Opera and the Culture of Fascism

ISBN-13: 9780198165668 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 288 str.

Jeremy Tambling

Opis

Tambling draws on the insights of Adorno, Benjamin, Theweleit, Bataille, Kristeva, and others to read nineteenth- and early twentieth-century opera as part of a culture which produced fascism as a crisis-state, and threatened to extinguish the genre as an influential and contemporary form of high art. Examining over a dozen operas in detail, Tambling discovers an ideology with both reactionary and revolutionary potentials.

Recenzje

Tambling takes the texts of opera seriously. He is interested in why composers have chosen their subjects, and how these relate to their opinions and to the prejudices of the societies in which they lived. Tambling is courageously attempting to strike deeper, to suggest that audiences cannot allow themselves to be merely 'entertained' by operas and should be troubled by their subject-matter and sub-texts - and he shows real insight in bringing these to the surface.