Digital Commons Network^™

Edward & Sons: An Improvised Opera, Ian Robles

Theses and Dissertations

A hurricane is coming, but at Edward & Sons Hardware and Plumbing the shelves are bare, the gringo debt collectors are calling and the owners is getting high in the back room. An improvised opera about the demise of the very last family-owned hardware store in Puerto Rico.

New Music For A New World: Robert Ashley’S Television Operas, Nicole Kaack

Theses and Dissertations

Robert Ashley defined the majority of his works as “television operas”—spoken narrative music for television broadcast. Analyzing Ashley’s works through their cross-disciplinarity, this thesis addresses the development of Ashley’s chosen medium; assesses his use of visual, linguistic, and musical structures; and interprets their basis in American cultural identity.

The Dissonant History Of Tristan And Isolde, Amanda Persaud

Dissertations and Theses

This essay traces the historical evolution of the story of Tristan and Isolde through three distinct phases, highlighting the transformation of the story from a feudal version to a post-feudal rendition infused with courtly love doctrines and notions of Christian love. It examines the early versions of the story by Béroul and Gottfried von Strassburg and discusses the shift in the portrayal of the relationship between Tristan and Isolde from one that decries disloyalty to one that is more sympathetic to their love. The essay also analyzes Richard Wagner's opera version of the story, which celebrates individual desire over duty …

The Music Of Sylvano Bussotti And Its Interpretation: Biopolitics, Intersubjectivity, And Modernist Canon Formation, Charles A. Rudig

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The music of Italian composer Sylvano Bussotti (1931–2021) presents intentional challenges to interpretation and canonization. These particular challenges and Bussotti’s reasoning for implementing them are interrogated in this dissertation by reading the score to Bussotti’s La Passion selon Sade (1966) through contemporaneous European social theory, philosophy, and political developments. La Passion selon Sade is a theatre piece for a chamber ensemble, with a primary vocal and dramatic role written for mezzo-soprano Catherine Berberian, with whom Bussotti frequently collaborated. Like much of Bussotti’s music from the 1950s and 1960s, the discourse surrounding the piece and its reception largely relates to its …

Disposizione Scenica Per L’Opera Simon Boccanegra: An Insight Into Verdi’S Sense Of Drama And A Valuable Tool For Contemporary Performance, Giordana Rubria Fiori

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this dissertation is twofold: while it aims to provide a valuable tool for performers and all artists involved in a production of Simon Boccanegra, it also simultaneously explores and outlines several instances in which Verdi’s all-encompassing idea of drama shapes and directs this opera.

Throughout this process, the disposizione scenica to Simon Boccanegra constitutes the central document that connects the practical and the aesthetic perspective of this dissertation. Each chapter is dedicated to a different character of Simon Boccanegra, allowing the reader to follow each character on a journey through the opera as it is presented in …

Appropriation Of The Highest Order: A Study Of Harry Smith’S Master Work, Film No. 18 Mahagonny In Relation To The Brecht-Weill Opera The Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny And Duchamp’S The Large Glass, Rose V. Marcus

Theses and Dissertations

Harry Smith’s Film No. 18, Mahagonny, 1970 – 1980, is a transmutation of the original Brecht-Weill opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, a 1930, into a feature-length experimental film. This paper shows how the original opera and Duchamp's The Large Glass prove inherent to Smith’s double-pronged homage to both original works of art. The failure in the opera narrative and the chance shattering of The Large Glass inform Smith’s complex methodology to approach and spatialize cinema. Harry Smith’s use of the tools of the screening apparatus are traced in order to study Mahagonny in detail. The …

For The Love Of Inner Voices: Miriam Gideon, Orchestration, And Fortunato, Whitney E. George

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Post-tonal American opera composer Miriam Gideon (1906-1996) completed a chamber opera, perhaps intended for television, titled Fortunato, based on a dark comic tragedy set in turn-of-the-20th-century, economically-ravaged Madrid. The expressive staged work follows the life of the unfortunate title character Fortunato in three operatic vignettes, each one becoming more desperate and moribund by the scene. A curious piece in Gideon’s oeuvre, the work remained unfinished, with a piano score for the complete work, but only a sample of her orchestration for Scene 1. This study examines the orchestration of Scene 1 as a template for creating an orchestration similar in …

Cyber-Narrative In Opera: Three Case Studies, Naomi Barrettara

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation looks at three newly composed operas that feature what I call cyber-narratives: a work in which the story itself is inextricably linked with digital technologies, such that the characters utilize, interact with, or are affected by digital technologies to such a pervasive extent that the impact of said technologies is thematized within the work. Through an analysis of chat rooms and real-time text communication in Nico Muhly’s Two Boys (2011), artificial intelligence in Søren Nils Eichberg’s Glare (2014), and mind uploading and digital immortality in Tod Machover’s Death and the Powers (2010), a nexus of ideologies surrounding voice, …

