The Don Giovanni Moment - Essays on the Legacy of an Opera

Erscheinungsjahr 2006
ISBN: 978-0-231-13754-6
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 264 Seiten, Format (B × H): 162 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 522 g

Reihe: Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts

Mozart's Don Giovanni is an operatic masterpiece full of iconic and mythical tensions that still resonate today. The work redefines the terms of power, seduction, and morality, and the resulting conflict between the aesthetic and the ethical is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment and romanticism.

The Don Giovanni Moment is the first book to examine the aesthetic and moral legacy of Mozart's opera in the literature, philosophy, and culture of the nineteenth century. The prominent scholars in this collection address the opera's impact on the philosophical visions of Kierkegaard, Goethe, and Williams and its influence on the literary and dramatic works of Pushkin, Hoffmann, Mörike, Byron, Wagner, Strauss, and Shaw. Through a close and careful analysis of Don Giovanni's literary and philosophical reception and its many appropriations, rewritings, and retellings, these contributors treat the opera as a vantage point from which theory and philosophy can reconsider romanticism's central themes.

As lively and passionate as the opera itself, these essays continue the spirited debate over the meaning and character of Don Giovanni and its powerful legacy. Together they prove that Mozart's brilliant artistic achievement is as potent and relevant today as when it was first performed two centuries ago.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Goehr, Lydia

Herwitz, Daniel

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikgattungen Opernmusik
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Musiktheorie, Musikästhetik, Kompositionslehre

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of ContributorsIntroduction, by Lydia Goehr and Daniel Herwitz1. Don Giovanni: "And what communion hath light with darkness?," by Ingrid Rowland2. Don Juan and Faust: On the Interaction Between Two Literary Myths, by Ernst Osterkamp3. "Hidden Secrets of the Self ": E. T. A. Hoffmann's Reading of Don Giovanni, by Richard Eldridge4. Don Juan in Nicholas's Russia (Pushkin's The Stone Guest), by Boris Gasparov5. Mörike's Mozart and the Scent of a Woman, by Hans Rudolf Vaget6. The Gothic Libertine: The Shadow of Don Giovanni in Romantic Music and Culture, by Thomas S. Grey7. Don Juan as an Idea, by Bernard Williams8. Kierkegaard Writes His Opera, Daniel Herwitz9. The Curse and Promise of the Absolutely Musical: Tristan und Isolde and Don Giovanni, by Lydia Goehr10. Authority and Judgment in Mozart's Don Giovanni and Wagner's Ring, by Philip Kitcher and Richard Schacht11. Mozart's Don Giovanni in Shaw's Comedy, Agnes Heller12. Giovanni auf Naxos, Brian Soucek13. Homage to Adorno's "Homage to Zerlina," by Berthold Hoeckner14. Adorno and the Don, by Nikolaus Bacht

Über Autor(innen)

Lydia Goehr is professor of philosophy and aesthetics at Columbia University. She is the author of The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music; The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy, and Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory. Daniel Herwitz is the Mary Fair Croushore Professor of Humanities and director of the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption, and his short stories have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review.