Output details

Women in the Arts in the Belle Epoque

This collection of original essays by British and American scholars explores the careers and influence of a range of women arts practitioners whose work either commenced in, reached fruition or bore influence during the period popularly referred to as the Belle Epoque. The work further develops the author/editor’s specialist interest in opera, opera singers, early methods of performance recording and the transference of performance techniques between different media (specifically stage and screen).

The period 1890 to 1910 was chosen because it witnessed several revolutionary changes in the media’s ability to record and disseminate the arts, seeing as it did the development of audio and film recording (through the invention of the gramophone and the moving picture), technological advances in photography and the beginnings of the radio broadcasting industry.

Numerous influential women contributed to this historic development, but their contribution is often overlooked or simply ignored. This collection of essays gives renewed critical consideration of both the celebrated and the unknown. The editor’s introductory chapter sets a political, historical and creative context for the collection, whilst also offering critical consideration of several practitioners, including Geraldine Farrar, Mary Garden, Alice Guy Blache and Edith Craig, as exemplars of women who excelled not only as performers/creators but also as producers and managers of the arts.

The research for this collection was influenced by earlier work on the careers of singers, Mary Garden, Geraldine Farrar and Lina Cavalieri, all of which had previously resulted in publications of books articles and chapters, and the presentation of a series of illustrated public lectures and film screenings at venues including the British Film Institute, London, the Buxton Festival and the Library of Congress, Washington DC.

Dr Dassia Posner’s chapter on Nina Simonovich- Efimova was nominated for a Heldt Prize, (Association for Women in Slavic Studies) in 2013.