History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the Present Time

Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland), 1828-19Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5
Word count
959K words
Chapters
96

Tags

English Originals Music Public EntertainmentOpera HistoryArtistic EvolutionPerforming ArtsMusic HistoryComposerHumanistic CareTheater CultureItalian OperaCross-Cultural View

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time by EdwardsAuthor: Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland), 1828-1906,Language: English, Class: ML: Music: Literature of music, Release Date: Jul 8, 2012

Editor's review

This book is a general history of opera that begins with its origins in Italy and extends down to the author's own time, written by the nineteenth-century English music writer H. Sutherland Edwards. Its value lies not in a compilation of scattered anecdotes but in a continuous narrative that traces opera from the early experiments in Florence and the rise of public theaters in Venice through the changing tastes of stages in various countries, letting the reader see how an art form took shape amid patronage, commerce, and audience taste. The prose has the ease and judgment of a Victorian critic, and the material is organized around figures, works, and theaters, making it suitable as extended reading after an introduction to Western music history. It should be read as an "old history" with a point of view: absorb its narrative framework while remaining aware of judgments marked by their era. For readers who wish to understand the evolution of the operatic genre, or who are interested in the style of nineteenth-century music writing, this is a public-domain text worth reading slowly.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Begin with the opening chapters on the Italian origins to establish a timeline, then proceed along national and theatrical lines.
  2. Keep a running record of the composers, works, and theaters mentioned to build your own comparative table.
  3. When encountering judgments colored by the author's era, mark them as doubtful first and assess them after finishing, in light of other sources.
  4. Listen to selections from the works mentioned to let hearing aid your understanding of changing stage tastes.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96

FAQ

Is this book suitable for readers with no foundation in opera? Not really as a first book. It assumes some familiarity with operatic works, composers, and theater institutions, and the narrative is dense and lacks modern annotation. Complete beginners should first read an introductory guide with musical examples and explanations of terminology, then return to this book to trace the historical development.
Is this a modern scholarly work? No. The author was a nineteenth-century English writer; his prose and judgments bear the mark of his time, and there is no annotation system or bibliography such as modern scholarship provides. Its value lies in its earlier systematic narrative and original context; it should be read as a historical text rather than a survey of the latest research.
How difficult is the original English? It is nineteenth-century English expository prose with long sentences and a dense concentration of names of people, theaters, and works, but the grammar is generally regular and the logic coherent. Readers with university-level English can work through it with a dictionary; it is advisable to read one chapter at a time and take notes on figures and works so as not to be overwhelmed by proper names.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland), 1828-19 Author

Henry Sutherland Edwards (1828–19) was a nineteenth-century British author and critic of music and the stage. Public information about his life and dates is limited, and he is known mainly through his works. Five of his books are held here, centering on opera history and Parisian urban culture. Among them, History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time offers a systematic survey of opera's development, while The Great Musicians: Rossini and His School and The Life of Rossini focus on Rossini's life and musical achievements. The two volumes of Old and New Paris trace the city's changes and social life through its history, people, and places. His writing combines historical research with readable narrative, bringing music history and urban culture to general readers, and represents a notable strand of nineteenth-century British music criticism and popular history writing.