Skip to content
Scan a barcode
Scan
Added to your cart
Hardcover Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten Book

ISBN: 022625559X

ISBN13: 9780226255590

Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten

Select Format

Select Condition ThriftBooks Help Icon

Recommended

Format: Paperback

Condition: New

$64.99
50 Available
Ships within 2-3 days

Book Overview

Aging and creativity can seem a particularly fraught relationship for artists, who often face age-related difficulties as their audience's expectations are at a peak. In Four Last Songs, Linda and Michael Hutcheon explore this issue via the late works of some of the world's greatest composers.

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), Richard Strauss (1864-1949), Olivier Messiaen (1908-92), and Benjamin Britten (1913-76) all wrote operas late in life, pieces that reveal unique responses to the challenges of growing older. Verdi's Falstaff, his only comedic success, combated Richard Wagner's influence by introducing young Italian composers to a new model of national music. Strauss, on the other hand, struggling with personal and political problems in Nazi Germany, composed the self-reflexive Capriccio, a "life review" of opera and his own legacy. Though it exhausted him physically and emotionally, Messiaen at the age of seventy-five finished his only opera, Saint Fran ois d'Assise, which marked the pinnacle of his career. Britten, meanwhile, suffering from heart problems, refused surgery until he had completed his masterpiece, Death in Venice. For all four composers, age, far from sapping their creative power, provided impetus for some of their best accomplishments.

With its deft treatment of these composers' final years and works, Four Last Songs provides a valuable look at the challenges--and opportunities--that present themselves as artists grow older.
More by Linda Hutcheon
A Theory of Adaptation
A Theory of Adaptation
Linda Hutcheon

from: $70.22

A Poetics of Postmodernism
A Poetics of Postmodernism
Linda Hutcheon

from: $4.99

The Politics of Postmodernism (New Accents Series)
The Politics of Postmodernism (New Accents Series)
Linda Hutcheon

from: $5.49

Opera: Desire, Disease and Death (Texts & Contexts)
Opera: Desire, Disease and Death (Texts & Contexts)
Linda Hutcheon, Michael Hutcheon

from: $6.29

Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox (University Paperbacks)
Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox (University Paperbacks)
Linda Hutcheon

from: $6.89

Other solitudes: Canadian multicultural fictions
Other solitudes: Canadian multicultural fictions
Linda Hutcheon

from: $4.89

Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony
Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony
Linda Hutcheon

from: $56.97

Reader in Comedy: An Anthology of Theory and Criticism
Reader in Comedy: An Anthology of Theory and Criticism
Gerald Mast, Donatus, Evanthius, Susanne Langer, Michael North, William Hazlitt, Glenda R. Carpio, Aphra Behn, Samuel Butler, Liuprand of Cremona, John of Salisbury, John Lydgate, Jacques Derrida, Battista Guarini, Henri Bergson, Philip Sidney, Henry Fielding, Hrotsvita, Pope Honorius III, Jeremy Collier, George Gascoigne, Georges Bataille, Gian Giorgio Trissino, René Girard, Immanuel Kant, Ben Jonson, Kenneth Burke, Stephen Gosson, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Sigmund Freud, George Meredith, Northrop Frye, Thomas Wilson, Thomas Elyot, Molière, William Makepeace Thackeray, Plato, Mark Twain, Samuel Johnson, Constance Rourke, Ruth Wisse, George Bernard Shaw, Nicholas Udall, Charles Lamb, William Congreve, Quintilian, Simon Critchley, Virginia Woolf, Oliver Goldsmith, John of Garland, Horatius, Erasmus, Søren Kierkegaard, John Dryden, Stanley Cavell, Charles Baudelaire, Mikhail Bakhtin, Aristotle, Dante Alighieri, Mahadev L. Apte, Richard Blackmore, Jean-Paul Richter, Henry Jenkins, Linda Hutcheon, Luigi Pirandello

from: $58.61

Bodily Charm: Living Opera (Abraham Lincoln Lecture)
Bodily Charm: Living Opera (Abraham Lincoln Lecture)
Michael Hutcheon, Linda Hutcheon

from: $6.69

Remembering Postmodernism: Trends in Recent Canadian Art
Remembering Postmodernism: Trends in Recent Canadian Art
Mark Cheetham, Linda Hutcheon

from: $20.87

Formalism and the Freudian Aesthetic: The Example of Charles Mauron
Formalism and the Freudian Aesthetic: The Example of Charles Mauron
Linda Hutcheon

from: $41.99

A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms
A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms
Linda Hutcheon

Out of Stock

Opera: The Art of Dying (Convergences: Inventories of the Present)
Opera: The Art of Dying (Convergences: Inventories of the Present)
Linda Hutcheon, Michael Hutcheon

Out of Stock

Productive Postmodernism: Consuming Histories and Cultural Studies (S U N Y Series in Postmodern Culture)
Productive Postmodernism: Consuming Histories and Cultural Studies (S U N Y Series in Postmodern Culture)
Linda Hutcheon

Out of Stock

Leonard Cohen and His Works
Leonard Cohen and His Works
Linda Hutcheon

Out of Stock

Splitting Images: Contemporary Canadian Ironies (Studies in Canadian Literature)
Splitting Images: Contemporary Canadian Ironies (Studies in Canadian Literature)
Linda Hutcheon

Out of Stock

Genre Trope Gender: Critical Essays
Genre Trope Gender: Critical Essays
Linda Hutcheon, Shirley Neuman, Northrop Frye

Out of Stock

Remembering Postmodernism: Trends in Canadian Art, 1970-1990
Remembering Postmodernism: Trends in Canadian Art, 1970-1990
Linda Hutcheon, Mark A. Cheetham

Out of Stock

Double-Talking: Essays on Verbal and Visual Ironies in Canadian Contemporary Art and Literature
Double-Talking: Essays on Verbal and Visual Ironies in Canadian Contemporary Art and Literature
Linda Hutcheon

Out of Stock

Customer Reviews

0 customer rating | 0 review
There are currently no reviews. Be the first to review this work.
Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
GoDaddy Verified and Secured