Cambridge Companion To Verdi, The

Description:
This Companion provides a biographical, theatrical, and social-cultural background for Verdi's music, examines in detail important general aspects of its style and method of composing, and synthesizes stylistic themes in discussions of representative works. Aspects of Verdi's milieu, style, creative process, and critical reception are explored in essays by highly reputed specialists. Individual chapters address themes in Verdi's life, his role in transforming the theater business, and his relationship to Italian Romanticism and the Risorgimento. Chapters on four operas representative of the different stages of Verdi's career, Ernani, Rigoletto, Don Carlos, and Otello synthesize analytical themes introduced in the more general chapters and illustrate the richness of Verdi's creativity. The Companion also includes chapters on Verdi's non-operatic songs and other music, his creative process, and scholarly writing about Verdi from the nineteenth-century to the present day.

Review:
'...offers many hours of thoroughly delectable and mostly instructive reading.' Nineteenth-Century Music Review

Table of Contents:
List of music examples; List of tables; Notes on contributors; Preface; Chronology; Part I. Personal, Cultural, and Political Context: 1. Verdi's life: a thematic biography Mary Jane Phillips-Matz; 2. The Italian theater of Verdi's day Alessandro Roccatagliati; 3. Verdi, Italian Romanticism and the Risorgimento Mary Ann Smart; Part II. The Style of Verdi's Operas and Non-Operatic Works: 4. The forms of set pieces Scott L. Balthazar; 5. New currents in the libretto Fabrizio della Seta; 6. Words and music Emanuele Senici; 7. French influences Andreas Giger; 8. Structural coherence Steven Huebner; 9. Instrumental music in Verdi's operas David Kimbell; 10. Verdi's non-operatic works Roberta Montemorra Marvin; Part III. Essays on Representative Operas: 11. Ernani: the tenor in transformation Rosa Solinas; 12. 'Ch'hai di nuovo, buffon?' or what's new with Rigoletto Cormac Newark; 13. Verdi's Don Carlos: an overview of the opera Harold Powers; 14. Desdemona's alienation and Otello's fall Scott L. Balthazar; Part IV. Creation and Critical Reception: 15. An introduction to Verdi's working methods Luke Jensen; 16. Verdi criticism Gregory Harwood; List of Verdi's operas; Notes; Verdi's Works; Bibliography; Index.

Author Biography:
Scott L. Balthazar is Professor of Music History at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. He has lectured and published on stylistic aspects of nineteenth-century Italian opera and on contemporary theories of instrumental form in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dr Balthazar is a contributor to the revised New Grove Dictionary of Music and the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, and his articles and reviews have appeared in a number of musicological journals.