"Parker's wit and high irony pervade every page. In a sense, his central
aim (though never self-identified as such) is to brandish a new 'tone'
or attitude toward scholarship--and toward Verdi--in the postmodern
1990s. The book is immensely engaging throughout: verbal surprises and
astonishing suggestions lurk around every corner. Leonora's Last Act is
a joy to read even as it seeks mischievously to unsettle our views of
this composer."--James Hepokoski, University of MinnesotaIn these
essays, Roger Parker brings a series of valuable insights to bear on
Verdian analysis and criticism, and does so in a way that responds both
to an opera-goer's love of musical drama and to a scholar's concern for
recent critical trends. As he writes at one point: "opera challenges us
by means of its brash impurity, its loose ends and excess of meaning,
its superfluity of narrative secrets." Verdi's works, many of which
underwent drastic revisions over the years and which sometimes bore
marks of an unusual collaboration between composer and librettist,
illustrate in particular why it can sometimes be misleading to assign
fixed meanings to an opera. Parker instead explores works like
Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La forza del destino, and Falstaff from a
variety of angles, and addresses such contentious topics as the
composer's involvement with Italian politics, the possibilities of an
"authentic" staging of his work, and the advantages and pitfalls of
analyzing his operas according to terms that his contemporaries might
have understood.Parker takes into account many of the interdisciplinary
influences currently engaging musicologists, in particular narrative and
feminist theory. But he also demonstrates thatclose attention to the
documentary evidence--especially that offered by autograph scores--can
stimulate equal interpretive activity. This book serves as a model of
research and critical thinking about opera, while nevertheless retaining
a deep respect for opera's continuing power to touch generations of
listeners.
