MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN OPERA AND THE RISE OF THE UNCONVENTIONAL LEADING MEZZO-SOPRANO
Issue Date
2018-05-31Author
Phillips, Mackenzie
Publisher
University of Kansas
Format
32 pages
Type
Dissertation
Degree Level
D.M.A.
Discipline
Music
Rights
Copyright held by the author.
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The lecture recital focuses on selections from leading mezzo-soprano roles from four mid-twentieth century American operas: Regina by Marc Blitzstein, Trouble in Tahiti by Leonard Bernstein, The Ballad of Baby Doe by Douglas Moore, and The Crucible by Robert Ward. I discuss how each of these operas features a leading mezzo-soprano lady and how those roles compare and contrast to mezzo-soprano leads from European opera of previous centuries. Specific arias from each role are highlighted in order to display why each character displays unconventional characteristics. This paper provides an in-depth character analysis of these four roles and show that there are definite similarities in how they break away from standard mezzo-soprano tropes and also brings to light the connection between mezzo-soprano roles in operas by mid-twentieth-century American opera composers and contemporaneous transformation in the American society, most specifically the genesis of Second Wave Feminism in the 1960s. The hope is to draw a connection between these four operas in providing unconventional representations of strong female leads with the mezzo-soprano voice type and establish this feature as a predominant characteristic of mid-twentieth century American opera.
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- Dissertations [4702]
- Music Dissertations and Theses [335]
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