Linda Collazo: A Bronx Aria, Jose A. Giralt

Capstones

This video project follows Linda Collazo, a mezzo-soprano from the Bronx, as she prepares for various performances during fall of 2018. She describes the training in vocals, music, and acting she undergoes in order to break into the highly competitive field of operatic singers.

https://giraltjschool.exposure.co/linda-collazo-a-bronx-aria

Strauss And The City: The Reception Of Richard Strauss’S Salome, Elektra, And Der Rosenkavalier Within New York City, 1907–1934, Christopher G. Ogburn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

New York City at the beginning of the twentieth century was growing into its status as one of the world’s great cultural centers. At the same time, across the Atlantic, Richard Strauss was emerging as Germany’s preeminent composer. The city and Strauss, although seemingly unrelated, were more intertwined than it would at first appear. This study examines this connection through a reception history of Strauss’s Salome, Elektra, and Der Rosenkavalier in the city, beginning in 1907 with the New York City premiere of Salome and concluding in 1934 when the opera returned to the Metropolitan’s stage. The reception …

Operabbit, Mariel C. Mayz

Theses and Dissertations

OPERAbbit takes place in an unknown country with unnamed characters who are struggling for basic necessities amongst a political, social, and economic crisis. Questions of loyalty, trust, and nationalism are brought to the foreground as our Protagonist receives an unconventional government hand-out: a bunny. This fictional story— written by the composer and her brother— is met with humor and the liveliness of Latin American culture. The underlying truth, however, is more tragic. Many countries in Latin America have faced deep political, economic, or societal problems throughout their histories. None, however, have faced them all simultaneously as the country of Venezuela …

Climax Structure In Late Romantic Opera, Ji Yeon Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

When people listen to music, they tend to perceive dynamic rise and fall, often without preliminary knowledge of musical structures and mechanism. This perception of musical dynamism has long been assumed too intuitive and natural to merit serious academic attention. The present dissertation aims to address this neglect by approaching musical dynamism as a logical, systematic process. A formal analytical model, the climax archetype, is proposed for understanding the workings of musical dynamism; to this end, the dissertation focuses on late Romantic operas, especially the works of Wagner and verismo composers, which are characterized by intense musical, dramatic, and emotional …

The Analysis Of Musical Dramaturgy In Mozart's Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail, Danielle J. Bastone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It has long been recognized that the music of Mozart’s Singspiels bears more dramatic weight than that of most eighteenth-century German comic operas. Yet this view arises from a body of scholarship that heavily privileges Die Zauberflöte at the expense of Mozart’s other German-language operatic works, including Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), which constituted Mozart’s first big statement in Vienna and became easily the most popular of his operas during his lifetime. This is an analytical study of Mozart’s Entführung that examines form, phrase rhythm, and text-setting as agents of musical dramaturgy throughout the score. More specifically, it demonstrates …

Musical And Dramatic Roles Of The Chorus In Hugo Weisgall’S "Esther", Michael A. Capobianco Iv

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hugo Weisgall is considered one of America’s most important opera composers. He invariably chose subject matter of high artistic or philosophical importance, composing operas that dealt with significant 20th-century moral, social, and philosophical issues. In writing his final opera, Esther, which the New York City Opera premiered in October, 1993, Weisgall was able to make a larger statement about his Jewish heritage, the history of Jewish persecution and ultimate survival. The dissertation suggests that we enter the music and meaning of the opera most deeply through a consideration and study of the Chorus. The Chorus’s roles are as essential …

La Vie Dans Les Plis, Andre Rene Bregegere

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

La vie dans les plis was premiered at The Firehouse Space (Brooklyn, NY) on June 9, 2014, by violinist Karen Rostron and pianist Mirna Lekić. The piece's title is a reference to an eponimous collection of texts by Belgian author Henri Michaux. There is no direct connection between Michaux's text and the structure of the piece. This choice of title, in addition to its great poetic beauty, is meant as an acknowledgement of my indebtedness to Henri Michaux's writings, and, more generally, to Surrealist - and Surrealist-influenced - poetry, for revealing to me the artistic value of a bold exploration …

L'Harmonie Révée: An Analysis Of Henri Pousseur's 'Votre Faust' And 'Les Litanies D'Icare', Andre Rene Bregegere

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of two chapters, largely self-contained, each dedicated to a different piece by Belgian composer Henri Pousseur (1929-2009). The first chapter presents a detailed survey of Pousseur's opera, Votre Faust, attempting to address all major aspects of this vast, ambitious work: origins and reception, compositional design, relationship with the Western operatic and literary tradition, formal experimentations, and harmonic innovations. The second chapter presents a detailed analysis of a work representative of Pousseur's more recent output, Les Litanies d'Icare (1993) for piano solo, focused on Pousseur's trademark techniques of parametric, serial design (technique des groupes), and …

Inventions Of Truth, Deidre Bird

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.