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Cry to Heaven
Anne Rice demonstrates her power to enthrall the reader as she makes real for us the exalted and fearful life of an extraordinary society--the eighteenth-century world of the castrati, the male sopranos whose glorious voices, unmatched by any singers since their time, brought them the adulation of the royal courts and grand opera houses of Europe. This is a novel that charms, shocks, and moves us by its portrayal of passionate and fascinating lives, by its re-creation of a strange and exotic moment in history--and by the ways in which it considers, and adds resonance to, our deepest images of the masculine and the feminine. It is a mesmerizing feat of storytelling. From the Trade Paperback edition..
Price: $19.99
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The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon
This entertaining and authoritative study of the castrati during the baroque period explores the lives and triumphs of more than 60 singers over three centuries—their social origins, training, and relationship to society and church. Blending history and anecdote, it traces the course of a phenomenon that held Europe in its thrall. People were fascinated by these hybrids—part man, part woman, and part child—who became virile heroes on the operatic stage. The reader will learn of the horrors of castration, the nature of the strange castrato voice, and the conflicts these singers experienced. .
Price: $27.99
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Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, And the Second Woman in Early Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (Musical Meaning and Interpretation)
The early 19th century was a period of acute transition in operatic tradition and style, when time-honoured practices gave way to the developing aesthetics of Romanticism, the rise of the tenor overtook the falling stars of the castrati, and the heroic, the masculine, and the feminine were profoundly reconfigured. These transformations resounded in operatic plot structures as well; the happy resolution of the 18th century twisted into a tragic 19th-century finale with the death of the helpless and innocent heroine - and frequently her tenor hero along with her.Female voices which formerly had sung en travesti, or basically in male drag, opposite their female character counterparts then took on roles of the second woman, a companion and foil to the death-bound heroine rather than her romantic partner. In "Voicing Gender", Naomi Andre skilfully traces the development of female characters in these first decades of the century, weaving in and around these changes in voicings and plot lines, to define an emergent legacy in operatic roles. Naomi Andre is Associate Professor at the University of Michigan. Trained as a musicologist, her research focuses on nineteenth-century opera and issues surrounding women, gender and voice. Working within feminist theory, she has examined voice as a sounding phenomena and as a conceptual construct. Her publications include topics on Italian opera, Schoenberg and women composers. Current research interests extend to constructions of race, ethnicity, and identity in opera..
Price: $24.94
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Interrupted Aria (Baroque Mystery)
The dazzling city on the lagoon is sailing toward the ruin of her maritime empire, determined to go down in a maelstrom of pleasure, music, and masquerade ... Venice, 1731. Opera is the popular entertainment of the day and the castrati are its reigning divas. Tito Amato, mutilated as a boy to preserve his enchanting soprano voice, returns to the city of his birth with his friend Felice, a castrato whose voice has failed. Disaster strikes Tito’s opera premier when the singer loses one beloved friend to poison and another to unjust accusation and arrest. Alarmed that the merchant--aristocrat who owns the theater is pressing the authorities to close the case, Tito races the executioner to find the real killer. The possible suspects could people the cast of one of his operas: a libertine nobleman and his spurned wife, a jealous soprano, an ambitious composer, and a patrician family bent on the theater’s ruin. With carnival gaiety swirling around him and rousing Venetian passions to an ominous crescendo, Tito finds that the most astonishing secrets lurk behind the masks of his own family and friends..
Price: $8.45
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Iron Tongue of Midnight, The: A Baroque Mystery
In September of 1740, singer Tito Amato receives a curious invitation. The German composer Karl Johann Weber is rehearsing a new opera at an isolated villa nestled in the hills of the Venetian mainland. Would Tito accept the lead role? Puzzled by the air of secrecy that enshrouds the production, but attracted by a generous fee, Tito agrees. Artist Gussie Rumbolt, Tito’s friend and brother-in-law, has also been summoned to paint scenes of the estate’s grape harvest. The two men find the countryside awash with the golden hues of autumn, but the bucolic mood quickly turns menacing when a notorious figure from Tito’s past turns up at the villa. That night, at the stroke of twelve, a soprano stumbles over a stranger who has been beaten to death with the clock pendulum. With the local constable away on a boar hunt, the midnight murderer strikes with impunity, raising terror to a fevered crescendo. Ever faithful to the ideals of truth and justice, Tito pursues his own quest for answers—a quest that leads straight into the painful secrets of his heart and beyond. The Iron Tongue of Midnight is the fourth novel in Myers’ Baroque Mystery series. It follows Cruel Music..
Price: $15.67
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The Last Castrato
In the late 1500's, the Catholic church forbade women to perform in public. Men were required to play female roles. Although many could impersonate women, only a certain few could sing like them. Castrated against their will at a pre-pubescent age, these boys grew up to be men with angelic voices. They were called 'Castrati'. "The Last Castrato" is a gripping tale of two brothers- fraternal twins who undergo this traumatic experience. One grows up to be a famous castrato, while the other lives, tormented. But who torments whom? .
Price: $3.99
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Cruel Music: A Baroque Mystery (Baroque)
Tito Amato returns from an operatic tour expecting to relax with his family. Instead he finds his merchant brother Alessandro imprisoned on a trumped-up smuggling charge, a capital crime in 1740 Venice. The senator who controls Alessandro's fate is determined to have a Venetian as the next pope. He forces Tito to Rome to sing at the villa of a powerful, music-loving cardinal who will control the coming papal election. Spying as he serenades Cardinal Fabiani and his guests, Tito peers into the dark mirror of Roman politics. Pope Clement XII is sinking fast, and two candidates emerge as leading contenders for St. Peter's throne. Will Fabiani support the highborn Venetian whose secret passion is tinkering with electrical experiments? Or the humble cardinal with the gift of healing and a mysterious past?The discovery of a beautiful corpse in Fabiani's garden complicates Tito's mission. Fabiani believes that a member of his household killed the young maid in a fit of madness, but Tito follows clues that indicate a more complex motive, assisted by his irrepressible manservant Benito and Englishman Gussie Rumbolt. From the heights of the Janiculum Hill to the muddy waters of the Tiber, from a cozy Trastevere cookshop to the chilly corridors of the Quirinal Palace, the trio wrestles with events that could change the course of history. Can Tito stop the killer and affect the election before Pope Clement takes his last breath? Or will Alessandro face the scaffold?.
Price: $9.13
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