Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici最新文献

{"title":"Baroque and Cameralism: Towards an Intellectual History of Economic Thinking","authors":"D. Raskov","doi":"10.58186/2782-3660-2023-3-1-100-122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58186/2782-3660-2023-3-1-100-122","url":null,"abstract":"The Baroque, as an era and style in architecture, music, and literature, shares analogies with the history of early political economy. The main purpose of this article is to show that the use of the notion of the Baroque in the intellectual history of economic thinking provides a better understanding of both the corpus of works and the motivations of the authors. It is common to refer to the era preceding classical political economy as mercantilism or cameralism, as its German version. A close acquaintance with the most prominent figures of cameralism — such as Johann Joachim Becher and Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi — raises questions. How can we understand such amazing productivity and desire to work simultaneously in such different fields, not limited to agriculture, finance, security, police, ethics, but touching upon law, natural philosophy, and natural sciences, humor, and such questions as making paints or turning sand into gold? Why are they so versatile and multifaceted? Why such immense mobility and desire to impress, charm and at the same time to create verbose intrigue, to intentionally obscure their meaning, to bring about a certain level of confusion? Why this manner of writing and the famous projectionism — those which are courageous and comic at the same time? In some cases, it is the juxtaposition of the two labels that will give a better understanding of the corpus of texts — Baroque and Cameralism. In addition, states had new demands for maintaining a permanent army, for building roads and buildings, for displaying grandeur and glory. The festive splendor of Versailles needed a Baroque man. Many obscure manifestations of economic thought become clearer through the prism of Baroque terms. The corpus of works exhibits vitality, excess, a desire for a new pathos, and optimism.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"66 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136318761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Louis XIV’s “The City of the Sun”","authors":"A. Stepanov","doi":"10.58186/2782-3660-2023-3-1-75-99","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58186/2782-3660-2023-3-1-75-99","url":null,"abstract":"The Versailles Park is a synthesis of the utopian fantasies of Tommaso Campanella and the urban baroque transformations of Rome, expressed through landscape architecture. Imbued with Campanella’s “mystical imperialism,” Louis XIV relegates the care of the palace to the background, building first and foremost a man-made landscape as a metaphor for the representation of absolute power. If the Baroque transformations of Rome are projections of private manorial spatial structures onto the layout of the city, the Park of Versailles is the opposite phase of this process initiated by the Roman pontiffs, that is, the projection of Roman Baroque urban structures onto the only truly private property in France at the time. The layouts of Versailles are an essence of Baroque, which could not be obtained either in Rome itself or in Paris with their dense buildings. Louis XIV contrasts Versailles with the capital of the Catholic world and the restless capital of his own kingdom. The park is saturated with didactic symbolism, expressing his concern for the education of worthy successors. The king himself draws up guidebooks and orders the publication of plans of Versailles in which the south is at the top, so that no one dares to look at his residence from the side of the sun he has appropriated. The appearance and semantics of the bosquets and fountains allegorically represent the spheres of interest without which power can be neither enlightened nor universal. However, the grandiose planning structures are only the skeleton; the flesh of the Versailles Park is the walls of trembling foliage, the marble and gilding of statues and decorations, the sparkling and hissing of fountain jets, bursts of sunlight in shadow, the contrasts of cosmic and obscure spaces that are playfully comfortable. The Park of Versailles is a center of sensual pleasures, reaching the peak of ingenuity in the extravagant day-and-night revelries. Through a sophisticated and unconventional stage direction, earth, air, fire and water — all four elements — stir the imagination, memory and thought in the Baroque Gesamtkunstwerk, which glorifies the Sun King.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136317380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Music Drama","authors":"T. Adorno","doi":"10.58186/2782-3660-2023-3-1-55-74","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58186/2782-3660-2023-3-1-55-74","url":null,"abstract":"In this fragment of Theodor Adorno’s Versuch Uber Wagner (1952), the author analyzes Richard Wagner’s aesthetic conception of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or a “total work of art.” Drawing on both Wagner’s theoretical works and his operas, Adorno reveals the contradictions of this concept, emphasizing its fundamental difference from Hegel’s definition of art. Examining the relationship between the evolution of opera, the autonomy of the artist, and the development of cultural industries, he shows that despite Wagner’s rejection of the division of labor and his desire for perfect unity, the Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk not only fails to eliminate this division of labor but further reinforces it. According to Adorno, Wagner’s music drama is deeply contradictory: the music is locked within the action, leading to an intensification of subjective expression and an excess of plot over music. Wagner himself was aware of these contradictions both at the level of conception and at the level of the practical realization of the work.