The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity - Rilegato

Knapp, Raymond

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0691125244 ISBN 13: 9780691125244

Casa editrice: Princeton Univ Pr, 2006

Riassunto

The American musical has long provided an important vehicle through which writers, performers, and audiences reimagine who they are and how they might best interact with the world around them. Musicals are especially good at this because they provide not only an opportunity for us to enact dramatic versions of alternative identities, but also the material for performing such alternatives in the real world, through songs and the characters and attitudes those songs project.

This book addresses a variety of specific themes in musicals that serve this general function: fairy tale and fantasy, idealism and inspiration, gender and sexuality, and relationships, among others. It also considers three overlapping genres that are central, in quite different ways, to the projection of personal identity: operetta, movie musicals, and operatic musicals.

Among the musicals discussed are Camelot, Candide; Chicago; Company; Evita; Gypsy; Into the Woods; Kiss Me, Kate; A Little Night Music; Man of La Mancha; Meet Me in St. Louis; The Merry Widow; Moulin Rouge; My Fair Lady; Passion; The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Singin' in the Rain; Stormy Weather; Sweeney Todd; and The Wizard of Oz.

Complementing the author's earlier work, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity, this book completes a two-volume thematic history of the genre, designed for general audiences and specialists alike.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

"Brainy [and] meticulous. . . . The bedrock idea in The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity is that the self is, on some level, a performance--and isn't a performance incomplete when there's no audience? Other people provide the receptivity and feedback that allow one to become a certain person, rather than another. Character is--to revert to that inspiring buzzword--collaboration."--Celia Wren, American Theatre

"The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity is an insightful contribution to current scholarship on musical theatre. It integrates theoretical approaches based in both musicology and audience reception, and applies these approaches across the media of film and theatre. In so doing, it offers a transferable, revealing methodology for similarly sophisticated analyses of the role of musical theatre in American culture."--Diana Calderazzo, Theatre Journal

"With an engaging and accessible style, Knapp examines the ways American national and personal identity are revealed and defined through the evolving twentieth-century genres of stage and film musicals."--Arthur Pritchard, Studies in Musical Theater

"Raymond Knapp has an extraordinarily perceptive ear. As he surveys the history of the American musical, he hears things--important things, revelatory things--that earlier writers . . . have missed."--Edward Green, Popular Music and Society

"Knapp's writing is lively and elegant, his knowledge and research are exceedingly wide-ranging, and his observations are incisive and on-the-mark, often very funny, and frequently astonishing in their acuity."--Stacy Wolf, Modern Drama

"The author offers excellent in-depth treatments of 31 shows, including stage, film, and television musicals."--Choice

"Raymond Knapp has an extraordinarily perceptive ear. As he surveys the history of the American musical, he hears things--important things, revelatory things--that earlier writers who have attempted, systematically, to traverse this vast territory have missed. Hardly a page goes by without a 'Gee, I didn't realize that' moment. . . . One of the loveliest features of these books is the generosity of the musical examples. Coordinated with the text are hundreds of musical excerpts which Princeton University Press has made available to readers through easy downloading from the Internet. . . . It is clear that there is much to praise about Raymond Knapp's work, beginning with his vast knowledge of the subject and his infectious enthusiasm for it."--Edward Green, Popular Music and Society

Contenuti:

List of Figures ix
Explanatory Note about Audio Examples xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Entr'acte 1

Part One: PERSONAL GENRES 15

Chapter 1: The Viennese Connection: Franz Lehár and American Operetta 17
The Merry Widow (1907) 20
Naughty Marietta (1910) 31
Little Mary Sunshine (1959) 40
A Little Night Music (1973) 50

Chapter 2: The Movie Musical 65
Singin’ in the Rain (film, 1952) 70
Stormy Weather (film, 1943) and Bamboozled (film, 2000) 79
Meet Me in St. Louis (film, 1944) 94
Moulin Rouge (film, 2001) and Chicago (film, 2002) 102

Part Two: PERSONAL THEMES 119

Chapter 3: Fairy Tales and Fantasy 121
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (animated film, 1937) 125
The Wizard of Oz (film, 1939) 131
Mary Poppins (film, 1964) 141
Into the Woods (1987) 150

Chapter 4: Idealism and Inspiration 164
Camelot (1960) 170
Man of La Mancha (1965) 180
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1997) 189
Once More, with Feeling (television, 2001) 196

Chapter 5: Gender and Sexuality 205
Annie Get Your Gun (1946) 209
Gypsy (1959) 215
Sweet Charity (1966) 228
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (film, 1975) 240
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (1998; film, 2001) 252

Chapter 6: Relationships 264
Lady in the Dark (1941) 266
Kiss Me, Kate (1948) 273
My Fair Lady (1956) 284
Company (1970) 293
Passion (1994) 303
Epilogue 311

Chapter 7: Operatic Ambitions and Beyond 313
Candide (1956) 317
Sweeney Todd (1979) 331
Evita (1979) 342

Appendix: Additional Resources 357
Notes 377
Bibliography 433
Index 449

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Princeton Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0691125244
• ISBN 13: 9780691125244
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 470