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  3. "Popular art" has a number of meanings, impossible to define with any precis

"Popular art" has a number of meanings, impossible to define with any precis

游客2025-04-17  37
问题     "Popular art" has a number of meanings, impossible to define with any precision, which range from folklore to junk. The poles are clear enough, but the middle tends to blur. The Hollywood Western of the 1930’s for example, has elements of folklore, but is closer to junk than to high art or folk art There can be great trash, just as there is bad high art. The musicals of George Gershwin are great popular art, never aspiring to high art. Schubert and Brahms, however, used elements of popular music — folk themes — in works clearly intended as high art The case of Verdi is a different one: he took a popular genre — bourgeois melodrama set to music ( an accurate definition of nineteenth-century opera) and, without altering its fundamental nature, transmuted it into high art This remains one of the greatest achievements in music, and one that cannot be fully appreciated without recognizing the essential trashiness of the genre.
    As an example of such a transmutation, consider what Verdi made of the typical political elements of nineteenth-century opera. Generally in the plots of these operas, a hero or heroine — usually portrayed only as an individual, unfettered by class — is caught between the immoral corruption of the aristocracy and the doctrinaire rigidity or secret greed of the leaders of the proletariat Verdi transforms this naive and unlikely formulation with music of extraordinary energy and rhythmic vitality, music more subtle than it seems at first hearing. There are scenes and arias that still sound like calls to arms and were clearly understood as such when they were first performed. Such pieces lend an immediacy to the otherwise veiled political message of these operas and call up feelings beyond those of the opera itself.
    Or consider Verdi’s treatment of character. Before Verdi, there were rarely any characters at all in musical drama, only a series of situations which allowed the singers to express a series of emotional states. Any attempt to find coherent psychological portrayal in these operas is misplaced ingenuity. The only coherence was the singer’s vocal technique: when the cast changed, new arias were almost always substituted, generally adapted from other operas. Verdi’s characters, on the other hand, have genuine consistency and integrity. Even if, in many cases, the consistency is that of pasteboard melodrama, the integrity of the character is achieved through the music: once he had become established. Verdi did not rewrite his music for different singers or countenance alterations or substitutions of somebody else’s arias in one of his operas, as every eighteenth-century composer had done. When he revised an opera, it was only for dramatic economy and effectiveness. [br] It can be concluded from the passage that the author regards Verdi’s revisions to his operas with______
选项 A、approval for the intentions that motivated the revisions.
B、regret that the original musicals and texts were altered.
C、concern that the revisions changed plots of the originals.
D、disappointment, for the revisions seem largely irrelevant.
答案 A
解析 题干问：“从文中可以推论出作者是怀着什么心情来看待威尔迪对歌剧的修改?”此题定位于全文的最后一句，文中提到威尔迪修改一部歌剧，只是为了使剧本更加精炼、更加有力。由此看出作者是同意其修改意图的，因此选项A“同意其修改的意图”为正确选项。而选项B“后悔改变了原创音乐和原作”，选项C“担心所做的修改会改变原作的情节”和选项D“对看似无关的修改感到失望”均不是作者的观点和态度。
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