Singers of Italian opera : the history of a profession

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Singers of Italian opera : the history of a profession

by John Rosselli

Cambridge University Press, 1992

  • : pbk

Available at  / 15 libraries

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Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Adelina Patti was the most highly regarded singer in history. She earned nearly $5,000 a night and had her own railway carriage. Yet a minor comic singer would perform for the cost of his food and a pair of shoes to wear on stage. John Rosselli's wide-ranging study introduces all those singers, members of the chorus as well as stars, who have sung Italian opera from 1600 to the twentieth century. Singers are shown slowly emancipating themselves from dependence on great patrons and entering the dangerous freedom of the market. Rosselli also examines the sexist prejudices against the castrati of the eighteenth century and against women singers. Securely rooted in painstaking scholarship and sprinkled with amusing anecdote, this is a book to fascinate and inform opera fans at all levels.

Table of Contents

  • List of illustrations
  • Preface
  • List of abbreviations
  • Introduction: a living tradition
  • 1. Musicians attending
  • 2. Castrati
  • 3. Women
  • 4. The coming of a market
  • 5. Training
  • 6. Pay
  • 7. Careers
  • 8. The age of the tenor
  • 9. The coming of mass society
  • Notes
  • Note on further reading
  • Index.

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