Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806) is best known for his plays that have famously been adapted into opera librettos. Puccini's final opera, Turandot, was based on a play by Gozzi. Prokofiev's The Love of Three Oranges is also based on a Gozzi play. Richard Wagner's first opera, Die Feen, is based on Gozzi's La Donna Serpente. Mozart's The Magic Flute contains many elements that are similar to Gozzi's plays. Gozzi is well known for reviving commedia dell'arte, an ancient form of Italian improvisational theater that had fallen out of favor before his time. This is the first full biography in English of the most successful playwright in 18th century Venice.
In its revised third edition, this volume argues that an appreciation of opera is based on understanding of several key aspects: history, language, theatrical production, the power of the conductor, vocal tradition and standard repertory. This unique approach is intended for the newcomer curious about the art form. The author discusses how opera has changed in the last three decades and how it is now more easily enjoyed than ever before. Originally published in 1986, this book has been translated into four languages and has been used as an "Introduction to Opera" text in college classrooms around the world.
John Recchiuti recounts the history of a vibrant network of young American scholars and social activists who helped transform a city and a nation. New York, in the late Gilded Age and Progressive Era, was the nation's financial capital, its principal hub for immigration, and its premier center for the arts. It was also a center of civic engagement: most of the nation's main reform organizations were headquartered there. As public intellectuals, members of the city's social science network championed the fight for civil rights through the NAACP and National Urban League; sought solutions to labor problems through the American Association for Labor Legislation, National Consumers' League, and National Child Labor Committee; founded the nation's first settlement houses; and established the first center for social science and social work, the New York School of Philanthropy. In New York, which one group of social scientists called "the greatest social science laboratory in the world," these men and women lived and worked in Greenwich Village's working-class haunts, amid immigrant poverty on the Lower East Side, and on Columbia University's Upper West Side campus. They debated how much government should regulate laissez-faire capitalism, whether poverty was caused by individual character flaws, and how, through the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, to thwart municipal corruption. Some promulgated a racist eugenics, while others fought racism in the name of social science. And, in their reach for leadership, they confronted an essential question: was social science to be the herald of a reinvigorated democracy, or an instrument of technocracy? In this deeply researched study, Recchiuti focuses on more than a score of Progressive reformers, including Florence Kelley, W. E. B. Du Bois, E. R. A. Seligman, Charles Beard, Franz Boaz, Frances Perkins, Samuel Lindsay, Edward Devine, Mary Simkhovitch, and George Edmund Haynes. He reminds us how people from markedly diverse backgrounds forged a movement to change a city and, beyond it, a nation.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Founded as the Astronomical Society of London in 1820, this illustrious organisation received its royal charter in 1831. It has counted some of the world's greatest astronomers among its members, most notably its first president, Sir William Herschel, whose family archive forms part of its extensive library. Now based in Burlington House in Piccadilly, it continues to publish journals, award medals and prizes, and support education and outreach work. Following the society's centenary, this survey of its history appeared in 1923 and comprises contributions from leading astronomers of the early twentieth century. The extracts from primary sources include the diary entry of Sir John Herschel, son of William, recording the dinner at which the society's formation was discussed. The work also provides insights into how the society was able to take advantage of imperial expansion to collect observations and data from around the world, fuelling the Victorian pursuit of scientific knowledge.
Famous for his metal prosthetic nose, and for being associated with 'unlucky' days in Scandinavian folklore, Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) made the most accurate naked-eye astronomical measurements of his day. Cataloguing more than 1,000 new stars, his stellar and planetary observations helped lay the foundations of early modern astronomy. John Louis Emil Dreyer (1852–1926) was a fellow Dane, but he spent much of his working life in Ireland. When he was fourteen, he had read a book about Brahe and this inspired him to 'be an astronomer and nothing else'. First published in 1890, Dreyer's biography of his hero remained the definitive work for more than a century. He sets out to illuminate not simply the life of his subject, but also the lives and work of Brahe's contemporaries and the progress of science in the sixteenth century.
