Opera And The Political Imaginary In Old Regime France

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Opera and the Political Imaginary in Old Regime France

Olivia Bloechl
Opera and the Political Imaginary in Old Regime France Book PDF

Author : Olivia Bloechl
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2018-03-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226522890

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Opera and the Political Imaginary in Old Regime France by Olivia Bloechl Pdf

From its origins in the 1670s through the French Revolution, serious opera in France was associated with the power of the absolute monarchy, and its ties to the crown remain at the heart of our understanding of this opera tradition (especially its foremost genre, the tragédie en musique). In Opera and the Political Imaginary in Old Regime France, however, Olivia Bloechl reveals another layer of French opera’s political theater. The make-believe worlds on stage, she shows, involved not just fantasies of sovereign rule but also aspects of government. Plot conflicts over public conduct, morality, security, and law thus appear side-by-side with tableaus hailing glorious majesty. What’s more, opera’s creators dispersed sovereign-like dignity and powers well beyond the genre’s larger-than-life rulers and gods, to its lovers, magicians, and artists. This speaks to the genre’s distinctive combination of a theological political vocabulary with a concern for mundane human capacities, which is explored here for the first time. By looking at the political relations among opera characters and choruses in recurring scenes of mourning, confession, punishment, and pardoning, we can glimpse a collective political experience underlying, and sometimes working against, ancienrégime absolutism. Through this lens, French opera of the period emerges as a deeply conservative, yet also more politically nuanced, genre than previously thought.

Music, Pantomime and Freedom in Enlightenment France

Hedy Law
Music Pantomime and Freedom in Enlightenment France Book PDF

Author : Hedy Law
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : Enlightenment
ISBN : 9781783275601

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Music, Pantomime and Freedom in Enlightenment France by Hedy Law Pdf

How did composers and performers use the lost art of pantomime to explore and promote the Enlightenment ideals of free expression?

Canonic Repertories and the French Musical Press

William Weber,Beverly Wilcox
Canonic Repertories and the French Musical Press Book PDF

Author : William Weber,Beverly Wilcox
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2021
Category : History
ISBN : 9781648250163

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Canonic Repertories and the French Musical Press by William Weber,Beverly Wilcox Pdf

A bold application of the concept of canonical works to the development of French operatic and concert life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Waiting for Verdi

Mary Ann Smart
Waiting for Verdi Book PDF

Author : Mary Ann Smart
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2018-06-22
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780520966574

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Waiting for Verdi by Mary Ann Smart Pdf

The name Giuseppe Verdi conjures images of Italians singing opera in the streets and bursting into song at political protests or when facing the firing squad. While many of the accompanying stories were exaggerated, or even invented, by later generations, Verdi's operas—along with those by Rossini, Donizetti, and Mercadante—did inspire Italians to imagine Italy as an independent and unified nation. Capturing what it was like to attend the opera or to join in the music at an aristocratic salon, Waiting for Verdi shows that the moral dilemmas, emotional reactions, and journalistic polemics sparked by these performances set new horizons for what Italians could think, feel, say, and write. Among the lessons taught by this music were that rules enforced by artistic tradition could be broken, that opera could jolt spectators into intense feeling even as it educated them, and that Italy could be in the vanguard of stylistic and technical innovation rather than clinging to the glories of centuries past. More practically, theatrical performances showed audiences that political change really was possible, making the newly engaged spectator in the opera house into an actor on the political stage.

Opera, Tragedy, and Neighbouring Forms from Corneille to Calzabigi

Blair Hoxby
Opera Tragedy and Neighbouring Forms from Corneille to Calzabigi Book PDF

Author : Blair Hoxby
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 307 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2024-03-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781487518097

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Opera, Tragedy, and Neighbouring Forms from Corneille to Calzabigi by Blair Hoxby Pdf

