Weep, Shudder, Die: On Opera and Poetry
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
"Looking at opera from the standpoint of its texts, as only a gifted poet and librettist can do, Dana Gioia examines why a surprisingly small number of operas have attained a secure place in the repertory. His insight into the workings of this uniquely lyrical fusion of the arts makes Weep, Shudder, Die not only a definitive assessment of the importance of poetry to the operatic undertaking, but a gift to opera lovers everywhere. Read…Reflect…Delight!"
—Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Listener’s Encyclopedia of Classical Music
“Weep, Shudder, Die should be read by anyone who enjoys opera, or who cares about its place in today's world. Dana Gioia explores, with imagination and insight, the relationship between the libretto and the music. I learned a great deal in reading it, and at the same time enjoyed the experience immensely.”
—Henry Fogel, Former President, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and League of American Orchestras
A unique book about opera—personal, impassioned, and provocative.
Weep, Shudder, Die explores opera from the perspective by which the art was originally created, as the most intense form of poetic drama. The great operas have an essential connection to poetry, song, and the primal power of the human voice. The aim of opera is irrational enchantment, the unleashing of emotions and visionary imagination.
Gioia rejects the conventional view of opera which assumes that great operas can be built on execrable texts. He insists that in opera, words matter. Operas begin as words; strong words inspire composers, weak words burden them. Ultimately, singers embody the words to give the music a human form for the audience.
Weep, Shudder, Die is a poet’s book about opera. To some, that statement will suggest writing that is airy, impressionistic, and unreliable, but a poet also brings a practical sense of how words animate opera, lend life to imaginary characters, and give human shape to music. Written from a lifelong devotion to the art, Gioia’s book is for anyone who has wept in the dark of an opera house.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With this idiosyncratic and impassioned ode to the libretto, poet Gioia (Meet Me at the Lighthouse) aims to upend the "assumption that in opera words hardly matter." On the contrary, he argues, opera's compressed narrative structure means that lyrics function as a "driving force," drawing out "peak moments of human emotion" and allowing for "emotional transference" between performers and audience. Exploring the relationship between text and music, Gioia argues that seamless collaboration between composers and librettists has produced some of opera's most spectacular works, from Wolfgang Mozart and Venetian poet Lorenzo Da Ponte's Don Giovanni (Da Ponte contributed "a comic sophistication and thematic complexity" that elevated the opera "beyond earlier theatrical works") to Ira and George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Gioia's at his most convincing when he's affectionately analyzing the form's particularities, including the unabashed emotion with which it captures the "extremes of human existence" ("No one suffers silently in opera"). Other sections find him lost in the weeds, as when he spends several pages chiding critics who question the "operatic status" of Steven Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. Still, opera aficionados will find plenty to appreciate.
