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The article explores the role of harmonium in opera during the transformative 19th and early 20th centuries, amidst significant reforms in orchestration. The author thoroughly explores how harmonium is used in opera, even providing a table of operas that feature this instrument. It delves into specific opera passages by composers representing diverse nationalities and spanning various epochs, covering the period from 1845 to 1936. Through examples from works such as Verdi's "Giovanna d'Arco" and "Don Carlos," Dvořák's "Rusalka," and Enescu's "OEdipe," the essay illustrates the diverse roles played by the harmonium in operas. The author highlights the historical and musical significance of the harmonium in opera, suggesting a reevaluation of its role in today's performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At first glance, La pulce d'oro (1940), a one-act comic opera by Giorgio Federico Ghedini, might seem at odds with the turmoil of late-fascist Italy on the brink of war. A new opera in 1940 was itself anachronistic: a genre mired in unending crisis, resurfacing now at one of the darkest moments in the nation's history. However, on closer inspection, La pulce d'oro demonstrates a peculiar timeliness and—in the tradition of Verdi's Falstaff —offers pertinent insight into its contemporary and much overlooked moment. This article proposes a reading of the relevance of Ghedini's opera through its twofold use of parody: as a musical technique and as an allegorical means, connecting past and present, fiction and reality, fairy tale and history. Encompassing some of the key cultural currents of the time—neoclassicism, magic realism, and social satire —La pulce d'oro 's parody unexpectedly brings together comic opera and fascism at a moment of cultural and political apotheosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This scientific paper presents and highlights the musicality and virtuosity that Luigi Bassi perfected with the help of the variational principle, using themes of a unique expressiveness from the opera Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi. The work is addressed to clarinetists with a welldeveloped technique and a qualitative and homogeneous sonority throughout the clarinet's ambitus. In the present scientific and interpretive approach, we propose to decode and present elements of structure, diverse instrumental techniques, and ways of interpreting the themes and variations, that coincide with the composer's desire. We will highlight the instrumental technique problems, proposals to optimize (solve) them, and ways to highlight sound colors, depending on the message the performer conveys. We believe that this study can be of real use both to teaching staff and students in the didactic activity, but also to the valuable instrumentalists involved in the interpretative activity, bearing in mind that the work has a very high degree of difficulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La forza del destino was commissioned to Giuseppe Verdi by the St Petersburg Imperial Theatres in 1861. The opera was written on a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and draws its subject from the Spanish drama Don Alvaro o la fuerza del sino by Ángel de Saavedra. Piave worked on the Italian version by Faustino Sanseverino and, according to Verdi's indication, inserted fragments from Schiller's trilogy Wallenstein. The opera premiered in November 1862 at the Bol'shoy Kamenny Theatre but only had a succès d'estime. In this paper, I try to explain the opera's cold reception focusing on the discrepancies emerging between the Italian libretto and the Russian translation prepared by Apollon Grigor'yev for the first staging. I will consider the typical derivation of Italian operatic librettos from pre-existing literary works. This process combines mediated and inter-semiotic translation, allowing me to show the artistic resources mediated translation offers in stage literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a review of a recording of Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Il Corsaro" by the ensemble Europa Galante. The review discusses the orchestration and performance of the ensemble, as well as the individual performances of the principal singers. It highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each performer and provides an analysis of their interpretations. The review also comments on the choir's performance and the supplementary materials included in the album. Overall, the article suggests that the recording offers an opportunity to reflect on historical performance practices and the value of melodramatic choices in opera. [Extracted from the article]

In 2017, on the debut of the soprano Hui He in the role of Aida at the Hong Kong Opera, a Japanese finance and business website published a short article to introduce its readers to Verdi's monumental opera and more general issues of cultural appropriation and whitewashing related to it. What caught my attention, however, was the headline. Short and concise, it grasped an aspect that might have otherwise gone unnoticed: 'Opera Hong Kong's new production of "Aida" in October will feature a Chinese soprano playing an African princess singing in Italian'. The headline writer was probably more intrigued by the multicultural quirkiness of this event and ignored, for the sake of the readers, its cultural and historical implications. In fact, the article itself succeeded in depicting this event as a proper, if not extreme, moment of transcultural encounters by mingling different cultures – the Ethiopian heritage of the protagonist of the opera, the musical aura of Italian operas and the Chinese nationality of the soprano Hui He, opposed to the location of the Hong Kong opera evoked by a Japanese magazine – under the unifying authority of Verdi's Aida. This article seemed to consciously invoke a multicultural dimension built around the perceived prestige of Aida and all the debates on imperialism that, from