... surrounding the veneration of San Gennaro. I focus on the longstanding cultivation of cantatas as a vehicle for veneration and for the promotion of catechism and post-Tridentine ideology. The first part of the essay traces political, social, and religious currents that contributed to the growth of the cult...

...Don Harrán Laments were frequent in both cantatas and operas in the seventeenth century. The two emotions expressed in the lament were those that Aristotle connected with the essence of tragedy, namely, pity (on the fate of the one who laments) and fear (lest the observer share the same fate). Fear...

...Vladimir Orlov Prokofiev’s cantata Zdravitsa (1939) was appreciated by Soviet officialdom immediately upon its premiere, and its fame lasted throughout subsequent decades. In post-Stalin times, however, critics re-evaluated the cantata, arguing that Zdravitsa had not been written as pro-Stalinist...