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This volume of essays discusses the European and global expansion of Italian opera and the significance of this process for debates on opera at home in Italy. Covering different parts of Europe, the Americas, Southeast and East Asia, it investigates the impact of transnational musical exchanges on notions of national identity associated with the production and reception of Italian opera across the world. As a consequence of these exchanges between composers, impresarios, musicians and audiences, ideas of operatic Italianness (italianità) constantly changed and had to be reconfigured, reflecting the radically transformative experience of time and space that throughout the nineteenth century turned opera into a global aesthetic commodity. The book opens with a substantial introduction discussing key concepts in cross-disciplinary perspective and concludes with an epilogue relating its findings to different historiographical trends in transnational opera studies.
List of contents
Preface and acknowledgements; 1. Opera and italianità in transnational and global perspective: An introduction Axel Körner and Paulo Kühl; 2. Giving singers a voice. The Italian opera company and the press in Rio de Janeiro Fernando Santos BerçotI; 3. Nina d'Aubigny's 'Italian voice': A musical projection screen in German national discourse Carolin Krahn; 4. Italian opera and Creole identities: Manuel García in independent Mexico (1826 - 1829) Francesco Milella; 5. Italian opera in Vormärz Vienna: Gaetano Donizetti, Bartolomeo Merelli and Habsburg cultural policies in the mid-1830s Claudio Vellutini; 6. Southern exchanges: Italian opera in New Orleans, 1836-42 Charlotte Bentley; 7. 'For a moment, I felt like I was back in Italy:' Early south American experiences of Italian opera singers (1840-1860) Joseì Manuel Izquierdo König; 8. Reimagining Rossini: Obituaries as transnational narratives of Italian opera Arnold Jacobshagen; 9. From heaven and hell to the grail hall via Sant'Andrea della Valle: Religious identity and the internationalisation of operatic styles in liberal Italy Andrew Holden; 10. Arcadia undone: Teresa Carreño's 1887 Italian opera company in Caracas Ditlev Rindom; 11. Italian impresarios, American Minstrels and Parsi theatre: Sonic networks and the negotiation of opera in colonial South and Southeast Asia Rashna Darius Nicholson; 12. German national identity and operatic italianità: Franchetti's and Leoncavallo's operas on German myths Richard Erkens; 13. Fever in Belle Époque Manaus: italianità at the Teatro Amazonas, 1897-1907 Rosie McMahon-(Opera); 14. Between 'Sung Theatre' and Asakusa opera. In search of italianità in early Japanese opera history Michael Facius; 15. Epilogue Benjamin Walton.
About the author
Axel Körner is Professor of Modern Cultural and Intellectual History at Leipzig University and an Honorary Professor at University College London. He is author of Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy (2009) and America in Italy (2017), which won the American Historical Association's Marraro Prize.Paulo Kühl is Associate Professor at the University of Campinas, Brazil. He has published widely on Italian opera in Portugal and Brazil, with a focus on adaptations and translations of operas, censorship, and libretto studies.
Summary
As Italian opera gained an international following during the nineteenth century, the idea of operatic Italianness constantly evolved as a result of transnational exchanges between composers, promoters, musicians and audiences. This book explores the processes involved in constructing these shifting national identities and interprets their effects.
