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The University of California Press is delighted to announce the new publication of this three-act play by one of America's most important and well-loved writers. A highly entertaining comedy that has never appeared in print or on stage, Is He Dead? is finally available to the wide audience Mark Twain wished it to reach. Written in 1898 in Vienna as Twain emerged from one of the deepest depressions of his life, the play shows its author's superb gift for humor operating at its most energetic. The text of Is He Dead?, based on the manuscript in the Mark Twain Papers, appears here together with an illuminating essay by renowned Mark Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin and with Barry Moser's original woodcut illustrations in a volume that will surely become a treasured addition to the Mark Twain legacy. Richly intermingling elements of burlesque, farce, and social satire with a wry look at the world market in art, Is He Dead? centers on a group of poor artists in Barbizon, France, who stage the death of a friend to drive up the price of his paintings. In order to make this scheme succeed, the artists hatch some hilarious plots involving cross-dressing, a full-scale fake funeral, lovers' deceptions, and much more. Mark Twain was fascinated by the theater and made many attempts at playwriting, but this play is certainly his best. Is He Dead? may have been too "out there" for the Victorian 1890's, but today's readers will thoroughly enjoy Mark Twain's well-crafted dialogue, intriguing cast of characters, and above all, his characteristic ebullience and humor. In Shelley Fisher Fishkin's estimation, it is "a champagne cocktail of a play--not too dry, not too sweet, with just the right amount of bubbles and buzz."

Artists --- Death --- Barbizon (France) --- america. --- american drama. --- american literature. --- american theater. --- art and literature. --- burlesque. --- comedy theater. --- comedy. --- deception. --- famous authors. --- farce. --- harebrained schemes. --- humor. --- humorists. --- illustrated. --- literary criticism. --- literary icons. --- live entertainment. --- manuscript. --- men and women. --- modern audiences. --- performing arts. --- playwrights. --- social commentary. --- social satire. --- stage play. --- theatrical productions. --- twain scholars. --- world market.

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Identifying music as a vital site of cultural debate, Struggling to Define a Nation captures the dynamic, contested nature of musical life in the United States. In an engaging blend of music analysis and cultural critique, Charles Hiroshi Garrett examines a dazzling array of genres-including art music, jazz, popular song, ragtime, and Hawaiian music-and numerous well-known musicians, such as Charles Ives, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Irving Berlin. Garrett argues that rather than a single, unified vision, an exploration of the past century reveals a contested array of musical perspectives on the nation, each one advancing a different facet of American identity through sound.

Nationalism in music. --- Music --- Nationalism and music --- National music --- History and criticism. --- History and criticism --- 20th century american culture. --- 20th century american music. --- american culture. --- american identity. --- american music. --- american musical imagination. --- art music. --- bands. --- charles ives. --- chinatown. --- cultural debate. --- cultural studies. --- great migration. --- hawaiian music. --- irving berlin. --- jazz music. --- jelly roll morton. --- live entertainment. --- louis armstrong. --- music. --- musical orientalism. --- musical perspectives. --- musicians. --- musicology. --- popular song. --- ragtime. --- spanish tinge. --- true american music. --- united states of america.

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Romantic Anatomies of Performance is concerned with the very matter of musical expression: the hands and voices of virtuosic musicians. Rubini, Chopin, Nourrit, Liszt, Donzelli, Thalberg, Velluti, Sontag, and Malibran were prominent celebrity pianists and singers who plied their trade between London and Paris, the most dynamic musical centers of nineteenth-century Europe. In their day, performers such as these provoked an avalanche of commentary and analysis, inspiring debates over the nature of mind and body, emotion and materiality, spirituality and mechanism, artistry and skill. J. Q. Davies revisits these debates, examining how key musicians and their contemporaries made sense of extraordinary musical and physical abilities. This is a history told as much from scientific and medical writings as traditionally musicological ones. Davies describes competing notions of vocal and pianistic health, contrasts techniques of training, and explores the ways in which music acts in the cultivation of bodies.

Music --- Performance --- History. --- History and criticism. --- History and criticism --- castrato. --- celebrity pianists. --- franz liszt. --- frederic francois chopin. --- giovanni battista rubini. --- giovanni battista velluti. --- historical. --- history of music. --- history. --- live entertainment. --- maria felicia malibran. --- medical approach to music. --- music and physical impacts. --- music. --- musical expression. --- musical performers. --- musicians. --- musicological. --- opera. --- pianistic health. --- pianists. --- piano. --- scientific approach to music. --- sigismond thalberg. --- singers. --- techniques of musical training. --- virtuosic musicians. --- vocal health.

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This path-breaking study of stage works in Italian musical performances reconsiders a crucial period of music history. Through an interdisciplinary examination of the statue animated by music, Ellen Lockhart deftly shows how Enlightenment ideas influenced Italian theater and music, and vice versa. As Lockhart reveals, the animated statue became a fundamental figure within aesthetic theory and musical practice during the years spanning 1770–1830. Taking as its point of departure a repertoire of Italian ballets, melodramas, and operas from this period, Animation, Plasticity, and Music in Italy traces its core ideas between science, philosophy, theories of language, itinerant performance traditions, the epistemology of sensing, and music criticism.

Dramatic music --- Operas --- Music, Dramatic --- Music, Theatrical --- Music for the stage --- Stage music --- Theatrical music --- Music --- Literary themes, motives. --- Themes, motives, Literary --- Literary themes, motives --- E-books --- aesthetic theory. --- animated statue. --- art. --- artists. --- drama. --- enlightenment. --- epistemology of sensing. --- historical. --- interdisciplinary. --- italian ballets. --- italian music. --- italian musical performances. --- italian operas. --- italian theater. --- italy. --- itinerant performance traditions. --- live entertainment. --- melodramas. --- music criticism. --- music history. --- musical practice. --- musical. --- nationhood fantasies. --- opera music. --- performing arts. --- philosophy. --- science. --- sciences of the body. --- stage works. --- theatre. --- theatrical. --- theory of language.