Italian Opera in Global and Transnational Perspective
Reimagining Italianità in the Long Nineteenth Century

Investigates how operatic presentations of Italian identity evolved as Italian opera was performed for nineteenth-century audiences around the world.

Axel Körner (Edited by), Paulo M. Kühl (Edited by)

9781108843867, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 March 2022

320 pages
25 x 17.5 x 2.4 cm, 0.74 kg

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Opera [AVGC9], Romantic music [c 1830 to c 1900 AVGC5], Theatre studies [AN]