Research Catalog
The passions of Peter Sellars : staging the music
- Title
- The passions of Peter Sellars : staging the music / Susan McClary.
- Author
- McClary, Susan
- Publication
- Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2019.
- ©2019
Items in the Library & Off-site
Filter by
1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | JNE 19-103 | Performing Arts Research Collections - Music |
Details
- Description
- vi, 218 pages; 24 cm
- Summary
- Recognized as one of the most innovative and influential directors of our time, Peter Sellars has produced acclaimed-and often controversial-versions of many beloved operas and oratorios. He has also collaborated with several composers, including John C. Adams and Kaija Saariaho, to create challenging new operas. The Passions of Peter Sellars follows the development of his style, beginning with his interpretations of the Mozart-Da Ponte operas, proceeding to works for which he assembled the libretti and even the music, and concluding with his celebrated stagings of Bach's passions with the Berlin Philharmonic. Many directors leave the musical aspects of opera entirely to the singers and conductor. Sellars, however, immerses himself in the score, and has created a distinctive visual vocabulary to embody musical gesture on stage, drawing on the energies of the music as he shapes characters, ensemble interaction, and large-scale dramatic trajectories. As a leading scholar of gender and music, and the history of opera, Susan McClary is ideally positioned to illuminate Sellar's goal to address both the social tensions embodied in these operas as well as the spiritual dimensions of operatic performance. McClary considers Sellars's productions of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte; Handel's Theodora; Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise; John C. Adams's Nixon in China, The death of Klinghoffer, El niño, and Doctor Atomic; Kaija Saariaho's L'amour de loin, La passion de Simone, and Only the sound remains; Purcell's The Indian queen; and Bach's passions of Saint Matthew and Saint John. Approaching Sellars's theatrical strategies from a musicological perspective, McClary blends insights from theater, film, and literary scholarship to explore the work of one of the most brilliant living interpreters of opera.
- Subjects
- Genre/Form
- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
- History.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Contents
- Introduction : Who is Peter Sellars? -- American Mozart -- Ritualizing : Saint François and Theodora -- Inventing new operas : Collaborations with John Adams, Part I -- A libretto of one's own : Collaborations with John Adams, Part II -- Spectral sensualities : Collaborations with Kaija Saariaho -- Peter Sellars's Mayan Passion -- Back to the source : The Bach Passions.
- Call Number
- JNE 19-103
- ISBN
- 9780472131228
- 0472131222
- LCCN
- 2018027556
- OCLC
- 1041193953
- Author
- McClary, Susan, author.
- Title
- The passions of Peter Sellars : staging the music / Susan McClary.
- Publisher
- Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2019.
- Copyright Date
- ©2019
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Chronological Term
- 1900-1999
- Other Form:
- Online version: McClary, Susan. Passions of Peter Sellars. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2019 9780472124794 (DLC) 2018028800
- Research Call Number
- JNE 19-103