In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

298 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 Strauss=s 1905 opera. This chapter poses a challenge to feminist orthodoxy, suggesting that when Salome invites the male gaze during her erotic dance she gains rather loses power. Chapter 1, a dizzying survey of operas from Monteverdi=s Orfeo to Donizetti=s Lucrezia Borgia to Harry Somers=s Mario and the Magician, focuses on operatic portraits of deformity read through the filter of disability studies. Characters such as Verdi=s Rigoletto or Alberich in Wagner=s Ring cycle, the authors suggest, demonstrate a new understanding of deformity, not as a mark of inherent evil but as a manifestation of a diseased social order. >Act II= of Bodily Charm turns from operatic characters to real bodies, those of performers and spectators in turn. The medico-literary collaboration is at its best in the chapter devoted to singers. The fascinating discussion of the science of vocal production must be indebted to Michael Hutcheon=s medical expertise, but what sparkles most is not the information itself (much of which is available elsewhere, if in less accessible forms) but the virtuosic dialogue between the history of vocal pedagogy and the intelligent interpretation of anecdotes about singers= relationships to their bodies. And while the bodies and voices of performers have long been a subject of opera journalism, the bodily experience of the audience has been approached only rarely and solipistically, in some recent books that ask: >What do I feel like when I listen to this singer (this aria, this scene ...)?= The Hutcheons recount a few of their own opera-going experiences, but their primary aim is more theoretical. They attempt to explain how opera makes us feel and why, drawing on a kaleidoscope of evidence, from literary accounts by Flaubert and Willa Cather, physiological analysis of such phenomena as accelerated pulse and chills down the spine, to mundane experiences such as coughing fits or sleepiness induced by an extra glass of wine. This last chapter is the book=s most original and ambitious: the turn to the spectator=s experience enriches the definition of the >Dionysian= from something merely excessive and earthy and erotic to a more specifically Nietzschean understanding of opera as a ritual in which the representation of bodily sensation on stage meets with intense physical engagement of the audience to create a truly communal theatrical experience. (MARY ANN SMART) Carl Morey. An Opera Sampler: Miscellaneous Essays on Opera Dundurn Press 1998. vi, 154. $16.99 This is a collection of essays on subjects operatic, most of which appeared in program booklets for productions of Toronto=s Canadian Opera Company, in the periodical Opera Canada, or, in one case, the academic journal Canadian University Music Review. The book is thus a handy compendium of information and discussion of operas which maintain a presence on the Canadian opera stage, exactly the articles that the opera-goer would wish to HUMANITIES 299 keep for their lively, appealingly written commentary. Two-thirds of the eighteen essays between the opening introduction and the closing selected bibliography relate to Canadian Opera Company performances and include the colourful history of composers, librettists, the composition and its reception, and explanations of genre. Baroque opera is covered in essays on Monteverdi=s Orfeo, Handel=s Acis and Galatea and John Gay=s The Beggar=s Opera, the Classical period by Mozart=s Don Giovanni. The Romantic operas are Verdi=s Rigoletto, Tchaikovsky=s The Queen of Spades, Mussorgsky=s Boris Godunov, and Wagner=s Der Ring des Nibelungen (I use the language of the author, original or English translation, for these titles). A Canadian work, Mario and the Magician by Harry Somers and Rodney Anderson, joins Berg=s Wozzeck, Stravinsky=s The Rake=s Progress, and Strauss=s Der Rosenkavalier to represent the twentieth century. Six essays are broader in concept: >Venice and the Operatic Tradition,= >Revivalism in the Opera House: Donizetti and Massenet,= >NineteenthCentury Opera in Toronto,= >Wagner in the New World: Notes on Early Performances in Toronto,= and >Opera and Politics= and >Evviva gli Italiani.= While all of these are of interest to the general opera-loving public, several of them are also of considerable value to the specialist. Indeed, the essay...

pdf

Share