Since the nineteenth century, some of the most influential historians have portrayed opera and tragedy as wholly distinct cultural phenomena. These historians have denied a meaningful connection between the tragedy of the ancients and the efforts of early modern composers to arrive at styles that were intensely dramatic. Drawing on a series of case studies, Opera, Tragedy, and Neighbouring Forms from Corneille to Calzabigi traces the productive, if at times rivalrous, relationship between opera and tragedy from the institution of French regular tragedy under Richelieu in the 1630s to the reform of opera championed by Calzabigi and Gluck in the late eighteenth century. Blair Hoxby and his fellow contributors shed light on “neighbouring forms” of theatre, including pastoral drama, tragédie en machines, tragédie en musique, and Goldoni’s dramma giocoso. Their analysis includes famous masterpieces by Corneille, Voltaire, Metastasio, Goldoni, Calzabigi, Handel, and Gluck, as well as lesser-known artists such as Luisa Bergalli, the first female librettist to write for the public theatre in Italy. Opera, Tragedy, and Neighbouring Forms from Corneille to Calzabigi delves into a series of quarrels and debates in order to illuminate the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theatre.

Modes of Play in Eighteenth-Century France

Fayçal Falaky,Reginald McGinnis
Modes of Play in Eighteenth Century France Book PDF

Author : Fayçal Falaky,Reginald McGinnis
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2021-11-12
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781684483426

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Modes of Play in Eighteenth-Century France by Fayçal Falaky,Reginald McGinnis Pdf

Collecting diverse critical perspectives on the topic of play—from dolls, bilboquets, and lotteries, to writing itself—this volume offers new insights into how play was used to represent and reimagine the world in eighteenth-century France. In documenting various modes of play, contributors theorize its relation to law, religion, politics, and economics. Equally important was the role of “play” in plays, and the function of theatrical performance in mirroring, and often contesting, our place in the universe. These essays remind us that the spirit of play was very much alive during the “Age of Reason,” providing ways for its practitioners to consider more “serious” themes such as free will and determinism, illusions and equivocations, or chance and inequality. Standing at the intersection of multiple intellectual avenues, this is the first comprehensive study in English devoted to the different guises of play in Enlightenment France, certain to interest curious readers across disciplinary backgrounds.

The Musical World of Marie-Antoinette

Barrington James
The Musical World of Marie Antoinette Book PDF

Author : Barrington James
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 267 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2021-06-30
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781476684369

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The Musical World of Marie-Antoinette by Barrington James Pdf

For decades, eighteenth-century Paris had been declining into a baroque backwater. Spectacles at the opera, once considered fit for a king, had become "hell for the ears," wrote playwright Carlos Goldoni. Then, in 1774, with the crowning of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, Paris became one of the world's most vibrant musical centers. Austrian composer Christophe-Willibald Gluck, protege of the queen, introduced a new kind of tragic opera--dramatic, human and closer to nature. The expressive pantomime known as ballet d'action, forerunner of the modern ballet, replaced stately court dancing. Along the boulevards, people whistled lighter tunes from the Italian opera, where the queen's favorite composer, Andre Modeste Gretry, ruled supreme. This book recounts Gluck's remaking of the grand operatic tragedy--long symbolic of absolute monarchy--and the vehement quarrels between those who embraced reform and those who preferred familiar baroque tunes or the sweeter melodies of Italy. The turmoil was an important element in the ferment that led to the French Revolution and the beheading of the queen.

From Servant to Savant

Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden
From Servant to Savant Book PDF

Author : Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2022
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780197511510

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From Servant to Savant by Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden Pdf

Introduction -- Part I. Musical Privilege. Legal Privilège and Musical Production ; Social Privilège and Musician-Masons -- Part II. Property. Private Property : Music and Authorship ; Public Servants ; Cultural Heritage : Music as Work of Art ; National Industry : Music as a "Useful" Art and Science -- Postlude : A "Detractor" Breaks his "Silence" -- Conclusion : Privilege by Any Other Name.

