"The theatre scholar's daunting but irresistible quest to recover some echoes of performance of the past has never been more engagingly presented than in Pascoe's account of tracing the long-silenced voice of Sarah Siddons. Her report is a warm, witty, and highly informative exploration of the methodology and the pleasures of historical research."—Marvin Carlson, author of The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory MachineDuring her lifetime (1755-1831), English actress Sarah Siddons was an international celebrity acclaimed for her performances of tragic heroines. We know what she looked like—an endless number of artists asked her to sit for portraits and sculptures—but what of her famous voice, reported to cause audiences to hyperventilate or faint? In The Sarah Siddons Audio Files, Judith Pascoe takes readers on a journey to discover how the actor's voice actually sounded. In lively and engaging prose, Pascoe retraces her quixotic search, which leads her to enroll in a "Voice for Actors" class, to collect Lady Macbeth voice prints, and to listen more carefully to the soundscape of her life.Bringing together archival discoveries, sound recording history, and media theory, Pascoe shows how romantic poets' preoccupation with voices is linked to a larger cultural anxiety about the voice's ephemerality. The Sarah Siddons Audio Files contributes to a growing body of work on the fascinating history of sound and will engage a broad audience interested in how recording technology has altered human experience.
| ISBN: | 9780472035694 |
| Publication date: | 10th June 2013 |
| Author: | Judith Pascoe |
| Publisher: | The University of Michigan Press an imprint of University of Michigan Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 176 pages |
| Series: | Theater: Theory/Text/Performance |
| Genres: |
Plays, playscripts Acting techniques History of Performing Arts |
"The theatre scholar's daunting but irresistible quest to recover some echoes of performance of the past has never been more engagingly presented than in Pascoe's account of tracing the long-silenced voice of Sarah Siddons. Her report is a warm, witty, and highly informative exploration of the methodology and the pleasures of historical research."—Marvin Carlson, author of The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory MachineDuring her lifetime (1755-1831), English actress Sarah Siddons was an international celebrity acclaimed for her performances of tragic heroines. We know what she looked like—an endless number of artists asked her to sit for portraits and sculptures—but what of her famous voice, reported to cause audiences to hyperventilate or faint? In The Sarah Siddons Audio Files, Judith Pascoe takes readers on a journey to discover how the actor's voice actually sounded. In lively and engaging prose, Pascoe retraces her quixotic search, which leads her to enroll in a "Voice for Actors" class, to collect Lady Macbeth voice prints, and to listen more carefully to the soundscape of her life.Bringing together archival discoveries, sound recording history, and media theory, Pascoe shows how romantic poets' preoccupation with voices is linked to a larger cultural anxiety about the voice's ephemerality. The Sarah Siddons Audio Files contributes to a growing body of work on the fascinating history of sound and will engage a broad audience interested in how recording technology has altered human experience.
The Sarah Siddons Audio Files features in the following genres: Plays, playscripts, Acting techniques, History of Performing Arts
The Sarah Siddons Audio Files is available in Paperback, Hardback
The Sarah Siddons Audio Files was written by Judith Pascoe and published by The University of Michigan Press an imprint of University of Michigan Press
The Sarah Siddons Audio Files has 176 pages
Yes it is part of Theater: Theory/Text/Performance series