Waiting for Verdi : Italian opera and political opinion, 1815-1848 / Mary Ann Smart.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Risorgimento fantasies -- Accidental affinities: Gioachino Rossini and Salvatore Vigan? -- Elizabeth I, Mary Stuart, and the limits of allegory -- Reading Mazzini's Filosofia della musica with Byron and Donizetti -- Parlor games -- Progress, piety, and plagiarism: Verdi's I lombardi at La Scala -- Conclusion.

"The name Giuseppe Verdi conjures images of Italians singing opera in the streets and bursting into song at political protests, or even while facing the firing squad. Whereas many of those stories were exaggerated or even invented by later generations, opera--by Verdi, but also by Rossini, Donizetti, and Mercadante--did play a key role in priming Italians to imagine Italy as an independent and unified nation. Capturing what it was like to attend the opera or to join in the music at an aristocratic salon, Waiting for Verdi shows that the moral dilemmas, emotional reactions, and journalistic polemics sparked by these performances set new horizons for what Italians could think, feel, say, and write. Among the lessons taught by this music were that rules enforced by artistic tradition could be broken, that opera or ballet could jolt the spectator into intense feeling as well as edify, and that Italy could be in the vanguard of stylistic and technical innovation, rather than clinging to the glories of centuries past. More practically, theatrical performances showed spectators that political change really was possible, making the newly engaged spectator in the opera house into an actor on the political stage"--Provided by publisher.

Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on July 18, 2018).

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