Music, the Market, and the Marvellous - (British Academy Monographs) by Tommaso Sabbatini (Hardcover)
About this item
Highlights
- Music, the Market, and the Marvellous examines féerie, the French fairy play, in the last third of the nineteenth century.
- About the Author: Tommaso Sabbatini is a music historian specializing in nineteenth-century French theatre.
- 272 Pages
- Music, Instruction & Study
- Series Name: British Academy Monographs
Description
About the Book
Music, the Market, and the Marvellous examines féerie, the fairy play, recovering a large swathe of the theatrical landscape of nineteenth-century Paris. Forgotten plays are rediscovered, familiar works take on new meanings, and traditional historiographical narratives about drama and 'musical theatre' are thrown into question.
Book Synopsis
Music, the Market, and the Marvellous examines féerie, the French fairy play, in the last third of the nineteenth century. It is among the first book-length studies on the genre, the first in a language other than French, and the first from a musicological perspective. Sabbatini demonstrates that, contrary to conventional wisdom, féerie was still thriving during the fin de siècle, giving rise to innovations such as composerly féerie and scientific féerie. The plays, the theatre industry, and urban geography are discussed together, as befits a commercial genre where the marvellous was shaped by the market. Recovering this forgotten ^--^but once hugely influential ^--^ repertoire provides an occasion to rethink generic taxonomies of Parisian theatre and the ontology of nineteenth-century 'popular' theatre.
Review Quotes
"Sabbatini's book offers a study of a Parisian stage genre that has not previously been the subject of an English-language nor a musicological study. One of the book's great strengths, therefore, is to establish for the first time the key figures, institutions, repertoire, and aesthetic parameters of the féerie industry between 1864 and 1900 in a comprehensive manner. He also weaves together a chronology of the genre's large-scale artistic developments and establishes a rich corpus of féerie repertoire that is likely new to most readers. What these elements add up to is a rich portrait of the genre over thirty-six years." -- Sophie Horrocks David, Cambridge University Press
About the Author
Tommaso Sabbatini is a music historian specializing in nineteenth-century French theatre. He is currently a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bristol and McGill University. His research has been supported by the French Government, the American Musicological Society, and the British Academy. He has edited the Opéra-Comique production book from the French première of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca (forthcoming).