Divining Nature

Tili Boon Cuillé
Divining Nature Book PDF

Author : Tili Boon Cuillé
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 417 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2020-12-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781503614178

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Divining Nature by Tili Boon Cuillé Pdf

The Enlightenment remains widely associated with the rise of scientific progress and the loss of religious faith, a dual tendency that is thought to have contributed to the disenchantment of the world. In her wide-ranging and richly illustrated book, Tili Boon Cuillé questions the accuracy of this narrative by investigating the fate of the marvelous in the age of reason. Exploring the affinities between the natural sciences and the fine arts, Cuillé examines the representation of natural phenomena—whether harmonious or discordant—in natural history, painting, opera, and the novel from Buffon and Rameau to Ossian and Staël. She demonstrates that philosophical, artistic, and emotional responses to the "spectacle of nature" in eighteenth-century France included wonder, enthusiasm, melancholy, and the "sentiment of divinity." These "passions of the soul," traditionally associated with religion and considered antithetical to enlightenment, were linked to the faculties of reason, imagination, and memory that structured Diderot's Encyclopédie and to contemporary theorizations of the sublime. As Cuillé reveals, the marvelous was not eradicated but instead preserved through the establishment and reform of major French cultural institutions dedicated to science, art, religion, and folklore that were designed to inform, enchant, and persuade. This book has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

Voice Machines

Bonnie Gordon
Voice Machines Book PDF

Author : Bonnie Gordon
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 429 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2023-05-31
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780226825151

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Voice Machines by Bonnie Gordon Pdf

An exploration of the castrato as a critical provocation to explore the relationships between sound, music, voice instrument, and machine. Italian courts and churches began employing castrato singers in the late sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century, the singers occupied a celebrity status on the operatic stage. Constructed through surgical alteration and further modified by rigorous training, castrati inhabited human bodies that had been “mechanized” to produce sounds in ways that unmechanized bodies could not. The voices of these technologically enhanced singers, with their unique timbre, range, and strength, contributed to a dramatic expansion of musical vocabulary and prompted new ways of imagining sound, the body, and personhood. Connecting sometimes bizarre snippets of history, this multi-disciplinary book moves backward and forward in time, deliberately troubling the meaning of concepts like “technology” and “human.” Voice Machines attends to the ways that early modern encounters and inventions—including settler colonialism, emergent racialized worldviews, the printing press, gunpowder, and the telescope—participated in making castrati. In Bonnie Gordon’s revealing study, castrati serve as a critical provocation to ask questions about the voice, the limits of the body, and the stories historians tell.

Modern France

Michael F. Leruth
Modern France Book PDF

Author : Michael F. Leruth
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 540 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2022-10-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781440855498

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Modern France by Michael F. Leruth Pdf

This volume offers perspective on modern French society and culture through thematic chapters on topics ranging from geography to popular culture. Ideal for students and general readers, this book includes insightful, current information about France's past, present, and future. France is the country most visited by international tourists. Aside from clichéd images of baguettes and the Eiffel Tower, however, what is French society and culture really like? Modern France is organized into thematic chapters covering the full range of French history and contemporary daily life. Chapter topics include: geography; history; government and politics; economy; religion and thought; social classes and ethnicity; gender, marriage, and sexuality; education; language; etiquette; literature and drama; art and architecture; music and dance; food; leisure and sports; and media and popular culture. Each chapter contains an overview of the topic and alphabetized entries on examples of each theme. A detailed historical timeline covers prehistoric times to the presidency of Emmanuel Macron. Special appendices offer profiles of a typical day in the life of representative members of French society, a glossary, key facts and figures about France, and a holiday chart. The volume will be useful for readers looking for specific topical information and for those who want to develop an informed perspective on aspects of modern France.

The Comedians of the King

Julia Doe
The Comedians of the King Book PDF

Author : Julia Doe
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 327 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2021-03-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226743394

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The Comedians of the King by Julia Doe Pdf

Lyric theater in ancien régime France was an eminently political art, tied to the demands of court spectacle. This was true not only of tragic opera (tragédie lyrique) but also its comic counterpart, opéra comique, a form tracing its roots to the seasonal trade fairs of Paris. While historians have long privileged the genre’s popular origins, opéra comique was brought under the protection of the French crown in 1762, thus consolidating a new venue where national music might be debated and defined. In The Comedians of the King, Julia Doe traces the impact of Bourbon patronage on the development of opéra comique in the turbulent prerevolutionary years. Drawing on both musical and archival evidence, the book presents the history of this understudied genre and unpacks the material structures that supported its rapid evolution at the royally sponsored Comédie-Italienne. Doe demonstrates how comic theater was exploited in, and worked against, the monarchy’s carefully cultivated public image—a negotiation that became especially fraught after the accession of the music-loving queen, Marie Antoinette. The Comedians of the King examines the aesthetic and political tensions that arose when a genre with popular foundations was folded into the Bourbon propaganda machine, and when a group of actors trained at the Parisian fairs became official representatives of the sovereign, or comédiens ordinaires du roi.

