Filmmakers' fascination with opera dates back to the silent era but it was not until the late 1980s that critical enquiries into the intersection of opera and cinema began to emerge. Jeongwon Joe focusses primarily on the role of opera as soundtrack by exploring the distinct effects opera produces in film, effects which differ from other types of soundtrack music, such as jazz or symphony. These effects are examined from three perspectives: peculiar qualities of the operatic voice; various properties commonly associated with opera, such as excess, otherness or death; and multifaceted tensions between opera and cinema - for instance, opera as live, embodied, high art and cinema as technologically mediated, popular entertainment. Joe argues that when opera excerpts are employed on soundtracks they tend to appear at critical moments of the film, usually associated with the protagonists, and the author explores why it is opera, not symphony or jazz, that accompanies poignant scenes like these. Joe's film analysis focuses on the time period of the post-1970s, which is distinguished by an increase of opera excerpts on soundtracks to blockbuster titles, the commercial recognition of which promoted the production of numerous opera soundtrack CDs in the following years. Joe incorporates an empirical methodology by examining primary sources such as production files, cue-sheets and unpublished interviews with film directors and composers to enhance the traditional hermeneutic approach. The films analysed in her book include Woody Allen’s Match Point, David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, and Wong Kar-wai’s 2046.

Explores the history of opera music, how the music is performed and acted out, and why spectators enjoy watching the performances.

This book explores the connection between melodrama and medicine from multiple perspectives. Neuroscientists study the relationship between opera and brain functioning in the light of new findings in the fields of neurophysiology, neuroimaging, cognitive science and neuro-musicology; clinicians investigate the therapeutic potential of music, especially in the field of treatment and rehabilitation of individuals with neurodegenerative diseases; medical historians analyse the representation of diseases and those who cure diseases within operas; occupational doctors report descriptions of diseases that affect workers in the opera world and particularly focus on psychiatric and psychological alterations. Opera, with its instrumental and vocal accompaniment, is considered the most complete form of theatrical performance. However, little is known about the mechanisms of brain activity under the influence of melodrama on singers, musicians, and listeners. The use of neuroimaging techniques has enabled a better understanding of the neuronal mechanisms and circuits involved during an opera performance. Over the past 20 years, melodrama has increasingly been used as a therapeutic approach in various neurological and neuropsychiatric pathologies, such as depression, cognitive impairment, and even coma. The book also discusses the ways in which melodrama affects professionals involved in music and interventions to reduce or alleviate occupational diseases, leading to improved health and higher life satisfaction. The ultimate goal is to improve therapeutic interventions in neurological diseases and professional disorders, relying on solid neuroscientific data. This book will be of great interest to neurologists, neurobiologists, psychiatrists, occupational doctors and therapists in music.

Expanding the notion of translation, this book specifically focuses on the transferences between music and text. The concept of 'translation' is often limited solely to language transfer. It is, however, a process occurring within and around most forms of artistic expression. Music, considered a language in its own right, often refers to text discourse and other art forms. In translation, this referential relationship must be translated too. How is music affected by text translation? How does music influence the translation of the text it sets? How is the sense of both the text and the music transferred in the translation process? Combining theory with practice, the book questions the process and role translation has to play in a musical context. It provides a range of case studies across interdisciplinary fields. It is the first collection on music in translation that is not restricted to one discipline, including explorations of opera libretti, surtitling, art song, musicals, poetry, painting, sculpture and biography, alongside looking at issues of accessibility.

The Reader's Guide to Music is designed to provide a useful single-volume guide to the ever-increasing number of English language book-length studies in music. Each entry consists of a bibliography of some 3-20 titles and an essay in which these titles are evaluated, by an expert in the field, in light of the history of writing and scholarship on the given topic. The more than 500 entries include not just writings on major composers in music history but also the genres in which they worked (from early chant to rock and roll) and topics important to the various disciplines of music scholarship (from aesthetics to gay/lesbian musicology).

Named a Library Journal Best Reference of 2023 - "Bravo! An invaluable source for scholars and concertgoers.” - Library Journal In the history of the Western musical tradition, the Baroque period traditionally dates from the turn of the 17th century to 1750. The beginning of the period is marked by Italian experiments in composition that attempted to create a new kind of secular musical art based upon principles of Greek drama, quickly leading to the invention of opera. The ending is marked by the death of Johann Sebastian Bach in 1750 and the completion of George Frideric Handel’s last English oratorio, Jephtha, the following year. The Historical Dictionary of Baroque Music, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 500 cross-referenced entries on composers, instruments, cities, and technical terms. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about baroque music.

Music has been an integral part of film exhibition from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century. With the arrival of sound film in the late 1920s, music became part of a complex multimedia text. Although industry, fan-oriented, and scholarly literatures on film music have existed from early on, and music was frequently among the topics discussed and disputed, only in the past thirty years has sustained scholarly attention gone to music in visual media, beginning with the feature film. The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies charts that interdisciplinary activity in its primary areas of inquiry: history, genre and medium, analysis and criticism, and interpretation. The handbook provides an overview to the field on a large scale. Chapters in Part I range from the relations of music and the soundtrack to opera and film, textual representation of film sound, and film music as studied by cognitive scientists. Part II addresses genre and medium with chapters focusing on cartoons and animated films, the film musical, music in arcade and early video games, and the interplay of film, music, and recording over the past half century. The chapters in Part III offer case studies in interpretation along with extended critical surveys of theoretical models of gender, sexuality, and subjectivity as they impinge on music and sound. The three chapters on analysis in Part IV are diverse: one systematically models harmonies used in recent films, a second looks at issues of music and film temporality, and a third focuses on television. Chapters on history (Part V) cover topics including musical antecedents in nineteenth-century theater, the complex issues in sychronization of music in performance of early (silent) films, international practices in early film exhibition, and the symphony orchestra in film.

Opera and musical theater dominated French culture in the 1800s, and the influential stage music that emerged from this period helped make Paris, as Walter Benjamin put it, the “capital of the nineteenth century.” The fullest account available of this artistic ferment and its international impact, Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer explores the diverse institutions that shaped Parisian music and extended its influence across Europe, the Americas, and Australia. The contributors to this volume, who work in fields ranging from literature to theater to musicology, focus on the city’s musical theater scene as a whole rather than on individual theaters or repertories. Their broad range enables their collective examination of the ways in which all aspects of performance and reception were affected by the transfer of works, performers, and management models from one environment to another. By focusing on this interplay between institutions and individuals, the authors illuminate the tension between institutional conventions and artistic creation during the heady period when Parisian stage music reached its zenith.

Fifty of the world's most respected scholars cast opera as a fluid entity that continuously reinvents itself in a reflection of its patrons, audience, and creators.