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Opera and Modern Culture: Wagner and Strauss
In this enlightening and entertaining book, one of the most original and sophisticated musicologists writing today turns his attention to music's most dramatic genre. Extending his ongoing project of clarifying music's various roles in Western society, Kramer brings to opera his distinctive and pioneering blend of historical concreteness and theoretical awareness.
Opera is legendary for going to extremes, a tendency that has earned it a reputation for unreality. Opera and Modern Culture shows the reverse to be true. Kramer argues that for the past two centuries the preoccupation of a group of famous operas with the limits of supremacy and debasement helped to define a normality that seems the very opposite of the operatic. Exemplified in a series of beloved examples, a certain idea of opera―a fiction of opera―has contributed in key ways to the modern era's characterizations of desire, identity, and social order. Opera and Modern Culture exposes this process at work in operas by Richard Wagner, who put modernity on the agenda in ways no one after him could ignore, and by the young Richard Strauss. The book continues the initiative of much recent writing in treating opera as a multimedia rather than a primarily musical form. From Lohengrin and The Ring of the Niebelung to Salome and Elektra, it traces the rich interplay of operatic visions and voices and their contexts in the birth pangs of modern life.
Opera is legendary for going to extremes, a tendency that has earned it a reputation for unreality. Opera and Modern Culture shows the reverse to be true. Kramer argues that for the past two centuries the preoccupation of a group of famous operas with the limits of supremacy and debasement helped to define a normality that seems the very opposite of the operatic. Exemplified in a series of beloved examples, a certain idea of opera―a fiction of opera―has contributed in key ways to the modern era's characterizations of desire, identity, and social order. Opera and Modern Culture exposes this process at work in operas by Richard Wagner, who put modernity on the agenda in ways no one after him could ignore, and by the young Richard Strauss. The book continues the initiative of much recent writing in treating opera as a multimedia rather than a primarily musical form. From Lohengrin and The Ring of the Niebelung to Salome and Elektra, it traces the rich interplay of operatic visions and voices and their contexts in the birth pangs of modern life.
- GenresMusic
264 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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About the author
Lawrence Kramer
56 books10 followersLawrence Kramer is Professor of English and Music at Fordham University
and co-editor of the journal 19th-Century Music. He has held visiting
professorships at Yale, Columbia, the University of Graz, the University of
Newcastle upon Tyne, and McMaster University. His work, focused on the
interrelations of music, culture, and society, comprises numerous essays
and a series of seven books, most recently including Musical Meaning:
Toward a Critical History (2001) and Opera and Modern Culture: Wagner and
Strauss (2004), both published by the University of California Press.
Next year California will bring out Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing
Music in Cinema, a collection he edited with Daniel Goldmark and Richard
Leppert on the basis of an international conference that the three
organized in 2004.
and co-editor of the journal 19th-Century Music. He has held visiting
professorships at Yale, Columbia, the University of Graz, the University of
Newcastle upon Tyne, and McMaster University. His work, focused on the
interrelations of music, culture, and society, comprises numerous essays
and a series of seven books, most recently including Musical Meaning:
Toward a Critical History (2001) and Opera and Modern Culture: Wagner and
Strauss (2004), both published by the University of California Press.
Next year California will bring out Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing
Music in Cinema, a collection he edited with Daniel Goldmark and Richard
Leppert on the basis of an international conference that the three
organized in 2004.
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