The Meyerbeer Libretti

Italian Operas 3 (L'Esule de Granata, Il Crociato in Egitto)
2. Auflage 2009
ISBN: 978-1-84718-963-9
Verlag: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 338 Seiten

Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime unrivalled by any of his contemporaries. This eleven volume set provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts are offered in the most complete versions ever made available. Each libretto is translated into modern English by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's libretti, the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use.

The fourth volume presents Meyerbeer’s fifth and sixth Italian operas, written towards the end of his decisive sojourn in Italy, where for eight years (1816-24) he made the operatic traditions of bel canto his own, while constantly expanding his own powerful dramatic instincts. His Italian operas divide themselves into three pairs of two. In the third pair, L’Esule di Granata (Milan, 1822) and Il Crociato in Egitto (Venice, 1824), the impulse to dismantle and reconstruct the traditions of bel canto was carried even further than before. Development of the introduzione, a fluent handling and modification of structure, an imaginative expansion of forces, showed awareness of both the French traditions of grandeur and Rossini’s experiments in the opera seria in Naples. All Meyerbeer’s Italian operas are concerned with situations of exile and imposture, search and restitution, confusion and fulfilment, and none more so then Il Crociato. This recurrent theme certainly reflected a subliminal thematic treatment of issues at work in the composer’s life: his view of himself as a searching artist, an alien Jew, an outsider living away from his Prussian home and seeking his true métier. The success of the Crociato enabled Meyerbeer to effect a move to Paris, the operatic capital of the world, where his career would find its true artistic home.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Arsenty, Richard

Letellier, Robert

Über Autor(innen)

Richard Arsenty, a native of the U.S. midwest, received degrees from the University of Illinois in Biology Education and Library Science. After teaching for seven years at the high school, college and university levels, he took advantage of a unique opportunity and went to work as a libretto translator for MRF Records in New Jersey. Eight years later he decided to return to academia, accepting a position as Science Reference Librarian at Purchase College near New York City. At the end of 2002, after sixteen years of service to the college, he took an early retirement and returned to Illinois where his family is located. Richard has translated more than 160 libretti for organizations such as Opera Orchestra of New York, The New York City Opera, The Waterloo Festival, Hungaraton Records, Orfeo Records and Opera Rara. His translations include all of Meyerbeer’s operas (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2004), Nerone (Boito), Das Liebesverbot (Wagner), La Juive (Halévy), Marino Faliero (Donizetti), Salammbô (Reyer), Jérusalem (Verdi), Crispino e la Comare (Ricci) and many others.

Robert Ignatius Letellier was born in Natal, and educated in Grahamstown, Cambridge, Salzburg, Rome and Jerusalem. He is a member of Trinity College (Cambridge), the Salzburg Centre for Research in the Early English Novel (University of Salzburg), the Maryvale Institute (Birmingham), and the Institute for Continuing Education at Madingley Hall (Cambridge). His publications include books and articles on the late-seventeenth-, eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century novel (particularly the Gothic Novel and Sir Walter Scott), the Bible, and European culture, with emphasis on the Romantic opera and ballet. He has specialized in the work of Giacomo Meyerbeer (a four-volume English edition of his diaries, a collection of critical and biographical studies, a guide to research, and two readings of the operas, as well as compiling and introducing editions of the complete libretti and non-operatic texts). He has also written on the ballets of Ludwig Minkus.