Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdys Opernprojekte im kulturellen Kontext der deutschen Opern- und Librettogeschichte, 1820-1850
- Submitting institution
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Cardiff University / Prifysgol Caerdydd
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 97123957
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Wehrhahn
- ISBN
- 9783865256829
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- January
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This 725-page book is extensive, rigorous and comprehensive. The product of two decades of research, it constitutes a complete documentation, assessment and analysis of all of Mendelssohn’s over 100 opera projects. It required the identification, transcription and evaluation of a vast range of material in European and American archives, much of it unpublished, and some of it hitherto completely unknown. This included several hundred unpublished letters to the composer, previously unidentified, miscatalogued manuscripts by Mendelssohn and Emanuel Geibel for the opera Lorelei and Karl Immermann’s libretto for The Tempest. The range of material discovered allows conclusions of unprecedented authority.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
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- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- Yes
- English abstract
- This study constitutes a comprehensive documentation and analysis of all Mendelssohn’s over 100 opera projects, evaluated in the historical and cultural context of contemporary German opera. It is based on a vast range of primary archival sources, including hundreds of unpublished letters and previously unidentified manuscripts (e.g., by Mendelssohn and Emanuel Geibel for the opera Lorelei). This allows a treatment of the topic with unprecedented depth and rigour, as has been acknowledged by reviewers. One significant conclusion is that Mendelssohn’s aesthetic concept of the ideal German opera was, ironically, uncannily similar to that of his supposed nemesis, Richard Wagner.