French Opera and the Revolutionary Sublime

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

When the entire population of Meyerbeer's grand opera _Le Prophète_ (1849) was engulfed by a spectacular exploding palace, following a failed uprising, the tableau was widely received as merging political and aesthetic ideas of 1848 with those of the 1790s, and confirming the end of revolutionary idealism. Such tableaux were a crucial part of the discourse on the unrepresentable nature of revolutionary experience, and were found in operas in the 1790s, the 1820s and the 1850s. This project seeks to establish the nature of the relationship between revolution, cataclysmic operatic tableau and the sublime that emerged in 1790s Paris, and to trace how it evolved during the first half of the nineteenth century at moments of revolutionary crisis. The aesthetic effect of such tableaux and their impact on audiences will be analysed in the context of wider political and cultural experiences, and some of the ways in which these tableaux influenced operatic practices elsewhere in Europe will be identified.The project brings together three distinct research areas: the relationship between opera and political culture; opera and effect; and exchanges between different operatic traditions. A broadly interdisciplinary approach will be adopted, combining close reading of the music, staging manuals and librettos of individual operas with reception study and precise cultural, scientific and political contextualisation. Exciting scholarship is emerging in the realm of music and science that can help us to understand how such spectacular effects were created, and to theorise the perceptual overload and shock effects that they engendered, which (arguably) triggered the recall of real-life events. Four one-day workshops, in which specific ideas will be analysed from different disciplinary and/or national perspectives, will be integral to the research and dissemination processes: Sensory Perception and Drama; Music and Memory; Opera and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Europe; Travelling Opera. The principal output will be a monograph, _French Opera and the Revolutionary Sublime_, structured around the tableaux of five key operas by Luigi Cherubini (two), Gioachino Rossini, Giacomo Meyerbeer and Félicien David. It will be the first monograph to examine the impact of the French revolution on the development of nineteenth-century opera, and will situate the case studies a) in the context of France's evolving relationship with the 1789 revolution and its aftermath, and b) in relation to technological innovation and scientific understanding of the senses during the first half of the nineteenth century. Other outputs will include two articles, conference papers, a conference panel (leading to a special issue for the _Cambridge Opera Journal_) and teaching materials. A range of public talks, podcasts, broadcasts and programme notes will disseminate the research findings to a range of audiences via the Royal Opera House, Opera North, the Broadway Cinema (Nottingham), Derby Museum and the BBC, and thus support and inform the increasing interest in staging French grand operas, and in exploring opera's effects and political meanings. A short placement at the Royal Opera House aims to advance the relationship between academic research, creative practice and programming policy.