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"10037 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136318954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Some Scenes of Intersection Between Psychoanalysis and Opera","authors":"V. Mazin","doi":"10.58186/2782-3660-2023-3-1-6-22","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58186/2782-3660-2023-3-1-6-22","url":null,"abstract":"The article theorizes the intellectual intersections of psychoanalysis and opera. First, it analyses Sigmund Freud’s ambivalent relationship to music in general and to opera in particular. The principal reason for Freud’s conscious rejection of music’s influence becomes the impossibility of conceptualizing pleasure. One of the first to bring together musicological and psychoanalytic discourses was Max Graf, who was not only a friend of Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg but also a member of the very first psychoanalytic circle of friends that gathered at Freud’s home. Max Graf’s article, in which he offered a detailed analysis of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, was the first psychoanalytic publication devoted to the art of opera. Max Graf’s son Herbert Graf is known in the history of psychoanalysis as Little Hans. Herbert’s Graf dissertation was devoted to the works of Richard Wagner and he subsequently became a prominent opera director. In his dissertation, Herbert Graf used Freud’s psychoanalytic ideas to build his theory of opera staging where the concepts that unite the unconscious and operatic scenes, namely fantasy, desire, and identification, come to the fore. These subjects allow us to contextualize and map the space of the encounter between opera and psychoanalysis, fantasy and its embodiment.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"12 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134907620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"For the Love of Opera","authors":"S. Žižek, M. Dolar","doi":"10.58186/2782-3660-2023-3-1-23-54","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58186/2782-3660-2023-3-1-23-54","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, Mladen Dolar and Slavoj Žižek, founders of the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis, turn in their work to opera, with Mladen Dolar focusing on Mozart and Slavoj Žižek on Wagner. The title of their work refers to the two deaths, symbolic and real, of which Lacan speaks in connection with ethics and aesthetics in his Seminar VII. Death, along with love, forms the center of both the operatic and the psychoanalytic narrative. Recently, the psychoanalytic approach to opera has become notorious. Typically, its product is a deconstructionist reading of the libretto or, even worse, a rather primitive Freudian debunking of its (patriarchal, anti-Semitic, and/or anti-feminist) prejudices. However, the authors argue that opera deserves better. The historical relationship between opera and psychoanalysis is suggestive. The moment of the birth of psychoanalysis (early twentieth century) is also often perceived as the moment of the death of opera—as if after psychoanalysis, opera, at least in its traditional form, was no longer possible. Not surprisingly, echoes of Freudianism are present in most contenders for the title of the last opera.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"2 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134907103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Convolute D: Boredom, Eternal Return","authors":"W. Benjamin","doi":"10.58186/2782-3660-2022-2-6-160-192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58186/2782-3660-2022-2-6-160-192","url":null,"abstract":".","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135061037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"That Obscure Object that Sounds. Metamorphoses of the Composer’s Score in the Opera Industry","authors":"N. Dubov","doi":"10.58186/2782-3660-2022-2-6-109-132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58186/2782-3660-2022-2-6-109-132","url":null,"abstract":"In the 20th century, the composer’s music score acquired the status of the firmest and almost sacred core of the opera in stage performance. Battles between traditionalists and Regieoper lovers are still ongoing both online and offline. However, oaths of allegiance to it and accusations of wrongdoing against it show that it is almost impossible to maintain the inviolability of the score in theater practice. The history of opera presents various approaches to this problem. From the birth of the art of opera, the composer was an equal contributor to the show, just like the set designer, stage manager, or impresario. However, their position underwent changes until the 19th century when the phenomenon of repertoire theater emerged, and the operatic canon began to establish itself. From then on, music started to be considered a sacred element of every opera evening. Nevertheless, even the most traditionalistic opera houses nowadays modify the original scores by removing especially long passages, changing original arias, and rewriting default music or text.This article o5ers a historical essay on the relationship between composers and the opera industry, and discusses types of modifications to opera scores, such as cuts, inserts, and the pasticcio phenomenon.