Changing the Score

Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance

Hilary Poriss

AMS Studies in Music

First book to fully explore the practice of aria insertion during the 19th century
Uncovers many examples of prima donnas singing their own aria choices
Provides new insight into personalities and talents of many individual singers
Last chapter focuses on short story published in 1849, forgotten until now

Changing the Score

Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance

Hilary Poriss

Description

This study seeks to explore the role and significance of aria insertion, the practice that allowed singers to introduce music of their own choice into productions of Italian operas. Each chapter investigates the art of aria insertion during the nineteenth century from varying perspectives, beginning with an overview of the changing fortunes of the practice, followed by explorations of individual prima donnas and their relationship with particular insertion arias: Carolina Ungher's difficulties in finding a "perfect" aria to introduce into Donizetti's Marino Faliero; Guiditta Pasta's performance of an aria from Pacini's Niobe in a variety of operas, and the subsequent fortunes of that particular aria; Maria Malibran's interpolation of Vaccai's final scene from Giulietta e Romeo in place of Bellini's original setting in his I Capuleti e i Montecchi; and Adelina Patti's "mini-concerts" in the lesson scene of Il barbiere di Siviglia.

The final chapter provides a treatment of a short story, "Memoir of a Song," narrated by none other than an insertion aria itself, and the volume concludes with an appendix containing the first modern edition of this short story, a narrative that has lain utterly forgotten since its publication in 1849. This book covers a wide variety of material that will be of interest to opera scholars and opera lovers alike, touching on the fluidity of the operatic work, on the reception of the singers, and on the shifting and hardening aesthetics of music criticism through the period.

Changing the Score

Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance

Hilary Poriss

AMS Studies in Music

Introduction
1. A Discourse of Change
2. Selecting a "Perfect Entrance": Carolina Ungher and Marino Falier
3. Making Their Way through the World: Italian One-Hit Wonders
4. Maria Malibran, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, and a Tale of Suicide
5. Che vuol cantare? The Lesson Scene of Il barbiere di Siviglia
6. An Insertion Aria Speaks
Appendix I: "Memoir of a Song"
Bibliography
Index

Changing the Score

Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance

Hilary Poriss

AMS Studies in Music

Author Information

Hilary Poriss is Assistant Professor of Music at Northeastern University. Her research interests focus primarily on nineteenth-century Italian opera and on diva culture. She is the author of articles in many books and journals, and she is the co-editor of Fashions and Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (2009) and The Arts of the Prima Donna, 1800-1920 (2009).

Changing the Score

Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance

Hilary Poriss

AMS Studies in Music

Reviews and Awards

"Serves as a model of engaging and committed scholarship." --Journal of the American Musicological Society

"Written in lively prose, this book opens up fresh perspectives of a little explored area of operatic performance practice, and offers intriguing new material on the work of four nineteenth-century singers that will be of much benefit to opera scholars. Hilary Poriss approaches her theme with engaging energy and perception."--Susan Rutherford, University of Manchester, author of The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815-1930 (2006)

"Hilary Poriss invites us into a world where so many musical certainties seem to vanish, where the truths of Werktreue evaporate in the face of a culture of making and remaking opera, that the primo ottocento will never quite seem the same again."--Mark Everist, University of Southampton, author of Music Drama at the Paris Odéon, 1824-1828 (2002) and Giacomo Meyerbeer and Music Drama in Nineteenth-Century Paris (2005)

"A long-awaited addition to the literature...The book reveals the value of understanding the performance practice of Italian opera in the 19th century and the important role of the singers, especially the prima donnas. If contemporary operatic practice considers reviving the use of insertion arias, Changing the Score will have accomplished its objective."--Times Higher Education

"[A] marvelous book...thorough, full of material difficult to come by, accessibly written, free of jargon, and with interesting, provocative ideas." --Performance Practice Review

"Insightful." --Opera

"A pleasure to read, invoking a wide range of source material and provided with proper footnotes where footnotes ought to be. One for scholars and opera-goers alike." --The Musical Times