Curtain, Gong, Steam Wagnerian Technologies of Nineteenth-Century Opera [Hardcover]

In this innovative book, Gundula Kreuzer argues for the foundational role of technologies in the conception, production, and study of nineteenth-century opera. She shows how composers increasingly incorporated novel audiovisual effects in their works and how the uses and meanings of the required apparatuses changed through the twentieth century, sometimes still resonating in stagings, performance art, and popular culture today. Focusing on devices (which she dubs “Wagnerian technologies”) intended to amalgamate opera’s various media while veiling their mechanics, Kreuzer offers a practical counternarrative to Wagner’s idealist theories of total illusionism. At the same time,Curtain, Gong, Steam’s multifaceted exploration of the three titular technologies repositions Wagner as catalyst more than inventor in the history of operatic production. With its broad chronological and geographical scope, this book deepens our understanding of the material and mechanical conditions of historical operatic practice as well as of individual works, both well known and obscure.

Gundula Kreuzeris Associate Professor of Music at Yale University. She is the author of the award-winningVerdi and the Germans: From Unification to the Third Reichand editor of Verdi’s instrumental chamber music forThe Works of Giuseppe Verdi.

“Exemplary in the way it allies meticulous historical evidence with operatic interpretation, this is one of the most exciting books on nineteenth-century opera to appear in decades, and one that will become a touchstone for further work in this field.”—Carolyn Abbate, Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor, Harvard University

“At last Gundula Kreuzer has given operatic technologies a voice of their own. Wagner’s secret machines and hidden wires are themselves the actors, telling of their Baroque origins and theil“