tenor, and early international Wagner performance
Supporting cast.

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Opera Acts explores a wealth of new historical material about singers in the late nineteenth century and challenges the idea that this was a period of decline for the opera singer. In detailed case studies of four figures - the late Verdi baritone Victor Maurel; Bizet's first Carmen, Célestine Galli-Marié; Massenet's muse of the 1880s and '90s, Sibyl Sanderson; and the early Wagner star Jean de Reszke - Karen Henson argues that singers in the late nineteenth century continued to be important, but in ways that were not conventionally 'vocal'. Instead they enjoyed a freedom and creativity based on their ability to express text, act and communicate physically, and exploit the era's media. By these and other means, singers played a crucial role in the creation of opera up to the end of the nineteenth century.

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