Metaphysical Song – An Essay on Opera (Princeton Studies in Opera) - Hardcover

Tomlinson, Gary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691004080 ISBN 13: 9780691004082

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Connecting opera to shifting visions of metaphysics and selfhood across the last four hundred years, this book examines the relationship between the self and metaphysics as described by philosophers from Ficino through Descartes, Kant and Nietzsche, to Adorno. He then argues that opera, in its own right, has brought these subjects to the stage. Among the composers featured are Peri, Wagner, Lully, Verdi, Mozart and Britten. The book details interactions of song, words, drama and sounds used by creators of opera to fill in the outlines of the subjectivities they envisioned.

About this title

About the Author

Gary Tomlinson is Annenberg Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania and has held Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships. His books include Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance and Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others.

From the Back Cover

"A fascinating and sensitive study of how philosophers have probed the problem of subjectivity through the passage of the operatic voice. Tomlinson's work is notable for the way it combines a thorough knowledge of the history of music and opera with an understanding of contemporary problems of theory and methodology."--Lydia Goehr, Columbia University

"This extraordinary book offers us an 'alternative story' of the history of opera. . . . [It] will have an important . . . effect on the way we think about opera."--Roger Parker, Oxford University

From the Inside Flap

"A fascinating and sensitive study of how philosophers have probed the problem of subjectivity through the passage of the operatic voice. Tomlinson's work is notable for the way it combines a thorough knowledge of the history of music and opera with an understanding of contemporary problems of theory and methodology."--Lydia Goehr, Columbia University

"This extraordinary book offers us an 'alternative story' of the history of opera. . . . [It] will have an important . . . effect on the way we think about opera."--Roger Parker, Oxford University

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691004080
• ISBN 13: 9780691004082
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 202