19世纪歌剧【英文】

“Faust” ruled!
• French and German dramatists were more successful. • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote Faust in two parts (1808, 1832) with scope and grandeur of concept that challenged the theaters of his day.
• VICTOR HUGOHernani – couple could not live together so they drank poison. • Les Miserables
Alexandre Dumas fils
• ALEXANDER DUMAS, the Younger, ranks as one of the three leading French dramatists of the last quarter of the 19th century. • Obsessed with the theme of illicit love. • This theme has always played an important part on the French stage. • Eleven plays written before 1880 all have illicit love as the motif. Yet Dumas liked to regard himself as a moralist and teacher, a position that seems somewhat contradictory.
Alexandre Dumas fils
• His dad (Alexandre Dumas) wrote Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers
It’s cool to be Dumas fils
• Perhaps a psychiatrist would find in the fact that he, like his father, was an illegitimate child, an explanation of his harping so constantly on the single theme. • Had a Bohemian comradeship with the father, who had publicly acknowledged his son as soon as his own literary reputation was sufficiently established to bring in a dependable income. Fin • When only his pen stood between himself and disgrace, he brought forth in 1948 the famous Lady of the Camellias (or Camille), first as a novel, then in a dramatic version. • Its immediate and enthusiastic reception seemed to indicate that the public was ready and waiting to sympathize with that particular type of heroine.
Romantic Drama
• English Romantic poets produced a variety of plays espousing a new philosophy of the individual, democracy, and a cry for personal liberation. • Failed to capture popular stage.
Goethe’s development of Faust as a psychologically complex character contrasts with Marlowe’s version in Doctor Faustus
Viva la FRANCE!
• Romantic tragedy held sway for some time in the 1830’s.
19th Century Drama
New to Theatre
• Gas lights that could be dimmed or raised as needed. • Gas light onstage added emotional effects. • Proscenium was introduced • The “fourth wall” • Machinery lifted actors from below the stage • Flies/fly galleries – permittA person, as an artist or writer, who lives and acts free of regard for conventional rules and practices. • A gypsy
MELODRAMA!
• Developed in Germany and France mid to late 18th cent. • Melo – “song” • Music was the hallmark of melodrama • Proved to be one of the most durable innovations of the late 18th cent. • Background music altered according to mood.