Vincenzo Bellini on Stage and Screen, 1935-2020

Emilio Sala is Professor of Musicology at the University of Milan, Italy. He is editor of the series Le Sfere and has published many books as author and editor, among them The Sounds of Paris in Verdi’s “La traviata” (2013). Since 2020, together with Giorgio Biancorosso, he has been founding co-editor of the journal Sound Stage Screen.Graziella Seminara is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Catania, Italy, where she is director of the Centre for Bellini Studies. She is author of monographs on Jean-Philippe Rameau (2001) and Alban Berg (2012), and of the book Lo sguardo obliquo. Il teatro musicale di Corghi e Saramago (2015).Emanuele Senici is Professor of Musicology at the University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy. His publications include the monographs Landscape and Gender in Italian Opera: The Alpine Virgin from Bellini to Puccini (2005) and Music in the Present Tense: Rossini’s Italian Operas in Their Time (2019), and several edited volumes, such as The Cambridge Companion to Rossini (2004) and Giacomo Puccini and His World (2016, with Arman Schwartz). Between 2003 and 2008 he was co-editor of the Cambridge Opera Journal.

• IntroductionEmilio Sala (University of Milan, Italy), Graziella Seminara (University of Catania, Italy) and Emanuele Senici (University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy)1. Staging La sonnambula in the Twenty-First CenturyEmanuele Senici (University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy)2. Opera and Trauma: Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito’s I PuritaniBiagio Scuderi (University of Catania, Italy)3. Norma, Ibsen, and I: Experiencing Relevance and Exploring Reality in Bellini’s OperaHedda Høgåsen-Hallesby (Norwegian National Opera, Norway)4. From the Apotheosis of Italian Genius to Melodrama: Carmine Gallone’s Casta DivaGraziella Seminara (University of Catania, Italy)5. Carmine Gallone’s Casta Diva and the Italian Composer Biopic, 1935-1954: Pastiche, History and AffectGiuliano Danieli (University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy)6. Emotion and Temporality: ‘Casta Diva’ in Film Soundtracks, 1980-2011Matteo Giuggioli (University of Roma Tre, Italy)7. Remediating Bellini through Sound and Video Art: Christian Marclay’s Maria Callas in ContextGiacomo Albert (University of Turin, Italy)8. ‘Casta Diva’ Reimagined: Staging Death in Marina Abramovic’s 7 Deaths of Maria CallasJelena Novak (Universidade Nova, Lisbon, Portugal) and Michal Grover-Friedlander (Tel Aviv University, Israel)9. Bellini’s Digital LivenessClemens Risi (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität,Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany)ContributorsIndex

Vincenzo Bellini on Stage and Screen, 1935-2020 shows how musicological lucidity and theatrical imagination can fruitfully go hand in hand. Bellini’s three best-known operas, La sonnambula, Norma and I Puritani, are re-interpreted in light of contemporary aesthetics. This book makes it clear that aesthetic practice can not only open up new paths toward an operatic work, but also take us deep into it, which means that it is capable of transforming it from the inside out.