Mimomania : music and gesture in nineteenth-century opera / Mary Ann Smart.
| Author/creator |
Smart, Mary Ann |
| Format | Book and Print |
| Publication Info | Berkeley : University of California Press, 2004. |
| Description | ix, 247 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Subject(s) |
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| Series | California studies in 19th-century music ; 13 California studies in 19th century music ; 13. ^A174953 |
| Contents | In praise of overstatement -- Wagner's cancan, Fenella's leap ; La Muette de Portici and Auber's reality effect -- Bellini's unseen voices -- "Every word made flesh" ; Les Huguenots and the incarnation of the invisible -- Uneasy bodies: Verdi and sublimation -- Mimomania: allegory and embodiment in Wagner's music dramas. |
| Abstract | When Nietzsche dubbed Richard Wagner "the most enthusiastic mimomaniac" ever to exist, he was objecting to a hollowness he felt in the music, a crowding out of any true dramatic impulse by extravagant poses and constant nervous movements. The author suspects that Nietzsche may have seen and heard more than he realized. She takes his accusation as an invitation to listen to Wagner's music--and that of several of his near-contemporaries--for the way it serves to intensify the visible and the enacted. As the author demonstrates, this productive fusion of music and movement often arises when music forsakes the autonomy so prized by the Romantics to function mimetically, underlining the sighs of a Bellini heroine, for instance, or the authoritarian footsteps of a Verdi baritone. This book tracks such effects through readings of operas by Auber, Bellini, Meyerbeer, Verdi, and Wagner. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| LCCN | 2003014271 |
| ISBN | 0520239954 (alk. paper) |
Available Items
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions | |
| Music | Music Stacks | ML1720.4 .S63 2004 | ✔ Available | Place Hold |