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Song and Season

Science, Culture, and Theatrical Time in Early Modern Venice (The Calendar of Venetian Opera)

By Eleanor Selfridge-Field

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Publish Date

October 5, 2007

Publisher

Stanford University Press

Language

eng

Pages

397

Description:

"Two systems of timekeeping were in concurrent use in Venice between 1582 and 1797: government documents conformed to the Venetian year (beginning 1 March), church documents to the papal year (from 1 January). Song and Season defines the many ways in which time was discussed, resolving a long-standing fuzziness imposed on studies of people, institutions, and cultural dynamics as a result of dating conflicts. It is in this context that the standardization of timekeeping coincided with the collapse of the dramma per musica and the rise of scripted comedy and the opera buffa. Selfridge-Field discloses relationships between the musical stage and the cultures it served, such as the residues of medieval liturgical feasts embedded in the theatrical year. Such associations were transmuted into lingering seasonal associations with specific dramatic genres. Interactions between culture and chronology thus operated on both general and specific levels. Both are fundamental to understanding theatrical dynamics of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries."--Jacket.