In this well documented and highly readable book, James Stark provides a history of vocal pedagogy from the beginning of the bel canto tradition of solo... singing in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries to the present. Using a nineteenth-century treatise by Manuel Garcia as his point of reference, Stark analyses the many sources that discuss singing techniques and selects a number of primary vocal 'problems' for detailed investigation. He also presents data from a series of laboratory experiments carried out to demonstrate the techniques of bel canto.The discussion deals extensively with such topics as the emergence of virtuoso singing, the castrato phenomenon, national differences in singing styles, controversies regarding the perennial decline in the art of singing, and the so-called secrets of bel canto.Stark offers a new definition of bel canto which reconciles historical and scientific descriptions of good singing. His is a refreshing and profound discussion of issues important to all singers and voice teachers.

Renowned teacher presents the "vocal alphabet," or basic instructions and exercises that formed the voices of her own students, who included Melba... and Calvé. Topics include breathing, attack, registers, voice management, and projection.

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr.... Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds, and people from different continents become compatriots. Friendship, compassion, and the chance for great love lead the characters to forget the real danger that has been set in motion . . . and cannot be stopped.

Resolution of intractable problems around the world requires understanding ordinary people as well as leaders. This street-level view of Northern... Ireland provides the best explanation of the twenty-five-year conflict.

Intended for students as well as scholars of religion and violence, Belief and Bloodshed discusses how the relationship between religion and violence is... not unique to a post-9/11 world_it has existed throughout all of recorded history and culture. The book makes clear the complex interactions between religion, violence, and politics to show that religion as always innocent or always evil is misguided, and that rationalizations by religion for political power and violence are not new. Chronologically organized, the book shows religiously motivated violence across a variety of historical periods and cultures, moving from the ancient to medieval to the modern world, ending with an essay comparing the speeches of an ancient king to the speeches of the current U.S. President.

This fifth volume of the "Religion Today" series explores "religions" or forms of spirituality that tend to be marginal to the mainstream of British and... North American religious expression. The book examines how alternative spiritualities traditionally classed as "New Age" or new religious movements have grown exponentially in recent years. It progresses to detailed examination of Paganism, Celtic spirituality, Wicca, witchcraft, North American indigenous religion and New Age, considering the impact of the rise of science on religion and the emergence of new categories of spirituality. The authors explore why these forms of spirituality are so popular in the contemporary UK and USA, and how they impact on mainstream traditions.

In this highly personal book, one of Europe’s foremost contemporary philosophers confronts the theme of faith and religion. He argues that there is a... substantial link between the history of Christian revelation and the history of nihilism, in particular as the latter appears in the work of Nietzsche and Heidegger, Vattimo’s philosophical specialty. Tracing the relation between his response to these two thinkers and his own life as a devout Catholic, Vattimo shows how his interpretation of Heidegger’s work and his conceptions of “weak thought” and “weak ontology” can be seen as closely linked to a rediscovery of Christianity.Vattimo speaks here in the first person—a risk that results in a disarmingly open exploration of the themes of charity, truth, dogmatism, morality, and sin, viewed through the lens of his own life and his own return to Christianity. While deeply critical of institutionalized religion and the Church, Vattimo discovers in the Christian tradition a voice (not a distinct message) whose interpretation is still being played out around us. Shaped by his readings of Nietzsche and Heidegger, Vattimo’s decision to affirm his formation within the Christian tradition provides an original and engaging contribution to the contemporary debate on religion.At the center of this book is the enigma of belief. Freed by modernity from its Platonic subordination to knowledge, belief is recovered as a crucial and inevitable feature of our cultural and personal lives. “Do you believe?” Vattimo is asked. “I believe so,” he replies.

John Polkinghorne brings unique qualifications to his exploration of the possibilities of believing in God in an age of science: he is internationally... known as a theoretical physicist and as a theologian. In this thought-provoking book, Polkinghorne focuses on the collegiality between science and theology, contending that the inquiries of these "intellectual cousins" are parallel.

This is the first comprehensive study of one of the most important aspects of the Reformation in England: its impact on the status of the dead. It... explores attitudes towards the dead in pre-Reformation religious culture, and traces the uncertain progress of the 'reformation of the dead' attempted by Protestant authorities who sought to stamp out belief in purgatory and associated rituals. It also provides detailed surveys of Protestant perceptions of the afterlife, of the cultural meanings of the appearance of ghosts, and of the patterns of commemoration characteristic of post-Reformation England. Together these topics constitute an important case-study in the nature and tempo of the English Reformation as an agent of social and cultural change.

The complex and sometimes contradictory articulation of ethnicity, religion and gender informs this book on the cultural construction of identity for... Jamaican migrants in Britain. The author argues that religion -- in this case Pentecostalism -- cannot be understood simply as a means of spiritual compensation for the economically disadvantaged. Rather, in the New Testament Church of God, one of Britain's largest African Caribbean churches, the cosmology of the church resolves the questions surrounding identity as well as suffering. Religious participation is one way in which African Caribbean people negotiate the terms of representation and interaction in British society.

Believing in Belfast: Charismatic Christianity After the Troubles explores the charismatic movement (a popular form of religious belief and expression... around the world) from an anthropological vantage. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Liam D. Murphy draws on the life histories and cultural experience of various ''new'' congregations and prayer-groups to paint a portrait of Belfast's religious landscape in the wake of peace accords and political breakthroughs. The book documents the shifting fortunes, across several centuries, of charismatic practice in relation to political and ecclesiastical culture in the region. It also shows how the diverse tendrils of the contemporary charismatic movement articulate a latent ambition among Belfast's ''post-Troubles'' middle and professional classes to express new forms of cultural identity. Specifically, Believing in Belfast makes the case that charismatic religion embraces the modern ''globalizing'' world while simultaneously retaining core elements of those same religious traditions that have contributed to Northern Ireland's long history of social division and violence. Believing in Belfast has been written both for scholars and an educated, non-specialist audience in a lively, narrative style. It contributes both to the anthropology of Northern Ireland and to scholarship concerning transnational religion in twenty-first century. In cutting across the scholarly domains of anthropology, social history, religion, and politics, the text should prove attractive as for course adoption in a number of disciplines, including anthropology, European studies, religious studies, cultural studies, sociology, and theology. In addition, the book will appeal to readers interested in the character of modern, transnational religion, and its sundry effects and significances (political, cultural, and otherwise) on the international stage.