French Opera and the Revolutionary Sublime

迈尔比尔的大歌剧《普罗菲特》(1849)在一次起义失败后，整个剧场被一座壮观的爆炸宫殿吞没，这一幕被广泛接受，认为它融合了1848年和18世纪90年代的政治和美学思想，证实了革命理想主义的终结。这样的场面是关于革命经历的不可表现性的论述的关键部分，并在17世纪90年代、19世纪20年代和19世纪50年代的歌剧中出现。这个项目试图建立革命、灾难性的歌剧场景和17世纪90年代巴黎出现的崇高之间关系的本质，并追溯它是如何在19世纪上半叶革命危机时刻演变的。这些场景的美学效果及其对观众的影响将在更广泛的政治和文化经历的背景下进行分析，并将确定这些场景影响欧洲其他地方的歌剧实践的一些方式。该项目汇集了三个不同的研究领域：歌剧与政治文化的关系；歌剧与效果的关系；以及不同歌剧传统之间的交流。将采用广泛的跨学科方法，将仔细阅读音乐、上演个别歌剧的手册和剧本与接受研究和准确的文化、科学和政治背景相结合。在音乐和科学领域，令人兴奋的学术正在兴起，它可以帮助我们理解这种壮观的效果是如何产生的，并对它们所产生的感知过载和震惊效应进行理论推导，这些效应(可以说)引发了对现实生活事件的回忆。将举办四个为期一天的讲习班，从不同学科和/或国家的角度分析具体想法，这些讲习班将是研究和传播过程的组成部分：感官知觉与戏剧；音乐与记忆；十九世纪欧洲的歌剧与技术；巡回歌剧。主要作品将是一部专著《法国歌剧和革命崇高》，围绕路易吉·切鲁比尼(两部)、乔阿奇诺·罗西尼、贾科莫·迈尔比尔和费利西安·大卫的五部关键歌剧的场景构建。它将是第一本研究法国大革命对19世纪歌剧发展影响的专著，并将把案例研究a)放在法国与1789年大革命及其后果不断演变的关系中，b)放在19世纪上半叶的技术创新和对感官的科学理解的背景下。其他产出将包括两篇文章、会议论文、一个会议小组(导致《剑桥歌剧杂志》的特刊)和教学材料。一系列的公开演讲、播客、广播和节目说明将通过皇家歌剧院、北方歌剧院、(诺丁汉)百老汇电影院、德比博物馆和英国广播公司向一系列观众传播研究结果，从而支持和宣传人们对上演法国大歌剧以及探索歌剧的影响和政治意义的日益浓厚的兴趣。在皇家歌剧院的一个短期实习旨在促进学术研究、创意实践和节目政策之间的关系。

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.