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Abstract
After devastatingly defeating Prussian forces in 1806, Emperor Napoleon’s forces occupied Berlin, reduced Prussia’s territories, and forced King Friedrich Wilhelm III into exile. When the king returned to Berlin in 1809, the Nationaltheater staged Christoph Willibald von Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide (1774) in German translation as part of a larger dynastic celebration. On the one hand, these festivities attempted to restore a monarchical power structure. On the other hand, the staging of Gluck’s French opera represented a desire to appropriate Gluck’s works within a changing Prussian-German nationalist discourse. In particular, the writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann, J. D. Sander, and others sought to capture the Teutonic nature of Gluck’s ‘reform operas’. Drawing upon primary sources and recent research, this article demonstrates the manner in which this performance of Iphigénie en Aulide represents a confluence of political, cultural, and nationalist ideologies in the midst of a German national identity crisis.
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1 All translations are the author’s except where otherwise stated.
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Eric Schneeman
Dr. Eric Schneeman is a lecturer of music at the University of Texas at San Antonio and Northeast Lakeview College in San Antonio, Texas. His research on Christoph von Gluck, opera in Berlin, and cosmopolitanism in the age of nationalism has appeared in the Oxford Handbook Online, E. T. A. Hoffmann Jahrbuch, Music in 18th-Century Culture, and elsewhere. He recently completed a senior research grant from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst in 2018. In addition to his musicological research, Eric is an active participant in the performing arts community of San Antonio, Texas, and works to increase families' and students' access to the arts.