Author:
Bloechl, Olivia Ashley, author.
ImprintChicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
Imprint2017
Descriptionxiii, 286 pages : illustrations, music ; 24 cm
Note:Introduction: sovereignty and government in the Tragédie en musique -- The politics of glory: angelic citizenship and the contemplative chorus -- Choral lament and the mourning public -- True confessions: opera's theater of guilt and remorse -- The tormenting orchestra -- Spectral kingdoms: poetics and politics of Les Enfers -- Pluto, the underworld king -- Conclusion: a theater of precarity.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-277) and index.
Note:"From its origins in the 1670s through the French Revolution, serious opera in France was associated with the power of the absolute monarchy, and its ties to the crown remain at the heart of our understanding of the operatic tradition today. Yet, in Opera and the Political Imaginary in Old Regime France, Olivia Bloechl reveals an often overlooked layer of French opera's political theater--its investments in what Rousseau called political economy. The make-believe worlds on stage, she shows, involved not just fantasies of sovereign rule but also practical aspects of government; plot conflicts over public conduct, morality, security, and law appeared side by side with tableaus hailing glorious majesty. What's more, opera's creators conferred sovereign dignity and powers not just to the genre's larger-than-life rulers and gods, but also to its lovers, magicians, and artists. By looking at the political relations among opera characters and choruses in recurring scenes of mourning, confession, punishment, and pardoning, Bloechl explores here for thr first time the genre's distinctive combination of a theological political vocabulary with a concern for mundane human capacities. Through this lens, French opera of the period emerges as a genre whose political nuances deepen how we understand its infamous conservatism." --Dust jacket.
