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The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century - Oxford Scholarship Online
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The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century

Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss

Abstract

The female singers who graced the nineteenth-century operatic stage were among the most celebrated women of their era, but they were also among the most transgressive. This book explores the means by which this preeminence was negotiated, traversing the musical, the dramatic, and the visual, while addressing more recognizably modern concerns, such as career management, literary representation, and image manipulation. A key theme is the emergence of the diva archetype over the course of the century—a new ideological discourse through which the extremes of operatic female vocality were reinterpr ... More

Keywords: prima donna, diva, drama queens, operatic, career, management, representation, image, mortality, identity

Bibliographic Information

Print publication date: 2012 Print ISBN-13: 9780195365870
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2012 DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195365870.001.0001

Authors

Affiliations are at time of print publication.

Rachel Cowgill, editor
Cardiff University

Hilary Poriss, editor
Northeastern University

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