Celluloid Diva: Staging Leoncavallo'sZazàin the Cinematic Age

Abstract

Geraldine Farrar's performances in Ruggero Leoncavallo's Zazà (1900) at New York's Metropolitan Opera House in the early 1920s were widely acclaimed as an unexpected triumph for the soprano. This article examines Farrar's Zazà in the context of New York's post-war operatic crisis, the concurrent emergence of Hollywood cinema and Farrar's own highly prominent movements between operatic and cinematic media throughout the 1910s. While Leoncavallo's opera raised a number of pressing difficulties for New York critics, Farrar's critical and popular success in Zazà points to new understandings of operatic performance at the dawn of the cinematic age.

Introduction: Making History Through Music Performance and Education

“…It is not surprising that performativity can be confusing and unfocused if maintaining that the genealogy represents one prevalent performativity. Returning to the above journal article survey, some articles are even difficult to place, as their use allows several possible interpretations inherited through citation (see Freitas 2018;Moseley, 2015;Romero, 2019;) or implied meaning, which enables several possible readings, yet are not delineated sufficiently to make the intended terminological use apparent to the reader (Arendell, 2015;Butt, 2018;Flory, 2019;Kennaway, 2015;Mathew, 2018;Morais, 2015;Rindom, 2019;Robin, 2018;Romero, 2019;Saltzstein, 2017;Shelley, 2019;Spohr, 2019;Valiquet, 2019). A more schematic view of how performativity is conceived for the selected articles (see Table 2 below) can help.…”

“…In the case of implied meaning, I have based my categorisation on my own judgement of the contextual implementation of performative/performativity. In fact, 32% of the surveyed journal articles containing the words performative/performativity (i.e., 15 out of 46) only use the word once (Arendell 2015;Bianchi, 2017;Bonds 2017;Citron, 2017;Clarke et al, 2016;Cypess, 2017;Goldmark, 2017;Korhonen-Björkman, 2019;Lie, 2019;Mathew, 2018;Rindom, 2019;Romero 2019;Saltzstein, 2019;Spohr, 2019;Weaver, 2017). Some only use the word when contained in citations of other authors (Lie, 2019;Slater, 2016;Vandagriff, 2017;Venn, 2015).…”

Hearing Early Modern Music Through the Contemporary

“…It is not surprising that performativity can be confusing and unfocused if maintaining that the genealogy represents one prevalent performativity. Returning to the above journal article survey, some articles are even difficult to place, as their use allows several possible interpretations inherited through citation (see Freitas 2018;Moseley, 2015;Romero, 2019;) or implied meaning, which enables several possible readings, yet are not delineated sufficiently to make the intended terminological use apparent to the reader (Arendell, 2015;Butt, 2018;Flory, 2019;Kennaway, 2015;Mathew, 2018;Morais, 2015;Rindom, 2019;Robin, 2018;Romero, 2019;Saltzstein, 2017;Shelley, 2019;Spohr, 2019;Valiquet, 2019). A more schematic view of how performativity is conceived for the selected articles (see Table 2 below) can help.…”

“…In the case of implied meaning, I have based my categorisation on my own judgement of the contextual implementation of performative/performativity. In fact, 32% of the surveyed journal articles containing the words performative/performativity (i.e., 15 out of 46) only use the word once (Arendell 2015;Bianchi, 2017;Bonds 2017;Citron, 2017;Clarke et al, 2016;Cypess, 2017;Goldmark, 2017;Korhonen-Björkman, 2019;Lie, 2019;Mathew, 2018;Rindom, 2019;Romero 2019;Saltzstein, 2019;Spohr, 2019;Weaver, 2017). Some only use the word when contained in citations of other authors (Lie, 2019;Slater, 2016;Vandagriff, 2017;Venn, 2015).…”

Performative Musicology and HIP as Rhetoric and Pedagogy for the Past in Present and Future

“…It is not surprising that performativity can be confusing and unfocused if maintaining that the genealogy represents one prevalent performativity. Returning to the above journal article survey, some articles are even difficult to place, as their use allows several possible interpretations inherited through citation (see Freitas 2018;Moseley, 2015;Romero, 2019;) or implied meaning, which enables several possible readings, yet are not delineated sufficiently to make the intended terminological use apparent to the reader (Arendell, 2015;Butt, 2018;Flory, 2019;Kennaway, 2015;Mathew, 2018;Morais, 2015;Rindom, 2019;Robin, 2018;Romero, 2019;Saltzstein, 2017;Shelley, 2019;Spohr, 2019;Valiquet, 2019). A more schematic view of how performativity is conceived for the selected articles (see Table 2 below) can help.…”