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  1. Home
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  3. Nineteenth-Century Opera and the Scientific Imagination
  • Cited by 2
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
August 2019
Print publication year:
2019
Online ISBN:
9781316275863
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316275863
Subjects:
History of Science and Technology, Music, History, Nineteenth-Century Music
Information

Book description

Scientific thinking has long been linked to music theory and instrument making, yet the profound and often surprising intersections between the sciences and opera during the long nineteenth century are here explored for the first time. These touch on a wide variety of topics, including vocal physiology, theories of listening and sensory communication, technologies of theatrical machinery and discourses of biological degeneration. Taken together, the chapters reveal an intertwined cultural history that extends from backstage hydraulics to drawing-room hypnotism, and from laryngoscopy to theatrical aeronautics. Situated at the intersection of opera studies and the history of science, the book therefore offers a novel and illuminating set of case studies, of a kind that will appeal to historians of both science and opera, and of European culture more generally from the French Revolution to the end of the Victorian period.

Reviews

‘There is an interesting discussion of whether opera was beneficial or dangerous for the mentally ill. This exploration of the intersection of two important aspects of 19th-century Western life will interest scientists and musicians alike.’

R. Pitts Source: Choice

‘Over the course of the essays, all of which are excellent, the book weaves a very solid network of living objects, which resonate with each other from chapter to chapter and bear witness to the inextricable entanglement between the operatic stage and the scientific stage in nineteenth-century opera, echoes of which are still audible today.’

Isabelle Moindrot Source: Revue de musicologie

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