Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses
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Item‘Darling Kath’: Benjamin Britten’s music for Kathleen Ferrier( 2018)This thesis examines the career of contralto Kathleen Ferrier (1912–1953), and her collaborations with composer Benjamin Britten (1913–1976). In the late 1940s, Kathleen Ferrier was among the most famous classical singers of her day. Britten was the pre-eminent composer in Britain, composing solos for Ferrier in three major works: the title role in The Rape of Lucretia (1946), the contralto solos in Spring Symphony (1949), and the part of Isaac in Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac (1952). Although their collaboration ceased with Ferrier’s untimely death, Britten’s work with Ferrier was musically and personally significant, and proved influential for the course of Britten’s career and for shaping Ferrier’s legacy. Drawing on diaries, correspondence, and recordings, this thesis examines Britten’s intricate understanding of Ferrier’s voice and ability, the unusual way in which he exploited them, and how Ferrier in turn interpreted and created the premiere performances. In addition, with reference to the writings of J.P.E. Harper-Scott and Carolyn Abbate, this thesis evaluates the nature of the relationship between an influential male composer and the woman who gives voice to a work or role, to address the vexed question whether it is the composer or interpreter who creates that role.
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ItemVerdi's exceptional women: Giuseppina Strepponi and Teresa Stolz( 2015-05-15)This thesis investigates several of the persistent myths that surround Verdi’s life and career and those of the women with whom he had intimate relationships. Verdi’s self-image as a poor peasant whose success owed nothing to anyone else except his father-in-law, and the unwillingness in the scholarly literature to acknowledge any permanent threat to the unassailable solidarity of his marriage to a saintly wife whose past left no scars, reveal conflicts between public myth and private reality. In addition, the stereotype of the imperiously demanding ‘diva’, when applied to the two women under discussion, is not sustainable on close investigation. This thesis explores Verdi’s professional and personal relationship with exceptional women, focussing on two of the most important women in his life, the singers Giuseppina Strepponi and Teresa Stolz. It demonstrates his shifting power-balance with Giuseppina Strepponi as she sought to retain intellectual self-respect while his success and control increased. It presents a fresh appraisal of Teresa Stolz through examination of her letters from 1871 to 1895 and claims that, far from showing her to be an unintelligent and sometimes malicious gossip as is often stated in the scholarly literature, the letters demonstrate her astute evaluations of operatic performances and her buoyant affection for Verdi. The thesis argues that the two women fulfilled different functions as ‘handmaidens’, the one supporting and enhancing Verdi’s creativity at the beginning of his professional life, the other sustaining his sense of self-worth, at the end of his professional life; that each woman was an essential benefactor without whom Verdi’s career would not have been the same.