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135206250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Miraculous Metamorphoses” and “Simple-Minded Tricks”. Performances of the “Ring” by Richard Wagner in Entertainment Culture of Russian Capitals of the Early XX Century","authors":"T. Bukina","doi":"10.58186/2782-3660-2022-2-6-61-94","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58186/2782-3660-2022-2-6-61-94","url":null,"abstract":"The article focuses on the phenomenon of Wagnerism in Russia at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries and its impact on the culture of the epoch, whose impact is widely recognized. As opposed to the established tradition which considers this impact at the level of the creative elite of the Russian Silver Age, including major intellectual and artistic jgures, this paper raises a question about the role played by the reception of mass audiences in the spread of Wagnerism. Performances of Wagner’s tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen by the troupes of the Imperial Theatres in 1900–1914, which caused a great public response, were chosen as material for the inquiry. The article reconstructs the reception of these productions by mass audiences based on reviews in the press, as well as memories of participants and witnesses of the performances. The undertaken analysis led to the conclusion that at that time the performances of Wagner’s tetralogy were, in many respects, regarded by the audience as part of mass entertainment and attraction culture that experienced heydays in early 20th-century.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135206249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Diva Plavalaguna’s Aria","authors":"O. Manulkina","doi":"10.58186/2782-3660-2022-2-6-133-159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58186/2782-3660-2022-2-6-133-159","url":null,"abstract":"In the opera episode of Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (1997), the alien Diva Plavalaguna performs an aria in which a fragment of the Mad scene from Act III of Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor is replaced by a vocalization composed by Eric Serra. This article examines the relationship of the vocalization to the opera number and the unified form of the aria, created by combining seemingly incompatible parts. The Diva’s aria, in a concise and elementary form, is la solita forma , the traditional form of the Italian aria of the first half of the nineteenth century. Even though most of Rossini’s, Bellini’s, and Donizetti’s operas — solo and ensemble — and many of Verdi’s numbers up to his mature operas, including his most popular arias, are based on this form, la solita forma is often not perceived by the modern listener. The Diva’s aria, whose structure is wittily emphasized by its cinematic solution, offers a visualization and a lesson in hearing the central nineteenth-century operatic form. In addition, the article discusses nineteenth- and twentieth-century operatic practice, the way opera, and in particular Lucia di Lammermoor , are performed, and the transformation of the operatic work from performance to performance, as well as from era to era. The inclusion of the vocalization in the aria of the Diva of Plavalaguna is considered in the context of the changes introduced into the Mad scene by the author of the opera and the opera divas of past centuries.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135207639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"No, It’s All Wrong! Director’s Theatre in Opera: Fidelity to the Work, Fidelity to the Audience","authors":"A. Makarova","doi":"10.58186/2782-3660-2022-2-6-95-108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.58186/2782-3660-2022-2-6-95-108","url":null,"abstract":"The article is dedicated to the emergence and development of the phenomenon of interpretive theatre direction in opera as an art form. The author investigates the historical roots of director’s theater in relation to opera, the inevitable interaction of theatre and society, and the audience’s experience in relation to comfort and discomfort. Various aspects of the relevance of interpretive opera direction are presented to the reader. Discussions of the ways in which direction and the theater and music industries have developed show the problems of opera as a theatrical form. The article analyzes the cultural differences in the existence of director’s theater based on the demands of the state, society, and existing theatrical traditions. It offers an overview of the fundamental trends and a gallery of the most important personalities in the history of director’s theater. In the final part of the article, the author provides a forecast for the future.","PeriodicalId":41258,"journal":{"name":"Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135208109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}