Book contents
- Italian Opera in Global and Transnational Perspective
- Italian Opera in Global and Transnational Perspective
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Examples
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- 1 Opera and Italianità in Transnational and Global Perspective
- 2 Giving Singers a Voice
- 3 Nina d’Aubigny’s ‘Italian Voice’
- 4 Italian Opera and Creole Identities
- 5 Italian Opera in Vormärz Vienna
- 6 Southern Exchanges
- 7 ‘For a Moment, I Felt Like I Was Back in Italy’
- 8 Reimagining Rossini
- 9 From Heaven and Hell to the Grail Hall via Sant’Andrea della Valle
- 10 Arcadia Undone
- 11 Italian Impresarios, American Minstrels and Parsi Theatre
- 12 German National Identity and Operatic Italianità
- 13 (Opera) Fever in Belle Époque Manaus
- 14 Between ‘Sung Theatre’ and Asakusa Opera
- 15 Epilogue
- Index
8 - Reimagining Rossini
Obituaries as Transnational Narratives of Italian Opera
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2022
- Italian Opera in Global and Transnational Perspective
- Italian Opera in Global and Transnational Perspective
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Examples
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- 1 Opera and Italianità in Transnational and Global Perspective
- 2 Giving Singers a Voice
- 3 Nina d’Aubigny’s ‘Italian Voice’
- 4 Italian Opera and Creole Identities
- 5 Italian Opera in Vormärz Vienna
- 6 Southern Exchanges
- 7 ‘For a Moment, I Felt Like I Was Back in Italy’
- 8 Reimagining Rossini
- 9 From Heaven and Hell to the Grail Hall via Sant’Andrea della Valle
- 10 Arcadia Undone
- 11 Italian Impresarios, American Minstrels and Parsi Theatre
- 12 German National Identity and Operatic Italianità
- 13 (Opera) Fever in Belle Époque Manaus
- 14 Between ‘Sung Theatre’ and Asakusa Opera
- 15 Epilogue
- Index
Summary
As the first textual document to be produced following an individual’s death, the obituary is often the starting point of any biography, a work which by nature requires a retrospective assessment of the experiences of a concluded life. Yet despite the value and relevance of biographical literature to the field of musicology, the obituaries of composers are rarely employed as source material by historians of music. The death of Gioachino Rossini, one of the first true global celebrities in the history of music, provoked a tremendous international media response whose full extent may only be speculated upon. This chapter examines and compares obituaries of the composer from the French, English, German and Austrian press, bringing to light in condensed form the then-predominant narratives of Rossini’s life. The reading of these obituaries reveals a general transnational perspective on Italian opera, typical of the first half of the nineteenth century, as well as the national peculiarities of Rossini’s reception.
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- Italian Opera in Global and Transnational PerspectiveReimagining Italianità in the Long Nineteenth Century, pp. 147 - 166Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022