Kategoria BISAC: Performing Arts >> General

To its devotees, opera is the most sublime of arts. It is also one of the most accident prone, and when things go wrong, they tend to do so on a grand scale. Great Operatic Disasters records some of the most memorable calamities from opera houses around the world. Most of them are true, some have been embroidered over the years, and a few, well, se non e vero, e ben trovato.

This monograph, translated from the original Danish, concentrates on the plan and execution of 'Messiah', its singers and performances, manuscripts and editions, and aesthetics. . . . For all scholarly collections. "Library Journal"

Harold Pinter is universally described as Britain's leading dramatist. This book evaluates the justification for this appellation. It examines his work in relation to changes taking place in the New British Theatre after the so-called theatrical revolution of 1956, and draws attention to those autobiographical experiences that have been transmuted into his art. Beginning with a look at the nature of British theatre prior to 1956, Peacock then describes Pinter's early life in the East End of London, his career as an actor, and his early writing. The discussion follows Pinter's life and work...

Best known as the author of such plays as "A Doll's House" and "Hedda Gabler," Henrik Ibsen is one of the most influential figures of modern drama. This book takes Ibsen as a case study for an exploration of early modernist theatre in theory and practice, in text and performance. Modern drama has its roots in the theatrical activity across Europe during the 1880s and 1890s--the period when Ibsen's plays were first being produced in England and France, often by avant-garde or experimental theatrical groups. This study focuses on four of Ibsen's plays and their reception in England and...

"We are asked (to put it politely) for whom we are writing..." From his perspective as a composer, Roger Sessions discusses some basic questions raised by the experience of music: what do we mean by "knowing" a piece of music, or "understanding" it? In what ways is the relationship between composer and listener different today from what it was in the past, and what demands can each make on the other?

Music, like all nonverbal arts and certainly like mathematics and some branches of science, has its own dialectic, which is not that of words at all." Mr. Sessions...

Astronomy as a science began with the Ionian philosophers, with whom Greek philosophy and mathematics also began. While the Egyptians and Babylonians had accomplished much of astronomical worth, it remained for the unrivalled speculative genius of the Greeks, in particular, their mathematical genius, to lay the foundations of the true science of astronomy. In this classic study, a noted scholar discusses in lucid detail the specific advances made by the Greeks, many of whose ideas anticipated the discoveries of modern astronomy.
Pythagoras, born at Samos about 572 B.C., was probably the...

A great...