Opera and Society in Italy and France from Monteverdi to Bourdieu

Cambridge Studies in Opera

by Victoria Johnson (Editor), Jane F. Fulcher (Editor), Thomas Ertman (Editor)

This edited volume brings together academic specialists writing on the multi-media operatic form from a range of disciplines: comparative literature, history, sociology, and philosophy. The presence in the volume's title of Pierre Bourdieu, the leading cultural sociologist of the late twentieth century, signals the editors' intention to synthesise advances in social science with advances in musicological and other scholarship on opera. Through a focus on opera in Italy and France, the contributors to the volume draw on their respective disciplines both to expand our knowledge of opera's history and to demonstrate the kinds of contributions that stand to be made by different disciplines to the study of opera. The volume is divided into three sections, each of which is preceded by a concise and informative introduction explaining how the chapters in that section contribute to our understanding of opera.

440 pages, Hardcover

First published March 5, 2007

About the author

Victoria Johnson loves history, gardens, and opera. She earned her undergraduate degree in philosophy at Yale and her doctorate in sociology at Columbia. She teaches on the history of philanthropy, the arts, the natural environment, and New York City at Hunter College of the City University of New York. Her latest book, AMERICAN EDEN, is a biography of the doctor at the Hamilton-Burr duel, David Hosack, a pioneering physician and botanist. Hosack's botanical garden, the first in the new Republic, is now buried under Rockefeller Center.