Center Stage

Operatic Culture and Nation Building in Nineteenth-Century Central Europe
Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-1-55753-675-4
Verlag: Purdue University Press

Buch, Englisch, 340 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 446 g

Reihe: Central European Studies

This volume, a revised and extended version of two well-reviewed books published in German and Czech, explores the social and political background to this “opera mania” in nineteenth century Central Europe. After tracing the major trends in the opera history of the period, including the emergence of national genres of opera and its various social functions and cultural meanings, the author contrasts the histories of the major houses in Dresden (a court theatre), Lemberg (a theatre built and sponsored by aristocrats), and Prague (a civic institution). Beyond the operatic institutions and their key stage productions, composers such as Carl Maria von Weber, Richard Wagner, Bed?ich Smetana, Stanis?aw Moniuszko, Antonín Dvo?ák, and Richard Strauss are put in their social and political contexts. The concluding chapter, bringing together the different leitmotifs of social and cultural history explored in the rest of the book, explains the specificities of opera life in Central Europe within a wider European and global framework.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ther, Philipp

Über Autor(innen)

Philipp Ther is a professor of Central European history at the University of Vienna and has published a number of well-reviewed books and articles on cultural history and history and music, including In der Mitte der Gesellschaft: Operntheater in Zentraleuropa 1815–1914 (Oldenbourg Verlag, 2006), on which Center Stage is based. He received his master’s degree from Georgetown University and PhD in history from the Free University of Berlin. From 2007 to 2010, he was a professor of European history at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.