Creatures of the Air

J. Q. Davies
Creatures of the Air Book PDF

Author : J. Q. Davies
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 291 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2023-08-11
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780226826134

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Creatures of the Air by J. Q. Davies Pdf

"From the sounds of West Central African harps to the sounds of the European J. S. Bach revival, Creatures of the Air is a nineteenth-century music history told as a history of the art's elemental media system, air. Air is here understood as a human domain and music as an art of that domain, as such embedded in histories of environmental and colonial struggle around a thickened consciousness of the air and of breathing itself. The narrative moves across malarial equatorial climates and polluted industrial ones; the loss and recovery of the human voice in hazardous environmental conditions; scenes of suffocation and breathing mirrored in the creation and performance of Mendelssohn's enormous Elijah oratorio. No longer just an innocent luxury, by its claim to invisibility music is shown to be implicated in the struggle for control over air as a most precious natural resource. What emerges is a complex political ecology where differentiated musical systems combined, struggled against, and co-constituted one another in the course of the global nineteenth century and beyond"--

The Lyric Myth of Voice

Jessica Gabriel Peritz
The Lyric Myth of Voice Book PDF

Author : Jessica Gabriel Peritz
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2022-11-15
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780520380806

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The Lyric Myth of Voice by Jessica Gabriel Peritz Pdf

How did "voice" become a metaphor for selfhood in the Western imagination? The Lyric Myth of Voice situates the emergence of an ideological connection between voice and subjectivity in late eighteenth-century Italy, where long-standing political anxieties and new notions of cultural enlightenment collided in the mythical figure of the lyric poet-singer. Ultimately, music and literature together shaped the singing voice into a tool for civilizing modern Italian subjects. Drawing on a range of approaches and frameworks from historical musicology to gender studies, disability studies, anthropology, and literary theory, Jessica Gabriel Peritz shows how this ancient yet modern myth of voice attained interpretable form, flesh, and sound. The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the AMS 75 PAYS Fund of the American Musicological Society, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Apuleius in European Literature

Stephen Harrison,Regine May
Apuleius in European Literature Book PDF

Author : Stephen Harrison,Regine May
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2024-01-17
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780192677587

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Apuleius in European Literature by Stephen Harrison,Regine May Pdf

The story of Cupid and Psyche is first known through the Latin novel Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass by the second-century AD writer Apuleius—one of the few Latin fictions from Roman antiquity to have survived in its entirety. Apuleius in European Literature: Cupid and Psyche since 1650 examines the reception of the long two-book romantic story of Cupid and Psyche in European literature from 1650 to the present day, with some attention also devoted to fine art and opera across this period. Stephen Harrison and Regine May argue that Cupid and Psyche had a broad and profound influence on certain important and specific areas of European culture; it was appropriated and adapted to suit particular cultural and generic contexts, especially the development of the fairy tale. This constitutes an important strand of the more general reception of the ancient novel, since the tale of Cupid and Psyche is arguably the most famous section of any fiction from Greece or Rome. Apuleius' story has enjoyed an extraordinarily rich reception throughout the five centuries from its rediscovery in the Renaissance to the present day. Previous studies of this reception have focused on the tale's prominence in Renaissance art and literature, or otherwise on its status in the German Romantic period. This book goes further and wider, ranging across literary genres in English, French, German and Dutch, encompassing poetry and drama as well as prose fiction, and covering all the key elements of the tale's reception from 1650 to the present. We hereby rediscover a tale that today remains as relevant and ripe for appropriation as ever.