Great women on stage

Viac o knihe

Baroque opera is a plurimedial art form that uniquely allows for the creation, transformation, and reinterpretation of historical images and figures through intertwined semantic levels of drama, music, and acting. This volume, stemming from the Eleventh European Social Science History conference in 2016, explores the (re-)presentation of ancient female rulers in baroque opera, focusing not on music history or theory but on how librettists, composers, and stage designers processed ancient material to portray these figures. The prominence of ancient themes during the baroque period makes this an ideal subject for analysis. Agnès Garcia Ventura and Marta Ortega Balanza examine Agrippina the Younger in a 2013 staging of Händel’s opera at the Liceu opera house in Barcelona, analyzing the varied gender representations of Agrippina from ancient sources to the opera and its performance. Valeska Hartmann’s contribution centers on Cleopatra VII, focusing on the stage designs that create an appropriate setting for this complex and often sexualized ruler. The volume begins with an introductory chapter by Kerstin Droß-Krüpe on opera seria as a source for the reception of antiquity, followed by an essay by Kerstin Weiand discussing the polyvalence of antiquity in early modern Europe.