Said to Drummond and Locke, have become attached to it. Verdi's music is safely placed at the centre of a wide transcultural discourse which, rather than undermining the cultural 'authority' of Italian opera, reaffirms it even more strongly as a proper vehicle of 'global uniformity', as Christopher A. Bayly would define it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to explore the engagement between accounting and music in the social and relational construction of accountability. The authors conceive this construction as a dynamic and recursive interplay between the giving of different accounts and the responses that these accounts provoke. The authors investigate the emotional dimension of this interplay, as it is also triggered by music, feeding back into how accountability is constructed and evolves over time. Design/methodology/approach: This study relies upon a historical analysis of archival and secondary sources about the main music concert organized in 1913 by the founder of "Accademia Chigiana", one of the leading music academies in Italy. The concert celebrated the first centenary of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi, a worldwide famous Italian music composer, and icon of Italian national sentiment. Findings: This study shows that music and accounting were profoundly intertwined in the social and relational construction of accountability for the 1913 concert. Accountability evolved through different accounts, also linked to music, and the complex emotional reactions these accounts provoked in the audiences, citizens, media and institutions, leading to always further responses and accounts in the ongoing construction of accountability. Originality/value: This study extends prior literature on the chameleonic nature of accountability, as well as on its relational and emotional dimensions. The study shows that accountability is relationally constructed and evolves over time through the giving of accounts and the emotional reaction they provoke from others, feeding into further responses and accounts of the accountable subject. The authors show how the chameleonic nature of accountability permeates not only the accounts and the relations of accountability but also the subjects giving and demanding the accounts: these subjects change as chameleons through their interactions and emotions, feeding into the dynamic construction of accountability. The authors also show how arts, like music, can participate in the chameleonic nature of accountability and of its subjects, precisely by engaging with their emotional reactions and responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opera 'A Masked Ball' marks the end of the 'middle period' in the work of Giuseppe Verdi and represents an important stage in the musical progress of the composer. It comprises a variety and an orchestral inventiveness much higher than any other of his previous works, and, more than ever, the score is consistent with the dramatical structure of the opera. Compared to some titles from the first period of creation, the outlining of the protagonists is not performed only by means of vocality. The subtlety of the orchestral music rounds off a rich sound picture, in accordance with the requirements of musical dramaturgy. This article addresses the structural, stylistic, and dramaturgical aspects found at the level of the orchestral discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the 210th anniversary of the birth of the two great titans of the opera genre from the era of musical Romanticism: Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi and 140 years since the death of the first of them, we opted for a presentation of some biographical aspects of the personalities and the creation of the two musicians from the perspective of the experiences that shapes their personality and professional path. Verdi was the canonical in this case, following both the lifestyle and the composition of the laws of time, composing an opera in wich, through its choruses, it reflects the spirit of society. Wagner, with his free, eccentric style, created beyond any legalities imposed, an opera that constitutes a separate, original genre known as Wagnerian musical drama. Joining the two biographies, we note the perceptible difference of the two creative identities and their results generated in a distinct, original, unmistakable manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this contribution is to assert the role of didactic audiovisual translation as a helpful tool for enhancing metalinguistic skills in a foreign language classroom in Italy; more precisely, the paper will offer an analysis of how foreign language teachers can introduce their students to the idea of sociolinguistic variation, by observing how lexical and morphosyntactic changes can occur in the translation process from an Italian source text into an English target text and/or vice versa. The following sociolinguistic variables will be examined through the lens of audiovisual translation, applied to a range of text types including films and an opera libretto turned into surtitles in English: (1) diamesic variation, making students reflect on such aspects as coarse expressions and taboo words, in relation to the Australian film Ned Kelly; (2) diachronic variation, exploring the multidisciplinary possibilities offered by opera surtitling with a focus on the opera Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi; (3) diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic variations, commenting upon some examples from the Italian films Mio cognato (My Brother-In-Law) and L'uomo che comprò la luna (The Man Who Bought the Moon). