Dreaming with Open Eyes: Opera, Aesthetics, and Perception in Arcadian Rome (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780520298156)

Dreaming with Open Eyes examines visual symbolism in late seventeenth-century Italian opera, contextualizing the genre amid the broad ocularcentric debates emerging at the crossroads of the early modern period and the Enlightenment. Ayana O. Smith reevaluates significant aspects of the Arcadian reform aesthetic and establishes a historically informed method of opera criticism for modern scholars and interpreters. Unfolding in a narrative fashion, the text explores facets of the philosophical and literary background and concludes with close readings of text and music, using visual symbolism to create readings of gender and character in two operas: Alessandro Scarlatti's La Statira (Rome, 1690), and Carlo Francesco Pollarolo's La forza della virt (Venice, 1693). Smith's interdisciplinary approach enhances our modern perception of this rich and underexplored repertory, and will appeal to students and scholars not only of opera, but also of literature, philosophy, and visual and intellectual cultures.

Author: Ayana O. Smith
ISBN-10: 0520298152
ISBN-13: 9780520298156
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Published: 03/05/2019
Pages: 328
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.30w x 1.20d