Beyond Nationaloper. For a critique of methodological nationalism in reading nineteenth-century Italian and German opera

ABSTRACT

This article challenges traditional narratives that have tended to highlight the role of opera as a tool of political nationalism in nineteenth-century Europe. Instead, I will show how opera (both the form and the repertoire) served as a means of creating cultural and intellectual connections between peoples, and how it participated in the emergence of a European public. Claims that particular operas played a role in rousing nationalist sentiment are often methodologically unsound, due to the limitations of related sources of reception; or they are based on myths that were constructed long after these works’ original production. Moreover, even works written or described at the time as explicitly ‘national’ operas often relied on musical techniques amalgamated from different national contexts, raising questions over their classification in terms of national culture. Instead, Italian opera in particular assumed a central role in building cultural bridges between and within nations and polities. This was especially the case for the Habsburg monarchy, where opera was understood as a reference to Italy’s humanist legacy, based on a long tradition of reading opera as the reinvention of Greek drama. After 1815 and throughout the 1820s, the triumph of Rossini’s works on almost every stage in Europe shows how opera transcended barriers between peoples, states and nations. A mere ‘national’ reading of such works risks missing the point of why opera became a European art form of a truly global appeal.

RIASSUNTO

Questo lavoro si propone di rivisitare la tradizionale interpretazione dell’opera lirica come strumento di invenzione e diffusione del nazionalismo politico nell’Europa dell’Ottocento. L’articolo dimostra come il repertorio operistico e la sua forma artistica incoraggiarono lo sviluppo di una rete di relazioni culturali e intellettuali che svolsero un ruolo fondamentale nel processo di formazione di un’opinione pubblica europea. Le prospettive storiche che sottolineano il carattere ‘nazionale’ dell’opera spesso si basano su un’impalcatura metodologica discutibile, dovuta ai limiti delle fonti disponibili sul tema della ricezione dei libretti e degli spettacoli. Queste interpretazioni sono basate su una mitologia nazionale emersa a posteriori rispetto alle composizioni originali. Inoltre, anche le opere scritte con espliciti intenti patriottici si basavano su tecniche musicali di stampo transnazionale e di conseguenza non possono essere considerate il prodotto di qualsivoglia cultura nazionale. La tradizione operistica italiana, in particolare, svolse un ruolo di collegamento tra le culture nazionali.

Questa funzione emerse con particolare evidenza nell’impero asburgico dove l’opera era vista come un prodotto della tradizione umanistica, collegata al mito della tragedia greca. Il trionfo delle opere di Rossini sui palchi di tutta Europa dopo il 1815 dimostra chiaramente come l’opera trascendeva i confini tra popoli, stati e nazioni. Una lettura puramente ‘nazionale’ dell’opera lirica, quindi, rischia di non cogliere in maniera adeguata le ragioni che ne accrebbero il successo in quanto espressione artistica europea con un appeal globale.

KEYWORDS:

• Nationalism
• Opera
• Italian history
• German history
• Habsburg Empire
• Transnationalism

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• nazionalismo
• opera lirica
• Italia
• Germania
• Impero asburgico
• storia transnazionale

Notes

1. The critical analysis of the relationship between Italian opera and national character in transnational and global perspective was the topic of an international research network, financed over a period of a three years by the Leverhulme Trust and hosted by the UCL Centre for Transnational History: “Reimagining Italianità. Opera and Musical Culture in Transnational Perspective.” See: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/centre-transnational-history/research-and-publications/re-imagining-ita.

2. Clemens Wenzel Lothar Fürst von Metternich, “Tagebuch 8. April 1822,“ in: Aus Metternich’s nachgelassenen Papieren, Richard Fürst von Metternich-Winneburg, ed., Part II, Volume 1, Vienna: Braunmüller, 1881, 508–509

3. Metternich heard eight of Rossini’s Neapolitan operas at the San Carlo in 1819. See Metternich to his wife Eleonore von Kaunitz, 3 May 1819, in: Clemens Wenzel Lothar Fürst von Metternich, Mémoires, documents et écrits, Volume 3, Paris: Plon, 1881, 204–206, 205 f.

4. Metternich to his son Victor, 11 June 1827, in: Aus Metternich’s nachgelassenen Papieren, Part II, Volume 2, 335.

5. On Viardot’s cosmopolitan lifestyle see Figes (2019). On the broader context of female singers as working artists see Rutherford (2006). On the intersection of urban and transnational conditions of vocal practices see Parker and Rutherford (2019).

6. Clemens Wenzel Lothar Fürst von Metternich, Tagebuch 18. May 1821, in Aus Metternich’s nachgelassenen Papieren, Part II, Volume 1, 440. On the globaldimension of the Revolutions of 1820–23 see Späth (2012, 2019).

7. See Mährisch-Ständische Brünner Zeitung, 9.10.1823.

8. Allgemeine Theaterzeitung, 07.05.1831, 223.

9. Giuseppe Mazzini to Emilie Ashurst Venturi, 21 May 1867, in: Mazzini, Edizione nazionale, 45 ff. Giuseppe Mazzini to Emilie Ashurst Venturi, 21 May 1867, in: Edizione nazionale: Scritti editi ed inediti di Giuseppe Mazzini (Mario Menghini, ed.), vols. 1–106 (Imola, 1906–43), vol. 85, 44–47, 45ff. At the time of writing his original version of Filosofia della musica Mazzini did not know Meyerbeer’s Huguenots. For an analysis of Mazzini’s response see Körner (2017c).

10. In 1838 Il Subalpino featured several poems by Montanelli alongside the Italian translation of an essay by Schlegel, as well as several other articles on the role of Schlegel and Schiller in European literature: Il Subalpino. Giornale di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti II, 2 (1838).

11. La Congiura del Fiesco. Tragedia di Federico Schiller. Traduzione del Cavaliere Andrea Maffei. Milano: Pirola, 1853.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Axel Körner

Axel Körner is Professor of Modern History at University College London and Director of the UCL Centre for Transnational History. He has written widely on European cultural and intellectual history. America in Italy. The United States in the Political Thought and Imagination of the Italian Risorgimento, 1763–1865 was published by Princeton University Press in 2017 and won the Helen&Howard Marraro Prize of the American Historical Association. Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, he is currently completing a collaborative project entitled ‘Re-imagining italianità: opera and musical culture in transnational perspective’. His most recent research looks at the Habsburg monarchy in transnational perspective.