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the study is to study the spiritual paraphrases of Ferenc Liszt in order to identify Christian worldview motifs in the compositions of this type. The research methodology is based on historical, analytical, comparative methods, cultural interdisciplinary approach, hermeneutic approach, which follows from the intonational vision of the nature of music based on the works of B. Asafiev's followers in Ukraine -- D. Androsova, O. Markova, O. Roshchenko, O. Sokol, and other leading scholars. Scientific novelty. For the first time in Ukraine, Liszt's compositional landmarks are highlighted with an emphasis on a religiously and morally significant number borrowed from the material of the model on which the paraphrase is written. A classification of spiritual paraphrases by the type of thematic borrowings -- from operatic representations of spiritual chants or through references to liturgical music as such -- is introduced for the first time. Conclusions. Among the vast heritage of the composer's spiritual music, a special niche is occupied by spiritual piano paraphrases. Conventionally, the spiritual paraphrases created by the composer can be divided into paraphrases on opera themes based on models of spiritual music and paraphrases on directly spiritual works. Paraphrases on church music as such are unique in that here music intended directly for service in a church moves into the instrumental secular sphere. The metaphor of the spiritual-secular is derived from this, which gives special significance to Ferenc Liszt's work, especially in his later years. However, the paraphrases based on Verdi's workswhich model church sounds, are also significant, and their introduction into the piano composition is despite the emphasis on the popular non-church images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Norma and Abigaille, peaks of virtuosity in the lyrical repertoire is a short study of the similarities and even the differences between the two roles that unequivocally establish the position of Diva in such a beautiful and demanding world of opera and lyrical repertoire. A study about the type of voice that these roles are best served by considered terribly difficult technically, vocally and especially emotionally. Both roles require, in addition to an impressive technical background, an overflowing physical and vocal energy and a rare emotional maturity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Elizabethan world has aroused the fascination of a host of musicians, composers and performers, starting with Henry Purcell up to Benjamin Britten. It was with Purcell that the "Shakespearianisation" of musical theatre began, which was to reach its theatrical, poetic and expressive-musical climax with Verdi. The bipolar and dichotomous aspect of the queens finds a living fire in the operatic production of the early 19th century, where a veritable cycle of musical works dedicated to Elisabeth and the Tudor dynasty was born, where the crown, the dynastic conspiracies unceasingly bathed in blood and love find a burning sound in the dramatic colouraturas of authors such as Rossini and Donizetti. The role of the prima donna is at the heart of the Elizabethan operatic vein, for it is with Donizetti's Tudor trilogy that the glorification of the role of the queen reaches its pinnacles of tragic-vocal expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of financial statement comparability on audit pricing. Using the comparability measures of De Franco, Kothari and Verdi, we find that auditors charge lower audit fees for clients with greater financial statement comparability. This negative relation is more pronounced when auditors are industry specialists or clients in industries with higher operational heterogeneity. We also find that clients with greater financial statement comparability have lower audit risk, and their auditors exert less audit effort to provide assurance. Our study contributes to the current literature by documenting that homogeneity in financial statement reporting decreases audit risk and increases audit efficiency, reducing audit pricing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article retraces Giuseppe Verdi's Otello (1887) to the great Italian mattatori (star actors), particularly Tommaso Salvini (1829–1915), whose ground-breaking performances of the Moor of Venice, in a translation by Giulio Carcano, coincided with the time when Verdi and his librettist, Arrigo Boito, were collaborating on their Otello. The grandi attori enjoyed a reputation for realistic immediacy and impulsiveness readily associated with cultural stereotypes about Italy's perceived 'otherness'. In the ethnographic context of nineteenth-century Italy, it is argued here that the actors' interpretation of Shakespeare's Moor not only synthesised the multilateral cultural threads of the Jacobean Othello, but also partnered this racial alterity with a new dramatic language, which went on to influence Verdi's opera and prompt book, and, ultimately, to perpetuate an exoticised 'brand' of Italian artistic culture on stage at a time when Italy was fashioning its own national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three concepts for the application of multi-extreme conditions under in situ neutron scattering are described here. The first concept is a neutron diamond anvil cell made from a non-magnetic alloy. It is shrunk in size to fit existing magnets and future magnet designs and is designed for best pressure stability upon cooling. This will allow for maximum pressures above 10 GPa to be applied simultaneously with (steady-state) high magnetic field and (ultra-)low temperature. Additionally, an implementation of miniature coils for neutron diamond cells is presented for pulsed-field applications. The second concept presents a set-up for laser-heating a neutron diamond cell using a defocused CO2 laser. Cell, anvil, and gasket stability will be achieved through stroboscopic measurements and maximum temperatures of 1500 K are anticipated at pressures to the megabar. The third concept presents a hybrid levitator to enable measurements of solids and liquids at temperatures in excess of 4000 K. This will be accomplished by a combination of bulk induction and surface laser heating and hyperbaric conditions to reduce evaporation rates. The potential for deployment of these multi-extreme environments within this