Opera and the Built Environment

Nyhet

Inbunden, Engelska, 2025

Av Laura Vasilyeva

1 719 kr

Kommande

Finns i fler format (1)

Häftad

439 kr

Skickas torsdag 13/11

The first book to examine the classic Italian opera house in a global context. In Opera and the Built Environment, music scholar Laura Vasilyeva considers the remarkable mass construction of opera houses around the world since the 1800s and the no-less-remarkable bids to standardize the architectural features of their interiors across this vast theatrical infrastructure. Now known as the teatro all’italiana, this style of architecture—made most famous by Milan’s Teatro alla Scala—is characterized by auditoria with tiers of stacked boxes and a dominant red hue. With attention to the sensuous dimensions of their auditoria, from their surfaces to their atmospheres to their acoustics and thresholds, Vasilyeva reveals the calculated reasons these theaters took on the form they did. The result is a book that reveals unknown associations between the Italian opera house and matters of environmental destruction, empire, and belonging, showing us new and unexpected patterns in how opera connects to the world we know.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2025-11-19
Mått152 x 229 x 18 mm
Vikt399 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieOpera Lab: Explorations in History, Technology, and Performance
Antal sidor184
FörlagThe University of Chicago Press
ISBN9780226844442

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List of Illustrations and Tables1. ArchitectureDivisive ArchitectureDistributed ArchitectureBlueprint2. Surfaces(Chromo)phobiaRedSur-FaceErasure3. AtmosphereRansacked EarthPure AirDirty OperaEscapist Fantasies4. AcousticsOrchestra ChamberCalibrating AcousticsProtected SpaceAcoustic SignaturesPure Sound?5. ThresholdsEthics of BoundariesColonial MetalCellular ExpansionAcknowledgmentsAppendixNotesBibliographyIndex

“To understand opera we need to understand opera houses: this is the deceptively simple premise of Opera and the Built Environment. In Vasilyeva’s hands, however, it is an idea made foundational, as the classic tiered design of the operatic theater is revealed as a place of thresholds and surfaces, materials and atmospheres. Within its spaces, the operatic canon looks and sounds different, too, in the inseparability of the repertoire from the buildings in which it has for so long been performed. Across each chapter, we encounter the opera house transfigured, and by the end of this remarkable book the history of opera itself has been subtly reshaped.”