The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century

Oxford University Press; Oxford, New York, 2012. Softcover. Very Good. 9x6x1. [MUSIC]. Eds. Rachel Cowgill, Hilary Poriss. Contributors: Francesco Izzo, Roberta Montemorra Marvin, Joy H. Calico, et al. "The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century." Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. English language. Softcover. with black and white illustration. xlvi, 368 pp. 9 x 6 x 1 in. 23 x 16 x 2 cm. A book of academic essays. Text clean. Some dog-earring. Front cover bows out. Very Good. ISBN: 9780195365887. "Female characters assumed increasing prominence in the narratives of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century opera. And for contemporary audiences, many of these characters--and the celebrated women who played them--still define opera at its finest and most searingly affective, even if storylines leave them swooning and faded by the end of the drama. The presence and representation of women in opera has been addressed in a range of recent studies that offer valuable insights into the operatic stage as cultural space, focusing a critical lens at the text and the position and signification of female characters. Moving that lens onto the historical, "The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century" sheds light on the singers who created and inhabited these roles, the flesh-and-blood women who embodied these fabled "doomed women" onstage before an audience.