first instrument suite of the Second Target Station is described with a special focus on VERDI, PIONEER, CENTAUR, and CHESS. Furthermore, considerations for deployment on future instruments, such as the one proposed as TITAN, are discussed. Overall, the development of these multi-extremes at the Second Target Station, but also beyond, will be highly advantageous for future experimentation and will give access to parameter space previously not possible for neutron scattering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like all of Verdi's mature works, the opera "Un ballo in maschera" demonstrates notable progress in both vocal and orchestral writing. In terms of the vocality of the characters, Verdi creates remarkable solo roles, adapted to the various dramaturgical requirements. The role of Amelia is a key character, being assigned an extensive vocal discourse. Her vocality reflects a noticeable difference from the Verdian patterns used in the construction of female roles, up to "Il Trovatore". The suppression of the well-known "cabaletta", the abandonment of the demonstrations of vocal virtuosity and the intensification of the vocal writing in the middle register, offer a plus of uniqueness to this role. Thus, a new vocal pattern is materialized among the female characters representative in Giuseppe Verdi's work, leaving behind the vocal portraits of the heroines inspired from the belcanto singing "tradition". In this study we will analyze from a structural and interpretive point of view the main solo moments of the role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a literary genealogy of the titular character in Verdi's Aida. While scholars have explored the opera's resonances with late nineteenth-century conceptions of Orientalism, Blackness and the imagined 'East', Aida's etymology and character traits reflect a much broader archetype that extends back a century from its 1871 premiere. Her name is not Egyptian or Ethiopian but Greek, and her backstory was modelled on characters named 'Haidée' and 'Haydée' who appeared in works by Lord Byron and Alexandre Dumas fils , as well as in a celebrated opéra comique by Daniel Auber. Aida was thus an assemblage of ready-made character archetypes and scenarios rather than an author's sui generis depiction of non-Western culture. An intertextual reading of Aida offers a broader perspective on alterity in the nineteenth century, which eschewed geographical specificity for archetypes, quotations and allusions. It also offers another way to confront claims of authenticity made by current-day defenders of brownface in Verdi's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The VERsatile DIffractometer will set a new standard for a world-class magnetic diffractometer with versatility for both powder and single crystal samples and capability for wide-angle polarization analysis. The instrument will utilize a large single-frame bandwidth and will offer high-resolution at low momentum transfers and excellent signal-to-noise ratio. A horizontal elliptical mirror concept with interchangeable guide pieces will provide high flexibility in beam divergence to allow for a high-resolution powder mode, a high-intensity single crystal mode, and a polarized beam option. A major science focus will be quantum materials that exhibit emergent properties arising from collective effects in condensed matter. The unique use of polarized neutrons to isolate the magnetic signature will provide optimal experimental input to state-of-the-art modeling approaches to access detailed insight into local magnetic ordering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers the first systematic investigation of the institution of opera censorship in Russia during the reign of Nicholas I. Drawing on new archival sources, it examines censorship legislation, the organisation of dramatic (i.e., theatre) censorship, the workings of its bureaucracy, censors' reports and protocols and Nicholas's personal decrees on productions of specific operas, and printed and manuscript librettos. From these, it distils the patterns of state intervention in opera, revealing a remarkable fluidity – even capriciousness – of approaches. Decisions to ban or permit, and specific intrusions into the texts, were based on the censors' adherence to or disregard for the Empire's censorship laws, Nicholas's inclinations and impulses, changes in cultural policy, practical needs of the Imperial Theatres, the shifting political climate at home and abroad, and, most of all, the national point of origin of the operatic work under review. In addition to surveying the trends, the article offers three case studies: Glinka's Zhizn' za Tsarya (A Life for the Tsar), Verdi's Rigoletto and Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the peculiar setting - the kitchen - chosen for the revenge scene in Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff (Act II, scene 2) by director Robert Carsen for his production at the Metropolitan Opera, New York (2013). I examine side by side Arrigo Boito's libretto and the corresponding scenes in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor in order to highlight the textual clues that may support Carsen's choice. Against the background provided by a brief historicisation of the emergence of the modern kitchen and its association (originally) with bourgeois women, I discuss Carsen's revenge scene, by recourse to gender theory, as a masquerade of femininity, i.e., a mockingly exaggerated performance of gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, Egan and Pinchbeck combine Postdramatic Theatre (Lehmann, 2006), Composed Theatre (Rebstock and Roesner, 2012) and Score Theatre (Spagnolo, 2017) to address the representation of classical music in two separate contemporary performances they were involved in making. Egan addresses the question of 'adapting scores' in relation to Plane Performance's Traviata (2010), where Verdi's operatic score became the main 'text' from which the company were able to deconstruct and re-imagine the opera