At first look, modernism and opera could seem like unusual bedfellows—the former opposed to sentiment, the latter donning its center on its sleeve. And but those obvious opposites allure: many operas are aesthetically avant-garde, politically subversive, and socially transgressive. From the proto-modernist traces of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal through the twenty-first-century modernism of Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de loin, the duet among modernism and opera, at turns harmonious and dissonant, has been one of many relevant inventive occasions of modernity. regardless of this centrality, students of modernist literature merely not often enterprise into opera, and tune students often go back the want by means of leaving literature to 1 aspect. yet opera, that grand cauldron of the humanities, calls for that students, too, percentage the degree with one another.

In Modernism and Opera, Richard Begam and Matthew Wilson Smith compile musicologists, literary critics, and theater students for the 1st time in a mutual pastime to track convinced key moments within the heritage of modernism and opera. This cutting edge quantity contains essays from the most awesome students of their fields and covers works as varied as Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, Berg’s Wozzeck, Janácek’s Makropulos Case, Thomson’s Four Saints in 3 Acts, Strauss’s Arabella, Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron, Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Britten’s Gloriana, and Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise.

A collaborative learn of the last word collaborative artwork shape, Modernism and Opera finds how modernism and opera light up one another and, extra regularly, the tradition of the 20 th century. It additionally addresses a couple of concerns an important for knowing the relation among modernism and opera, focusing particularly on intermediality (how modernism integrates tune, literature, and drama into opera) and anti-theatricality (how opera responds to modernism’s obvious antipathy to theatricality). This attractive book—the first of its kind—will attract students of literature, song, theater, and modernity in addition to to stylish opera enthusiasts everywhere.