The research is dedicated to Gilbert Blin’s work in staging operas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nourished by a decade of productions for the Boston Early Music Festival, the first... Show moreThe research is dedicated to Gilbert Blin’s work in staging operas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nourished by a decade of productions for the Boston Early Music Festival, the first objective of his dissertation is to enable a better understanding of both his creative and interpretive processes in the operatic field. The main research question he attempts to answer in his dissertation can be phrased as follows: how can a post-modern stage director use historical research for creative purposes? The title of this dissertation, The Reflections of Memory, is the appellation Gilbert Blin has been giving to his current approach as an artist and constitutes a conceptual answer to this question Show less
This thesis examined two previously neglected topics, Baroque Italian recorders and the Neapolitan Baroque repertoire for the recorder, and then combined both aspects. First, information was... Show moreThis thesis examined two previously neglected topics, Baroque Italian recorders and the Neapolitan Baroque repertoire for the recorder, and then combined both aspects. First, information was collected on all Italian Baroque recorders currently known, including biographical references about the makers of these recorders, as well as technical drawings, measurements and photographs. The practical experience with the copies of a few of those recorders was described by the author. Second, the Baroque repertoire composed in Naples for the recorder was researched, uncovering a rich and forgotten corpus of music written and copied between 1695 and 1759. The Neapolitan recorder works were also listed with a brief analysis and further commentary on the recorder part, with a view of connecting the works with the instruments that might have once been used to play them. Furthermore, an overview of the social and cultural atmosphere of Naples in the early eighteenth century was offered as contextualization to the musical ambience, aided by iconographical references. Conclusions on performance practice are presented as a result of the combination of both research aspects. The artistic outcome of this study has brought together, also in performance, the two main aspects of the research: 'new' instruments and 'new' works. Show less
While the sculpted object is so obviously carved from hard and lifeless marble, at the same time it has the capacity to conjure up a seemingly living presence of soft, undulating flesh, dramatic... Show moreWhile the sculpted object is so obviously carved from hard and lifeless marble, at the same time it has the capacity to conjure up a seemingly living presence of soft, undulating flesh, dramatic movements, and fluttering draperies. As its apparent life is persistently obscured by its materiality and its materiality denied by hints of life, sculpture challenges the beholder, is cause for confusion or frustration. This was no less the case in seventeenth-century Rome—in fact, the double character of sculpture and the manner in which the beholder coped with this was a central issue in contemporary discussions of art. This study explores the complicated interaction between beholder and sculpture in seventeenth-century Rome, asking how we may understand the manner in which the beholder engaged the sculpted object. Two lines of inquiry are adopted to approach this problem. In the first place a poetic discourse is reconstructed and analyzed, which, in the way it persistently thematizes the beholder’s intricate interaction with the sculpted object, provides a set of central concerns occupying contemporary beholders. And secondly, insights from modern-day psychology are applied to gain further understanding of the way in which beholders dealt with the complicated nature of sculpture. Show less