as a piece of contemporary theatre; one that celebrated the complexities and subtle nuances of the classical composition and brought a 'sense' of the opera to a contemporary theatre audience. The research focusses on the feedback loop between performance score and music score as an additive process of 'musicalising' the performance and 'theatricalising' the composition. Taking Etchells' understanding of the interplay between 're-enacting and reactivating' the score (2015) alongside Roesner's sense of sampling as 'the transformation of a citation into composable material' (2016) the research examines the useful exchanges that emerge between the disparate texts of the performance world and the many 'texts' present in the music score. Pinchbeck addresses how to 'stage scores' by reflecting on Concerto (2016). The research is framed by Ravel's instruction to conductors to 'follow the score' and biographises a piece of music (Concerto for the Left Hand). Using verbatim text, autobiographical and postdramatic devising techniques and archival research, the work advances Rebstock and Roesner's definition of 'composed theatre' (2013) and Adrian Curtin's 'orchestral theatre' (2019) by using music to structure theatre in both form and content. Concerto 'stages scores' by creating post-dramatic, post-traumatic performance and de-constructing/de-orchestrating post-conflict narratives around its original composition to reconfigure the relationship between audience and performer into an immersive and embodied 'theatricalised concert' (Bonshek, 2006). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents the evolution of the Italian melodrama of the nineteenth century, having as a major composer exponents such as Gaetano Donizetti and Giuseppe Verdi. The rich culture of the Italian Romantic space, as well as the socio-political events of the 19th century, influenced the mentality and style of opera composers. Thus, titles such as "La donna del lago" (1819), "Wilhelm Tell" (1829) - G. Rossini, "I Capuleti e i Montecchi" (1830) - V. Bellini, foreshadow the new directions of Italian romantic opera. The maturation process of Italian romantic opera is crowned by Gaetano Donizetti and Giuseppe Verdi, who, through melodrama, achieve important stylistic synthesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research is to investigate the contribution of Giuseppe Verdi and Casa Ricordi in shaping the nineteenth-century music culture industry by adopting a new perspective on accounting and history. In nineteenth-century Italy, opera represented an important phenomenon, both artistically and socially, playing a fundamental role of intermediary between society and the political sphere. The complex relationships between the composer (artist) and the publisher (cultural intermediary) are analysed in the specific field of opera music, outlining the evolution and interweaving of artistic, social and economic aspects. The study embraces the period 1839–1893 and examines the economic and private relations between Giuseppe Verdi and Casa Ricordi and their impacts on the culture industry to this day. This article's novelty is to adopt a historical perspective to broaden accounting into the field of high music offering possibilities for further studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nineteenth-century French opera is renowned for its obsession with "the exotic"-that is, with lands and peoples either located far away from "us" Western Europeans or understood as being very different from us. One example: hyper-passionate Spaniards and "Gypsies" in Bizet's Carmen. Most discussions of the role that the exotic plays in nineteenth-century French opera focus on a few standard-repertory works (mainly serious in nature), rather than looking at a wider range of significant works performed at the time in various theaters, including the Opera, the Opdra-Comique, and Offenbach's Bouffes-Parisiens. The present article attempts to survey the repertory broadly. Part 1 examines various "different" Cor Other) lands and peoples frequently represented on stage in French operas. Part 2 discusses typical plots and character types found in these operas (sometimes regardless of the particular exotic land that was chosen) and concludes by exploring the musical means that were often employed to impel the drama and to convey the specific qualities of the people or ethnic group being represented. These musical means could include special or unusual traits: either all-purpose style markers of the exotic generally or more specific style markers associated with identifiable peoples or regions. But the musical means could also include any of the rich fund of devices that opera composers normally used when creating drama and defining character: melodie, harmonic, structural, and so on. This last point is often neglected or misunderstood in discussions of "the exotic in music," which tend instead to focus primarily on elements that indisputably "point to" (as if semiotically) the specific land or people that the work is seeking to evoke or represent. In both Parts 1 and 2, instances are chosen from works that were often quite successfully performed at the time in French-speaking regions and that, even if little known today, can at least be consulted through recordings or videos. The workscome from the standard recognized operatic genres: five-act grands operas, three-act opdras-comiques, and short works in bouffe style. The composers involved include gamong others) Adam, Auber, Berlioz, Bizet, Chabrier, Cherubint Clapisson, Fdlicien David, Delibes, Flotow, Gomis, Gounod, Haldvy, Messager, Meyerbeer, Hippolyte Monpou, Offenbach, Ernest Reyer, Saint-Saens, Ambroise Thomas, and Verdi (Les vtpres siciliennes, DonCarlos). Examining certain lesser-known works reveals merits that have gone relatively unheralded. As for the better-known works, approaching them in this wide-angled way grants us a richer appreciation of their strengths and their often-enlivening internal contradictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]