Table of Contents

Introduction
Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss

PART ONE: PROMOTION AND IMAGE-MAKING

Chapter 1. Divas and Sonnets: Poetry for Female Singers in Teatri arti e letteratura
Francesco Izzo

Chapter 2. Idealizing the Prima Donna in Mid-Victorian London
Roberta Montemorra Marvin

Chapter 3. Prima Donnas and the Performance of Altruism
Hilary Poriss

Chapter 4. Staging Scandal with Salome and Elektra
Joy H. Calico

Chapter 5. Screening the Diva
Mary Simonson

Chapter 6. The Prima Donna's Art of Politics
James R. Currie

INTERLUDE 1: The Prima Donna Creates
Julian Rushton

PART TWO: FANTASY AND REPRESENTATION

Chapter 7. Gautier's "Diva": The First French Use of the Word
James Q. Davies

Chapter 8. Artistic Experiment and the Reevaluation of the Prima Donna in George Moore's Evelyn Innes
Grace Kehler

Chapter 9. Ars moriendi: Reflections on the Death of Mimi
Helen Greenwald

Chapter 10. Lakmé's Echoing Jewels
Gurminder Kaur Bhogal

INTERLUDE 2: Breath's End: Opera and Mortality
Terry Castle

PART THREE: CULTURES OF CELEBRITY

Chapter 11. "Attitudes with a Shawl": Performance, Femininity, and Spectatorship at the Italian Opera in Early Nineteenth-Century London
Rachel Cowgill

Chapter 12. From Diva to Drama Queen
Tracy C. Davis

Chapter 13. The Prima Donna as Opera Impresario: Emma Carelli and the Teatro Costanzi, 1911-1926
Susan Rutherford

Chapter 14. "In Imitation of My Negro Mammy": Alma Gluck and the American Prima Donna
Susan C. Cook

Chapter 15. "The Finest Voice of the Century": Clara Butt and Other Concert-Hall and Drawing-Room Singers of Fin-de-siècle Britain
Sophie Fuller

Chapter 16. Galli-Curci Comes to Town: The Prima Donna's Presence in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Alexandra Wilson

Index

About the Author

Rachel Cowgill is Professor of Music at Cardiff University, and editor of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. Her research encompasses British music and musical cultures, Italian opera, Mozart reception, and gender and sexuality, and has appeared in Cambridge Opera Journal, JRMA, Early Music, Musical Times, and collections from Ashgate, Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Oxford University Press,
and Princeton University Press. Rachel co-edited Europe, Empire, and Spectacle in Nineteenth-Century British Music (Ashgate, 2006), Music in the British Provinces, 1690-1914 (Ashgate, 2007), and Art and Ideology in European Opera (Boydell & Brewer, 2010).

Hilary Poriss is Associate Professor at Northeastern University, Boston. Her research interests focus on Italian opera, performance practice, diva culture, and the aesthetics of nineteenth-century musical culture. She is the author of Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance (Oxford University Press, 2009); and co-editor, with Roberta Montemorra Marvin of Fashions and Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (Cambridge
University Press, 2010). She has published articles and reviews in 19th-Century Music, Cambridge Opera Journal, Verdi Forum, and Nineteenth-Century Music Review.

Reviews

"Take a handful of enduring diva myths; add a large bunch of creative risk-takers; mix with intellectual vigour; watch the myths fade. This essay collection from Cowgill and Poriss is as exciting as it is addictive, re-evaluating the prima donna-real, fictional, or both-as a compelling cultural force." --Katharine Ellis, Professor of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London
"Opera scholarship is no longer fixated on the composer and his/her efforts. Performers have become a center of interest, but what is a prima donna? or even a diva? While these essays, collected and superbly edited by Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss, provide no universal answers, their authors raise questions that will guide thinking for many years." --Philip Gossett, Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, The University of Chicago
"Thorough research is evident, and excellent footnotes accompany each essay...Highly recommended." --Choice
"An impressive collection of essays that will guide scholarship on vocal artists for years
to come, and perhaps inspire more research on operatic centers not covered by
the book...Will be of interest not only to musicologists and opera scholars, but also to anyone interested in those fascinating women who, evening after evening, brought opera to life." --Notes