Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-271) and index.
Contents:
Introduction : The modernity of grand opera -- Opera and beauty -- Gaslight and phantasmagoria at the Opera -- The diorama, apparitions and dream image in Robert le Diable -- The phantom ship in Der fliegende Hollander and L'africaine -- The poetics of sensation in L'africaine and Tristan und Isolde -- Aida, Egyptomania and the after-life of grand opera.
Summary:
"Grand Illusion is a new history of grand opera as an art of illusion facilitated by the introduction of gaslight illumination at the Academie Royale de Musique (Paris) in the 1820s. It contends that gaslight and the technologies of illusion used in the theater after the 1820s spurred the development of a new lyrical art, attentive to the conditions of darkness and radiance, and inspired by the model of phantasmagoria. Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno have used the concept of phantasmagoria to arrive at a philosophical understanding of modern life as total spectacle, in which the appearance of things supplants their reality. The book argues that the Academie became an early laboratory for this historical process of commodification, for the transformation of opera into an audio-visual spectacle delivering dream-like images. It shows that this transformation began in Paris and then defined opera after the mid-century. In the hands of Giacomo Meyerbeer (Robert le Diable, L'Africaine), Richard Wagner (Der fliegende Hollander, Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde) and Giuseppe Verdi (Aida), opera became an expanded form of phantasmagoria"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.