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It has long been argued that opera is all about sex.Siren Songsis the first collection of articles devoted to exploring the impact of this sexual obsession, and of the power relations that come with it, on the music, words, and staging of opera. Here a distinguished and diverse group of musicologists, literary critics, and feminist scholars address a wide range of fascinating topics--from Salome's striptease to hysteria to jazz and gender--in Italian, English, German, and French operas from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. The authors combine readings of specific scenes with efforts to situate these musical moments within richly and precisely observed historical contexts. Challenging both formalist categories of musical analysis and the rhetoric that traditionally pits a male composer against the female characters he creates, many of the articles work toward inventing a language for the study of gender and opera. The collection opens with Mary Ann Smart's introduction, which provides an engaging reflection on the state of gender topics in operatic criticism and musicology. It then moves on to a foundational essay on the complex relationships between opera and history by the renowned philosopher and novelist Catherine Clément, a pioneer of feminist opera criticism. Other articles examine the evolution of the \"trouser role\" as it evolved in the lesbian subculture offin-de-siècleParis, the phenomenon ofopera seria's\"absent mother\" as a manifestation of attitudes to the family under absolutism, the invention of a \"hystericized voice\" in Verdi'sDon Carlos,and a collaborative discussion of the staging problems posed by the gender politics of Mozart's operas. The contributors are Wye Jamison Allanboork, Joseph Auner, Katherine Bergeron, Philip Brett, Peter Brooks, Catherine Clement, Martha Feldman, Heather Hadlock, Mary Hunter, Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon, M.D., Lawrence Kramer, Roger Parker, Mary Ann Smart, and Gretchen Wheelock.

Unfinished at Puccini's death in 1924, Turandot was not only his most ambitious work, but it became the last Italian opera to enter the international repertory. In this colorful study two renowned music scholars demonstrate that this work, despite the modern climate in which it was written, was a fitting finale for the centuries-old Great Tradition of Italian opera. Here they provide concrete instances of how a listener might encounter the dramatic and musical structures of Turandot in light of the Italian melodramma, and firmly establish Puccini's last work within the tradition of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. In a summary of the sounds, sights, and symbolism of Turandot, the authors touch on earlier treatments of the subject, outline the conception, birth, and reception of the work, and analyze its coordinated dramatic and musical design. Showing how the evolution of the libretto documents Puccini's reversion to large musical forms typical of the Great Tradition in the late nineteenth century, they give particular attention to his use of contrasting Romantic, modernist, and two kinds of orientalist coloration in the general musical structure. They suggest that Puccini's inability to complete the opera resulted mainly from inadequate dramatic buildup for Turandot's last-minute change of heart combined with an overly successful treatment of the secondary character.

Cinema and opera have become intertwined in a variety of powerful and unusual ways.Vocal Apparitionstells the story of this fascinating intersection, interprets how it occurred, and explores what happens when opera is projected onto the medium of film. Michal Grover-Friedlander finds striking affinities between film and opera--from Lon Chaney's classic silent film,The Phantom of the Opera, to the Marx Brothers'A Night at the Opera to Fellini's E la nave va. One of the guiding questions of this book is what occurs when what is aesthetically essential about one medium is transposed into the aesthetic field of the other. For example, Grover-Friedlander's comparison of an opera by Poulenc and a Rossellini film, both based on Cocteau's playThe Human Voice, shows the relation of the vocal and the visual to be surprisingly affected by the choice of the medium. Her analysis of the Marx Brothers'A Nightat the Opera demonstrates how, as a response to opera's infatuation with death, cinema comically acts out a correction of opera's fate. Grover-Friedlander argues that filmed operas such as Zeffirelli's Otello and Friedrich's Falstaff show the impossibility of a direct transformation of the operatic into the cinematic. Paradoxically, cinema at times can be more operatic than opera itself, thus capturing something essential that escapes opera's self-understanding. A remarkable look at how cinema has been haunted--and transformed--by opera,Vocal Apparitionsreveals something original and important about each medium.

