Search results for " history of emotions"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Tears for Nina. Emotion and compassion, from the stage to the audience
2019
A recurrent feature of the reception of Giovanni Paisiello’s "Nina o sia La pazza per amore" (first version, in one act, 1789; second version, in two acts, 1790) is the deep empathic involvement of the audience. The masterpiece of the Italian composer appears to have had the power to move male and (mainly) female listeners and to produce strong effects like tears, outbursts, etc. The article offers a preliminary discussion of the French origins of the libretto (a translation of Marsollier des Vivetières’ "Nina ou la Folle par amour", set to music by Nicolas-Marie Dalayrac in 1786), as well as a reconstruction of the genesis of the work as an occasional piece for a specific event within Neap…
Healing Grief: A Commentary on Seneca's Consolatio ad Marciam
2023
Both our view of Seneca’s philosophical thought and our approach to the ancient consolatory genre have radically changed since the latest commentary on the Consolatio ad Marciam was written in 1981. The aim of this work is to offer a new book-length commentary on the earliest of Seneca’s extant writings, along with a revision of the Latin text and a reassessment of Seneca’s intellectual program, strategies, and context. A crucial document to penetrate Seneca’s discourse on the self in its embryonic stages, the Ad Marciam is here taken seriously as an engaging attempt to direct the persuasive power of literary models and rhetorical devices toward the fundamentally moral project of healing Ma…
Sulla fortuna di «Misero pargoletto»: materiali e ipotesi
2020
The aria "Misero pargoletto", sung by Timante in the third act of Pietro Metastasio's "Demofoonte", enjoyed exceptional fortune throughout the eighteenth century. The text was set tu music dozens of times not only as part of the opera it belongs to, but also as an independent piece. This essay discusses the judgements expressed on "Misero pargoletto" by several men of letters and theorists, examines some buffo parodies of the aria that demonstrate its wide notoriety, and formulates some hypotheses about the reasons for such a great success, which can be partially justified by the new conception of fatherood that emerged in the so-called Age of Sensibility.