Opera and Ideas is a study of the connections between music and intellectual history. Through lucid analysis of six operas and two song cycles, Paul Robinson shows how operas give musical and dramatic expression to ideas about the self, society, and history.

"When the curtain goes up on The Teapot Opera there is no music. There are no people, either. But there are plenty of characters: there's the teapot, of course, and a white plastic stallion, a china harpist, a skull, an expresso machine, chess pieces, fruit, the Michelin Tire man, fragments of a classical sculpture, ancient books, a souvenir bust of Teddy Roosevelt, valves and gauges of all kinds, a Shriner's fez, a glass eyeball, billiard balls, and so much more."--Jacket flap.

Fernando the mouse loves helping at the opera, but singer Dolores thinks she deserves a bigger assistant.

Opera, Sex, and Other Vital Matters gathers both classic and never-before-published essays from one of the leading stylists in contemporary American letters, and one of our more revered public intellectuals, Paul Robinson. Diverse and elegant, the essays in this new collection showcase the sly wit and lightly worn erudition of their author. Each celebrates art and the flesh, directing us to the twin ecstasies of music and eros. The essays on opera gathered here explore how masterpieces like Fidelio and The Magic Flute reflect the intellectual currents of their day. Be it the work of Verdi or Mozart, Wagner or Strauss, Robinson compels us to search for meaning not just in the lyrics of opera but also in the music. In melody, not libretto, we are more likely to discern key historical complexities and appreciate the way opera transcends language and time. The essays on sexuality, meanwhile, are ruminative, funny, and even moving. At one moment, Robinson measures whether homosexuality is the result of destiny or free choice. In another, he shares a touching exchange of letters with a gay student in the process of coming out. The final essays that encompass "other vital matters" find Robinson at his most incisive. Whether defending Freud as the most influential thinker of the twentieth century, attacking the dreaded use of semicolons, reflecting on his own mortality, or even meditating on the nature of cats, Sex, Opera, and Other Vital Matters is an eclectic work that will appeal to any reader interested in the continuing relevance of ideas to life.

A lifelong opera lover, Bernard Williams's articles and essays, talks for the BBC, contributions to the Grove Dictionary of Opera, and program notes for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the English National Opera, generated a devoted following. This volume brings together these widely scattered and largely unobtainable pieces, including two that have not been previously published. It covers an engaging range of topics from Mozart to Wagner, including essays on specific operas by those composers as well as Verdi, Puccini, Strauss, Debussy, Janacek, and Tippett. --From publisher's description.

This title is a part of the series “Schwung”; Critical Curating and Aesthetic Management for Art, Business and Politics. Conventional wisdom holds that the performing arts, due to the economic nature of the sector, are condemned to a state of permanent financial crisis. However, increasingly frequent information about the fiscal troubles of several opera houses has also led to questions about the soundness of the strategies adopted by these organizations, and about the administrative abilities of their general managers. The case narrated here (La Fenice, Venice’s main opera theater), represents a successful case in which, still inside the borders of a subsidized cultural production, a managerial turn led to substantial improvements in efficiency and productivity levels. However, the success of a case such as La Fenice in terms of bottom-line fiscal indicators does not imply immunity to critiques. The description and analysis of the case, far from being presented as a best practice with any claim of generalization, allows for a critical reflection on arts management, starting from the tension between art and commerce discussed initially by the Frankfurt School. Critiques not only challenge the dominant meaning of what is considered good and what is not: they also contribute to the reshaping of a new social order. Only by looking at the whole picture, at both dominant and critical voices, can we come to a greater understanding of current ideological stances in the arts world and contextualize them within existing discourses on art, management studies, and arts management.

From classic films like Carmen Jones to contemporary works like The Diary of Sally Hemings and U-Carmen eKhayelitsa, American and South African artists and composers have used opera to reclaim black people's place in history. Naomi André draws on the experiences of performers and audiences to explore this music's resonance with today's listeners. Interacting with creators and performers, as well as with the works themselves, André reveals how black opera unearths suppressed truths. These truths provoke complex, if uncomfortable, reconsideration of racial, gender, sexual, and other oppressive ideologies. Opera, in turn, operates as a cultural and political force that employs an immense, transformative power to represent or even liberate. Viewing opera as a fertile site for critical inquiry, political activism, and social change, Black Opera lays the foundation for innovative new approaches to applied scholarship.