When opera singers perform touchstone roles from the staples, they compete, however unfairly, not just with legendary artists of the past but also with themselves.

[...]it's redolent of many of the things we love about opera: its outsized beauty and glamour and a whiff of anachronism and swaths of luxuriously beautiful music.

Tim Ashley reviews the Royal Opera's production of \"Der Rosenkavalier.\"

Richard Strauss' instant and ever-popular \"Der Rosenkavalier\" -- a period operatic farce about sex and aging and renewal that turns unexpectedly profound and contemporary -- had its premiere in Dresden on Jan. 26, 1911. In an affectionate and nostalgic program note to accompany his affectionate and nostalgic staging, Mansouri says that the opera \"should not and cannot be updated\" or any other way messed with, given its representation of 18th century customs during the Empress Marie Therese's reign in Vienna.

[Jonathan Miller] shrouds the opera in discreet images of social change and intimations of impending conflagration. A brash, emotionally restrictive bourgeoisie is invading aristocratic territory with its loose codes of sexual licence. In Faninal's hastily furnished mansion, naff, Tissot-like paintings burst from packing cases in marked contrast to the Marschallin's boudoir, where 17th-century erotica surrounds her bed. Diana Montague's military Octavian sweeps on to present Susan Gritton's gawky Sophie with the silver rose at the front of a parade of men in uniform who may soon be despatched to the trenches to die. Miller even hints at what lies beyond the catastrophe: the proto-fascist statues that cover the front of Faninal's house represent a premonition of the Austro-German bourgeoisie's post-war swerve to the far right.

Markus Hollop (Baron Ochs) and James Maddelena (Faninal) were responsible for much of the humor, and they accomplished that in opposite ways. Hollop--younger, taller, slimmer than the traditional overstuffed lecherous baron--discarded all dignity; gross if funny, a sloppy character was revealed through sloppy singing. Maddelena's baritone is no longer always reliable, but his stage presence is. His small, but telling, portrait of Sophie's social climbing father was one of hilarious nuance. Most notable among the many others this opera employs were Jane Shaulis (Annina), Dennis Petersen (Valzacchi) and Robert Breault (an Italian tenor). [Patricia Risley] and Markus Hollop in the opera \"Der Rosenkavalier.\"; PHOTOGRAPHER: GLENN KOENIG / Los Angeles Times; Orange County Edition, F57 Baron Ochs, Markus Hollop helped supply much of the humor in the Costa Mesa production, which was a four-hour commitment for Tuesday's audience.; PHOTOGRAPHER: GLENN KOENIG Los Angeles Times

CORRECTION: SEE CORRECTION APPENDED; \"Der Rosenkavalier\" -- A headline on a review in Tuesday's Calendar section about an L.A. Opera production referred to it as [Gottfried Helnwein]'s staging of the opera \"Der Rosenkavalier.\" Helnwein is the set designer and costume designer; the work is directed by Maximilian Schell. Helnwein modernizes nostalgically. An artist who experiments with monochromatic canvases, he gives each act a different color. The Marschallin's bedroom is a handsome minimalist loft with a couple of antique chairs, bathed in blue. The parvenu Faninal -- whose daughter Sophie catches the eye of Octavian -- resides in an oversize yellow Colonial. The opera plays itself out as erotic farce in a low-life inn. Helnwein makes that a Spanish-style studio, full of his own portraits, and all is lewd red. [Richard Strauss] wrote Octavian for a mezzo-soprano (hence the lesbian implications), and the opera begins with Octavian and the Marschallin lounging in bed, following the orchestra's very specific musical description of lovemaking. Schell handles this more discreetly than most -- the lovers are off in a corner, unseen. Indeed, Schell goes so far as to accompany that orchestral opening with a video clip of galloping horses from a 1926 silent film of \"Der Rosenkavalier.\" So much for sex.