Making a spectacle of oneself: French Revolutionary opera by women

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-232
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Letzter
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Women Composers ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Dramatic Works ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Women ◽  
The Many ◽  
Ideological Context ◽  
The Revolution

Recent research in French Revolutionary culture has revealed that women composers and librettists gained access to the opera stage in unprecedented numbers in late eighteenth-century France. Although the number of women constituted still only a fraction of the total number of composers and librettists, it was an explosion as compared with earlier periods. In the fifty years between 1770 and 1820, there were five times as many women writing opera as all the women combined in the 125 years since the beginning of opera in France in 1645. This increased number of female-authored operas constituted a sufficient critical mass for some of these works to be singled out as great successes; indeed two of them, Julie Candeille's (1767–1834) libretto and music for Catherine, ou la belle fermière, and Constance de Salm's (1767–1845) libretto for Sapho (with music by J.-P.-E. Martini), ranked among the ten most-performed dramatic works in Paris during and just after the Terror, in 1793 and 1795, respectively. This article examines the ideological context in which these works were received, and asks, why, despite (or because of) the success of their works, women composers and librettists were often perceived by critics and the public as radical and subversive, especially when the messages they chose to include in their operas could be interpreted as feminist. This attitude is not surprising when one considers that the period of greatest success of female-authored opera (and of women's public activism), 1793–95, coincided with the height of the Jacobin authorities' repression of women. Despite this climate, women composers and librettists of the 1790s were surprisingly vocal in protesting their continuing exclusion from the many advantages brought about by the democratization of the institution of opera and society. This article is part of a continuing investigation by feminist scholars into the controversial meaning of the Revolution for public women, bringing nuance to earlier conclusions that women were excluded from public life during the era of the Revolution.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitch Kachun
Keyword(s):  
American History ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Public Life ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
The Public ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
The Many

The Conclusion ties together the book’s main arguments about Crispus Attucks’s place in American history and memory. We do not know enough about his experiences, associations, or motives before or during the Boston Massacre to conclude with certainty that Attucks should be considered a hero and patriot. But his presence in that mob on March 5, 1770, embodies the diversity of colonial America and the active participation of workers and people of color in the public life of the Revolutionary era. The strong likelihood that Attucks was a former slave who claimed his own freedom and carved out a life for himself in the colonial Atlantic world adds to his story’s historical significance. The lived realities of Crispus Attucks and the many other men and women like him must be a part of Americans’ understanding of the nation’s founding generations.

scholarly journals London 1600–1800: communities of natural knowledge and artificial practice

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-196
Author(s):  
JIM BENNETT ◽  
REBEKAH HIGGITT
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Public ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Culture ◽  
Collective Activity ◽  
Technical Culture ◽  
Knowledge And Practice ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

AbstractThis essay introduces a special issue of the BJHS on communities of natural knowledge and artificial practice in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London. In seeking to understand the rise of a learned and technical culture within a growing and changing city, our approach has been inclusive in terms of the activities, people and places we consider worth exploring but shaped by a sense of the importance of collective activity, training, storage of information and identity. London's knowledge culture was formed by the public, pragmatic and commercial spaces of the city rather than by the academy or the court. In this introduction, we outline the types of group and institution within our view and acknowledge the many locations that might be explored further. Above all, we introduce a particular vision of London's potential as a city of knowledge and practice, arising from its commercial and mercantile activity and fostered within its range of corporations, institutions and associations. This was recognized and promoted by contemporary authors, including natural and experimental philosophers, practical mathematicians, artisans and others, who sought to establish a place for and recognition of their individual and collective skills and knowledge within the metropolis.

Revolution in Boston? Eight Propositions for Public History on the Freedom Trail

2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred F. Young
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Public History ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
The Public ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Freedom Trail ◽  
The Many ◽  
Collaborative Efforts ◽  
The Revolution

The author reassesses the public presentation of history on Boston's Freedom Trail, founded in the 1950s, in light of the reinterpretation of the American Revolution which has brought into focus the multi-sided struggle for liberty and equality within America. In eight propositions, he questions whether the many sites of the trail with a minimum of coordination, do justice to the "popular" side of the Revolution. Boston is at risk in dealing with race and gender, he suggests, of fragmenting the Revolution. In avoiding the "dark" side, it can fall into an exclusively celebratory history. To present a more coherent history, the author points to the need for greater collaborative efforts by the sites which make up the trail.

Greek Inscriptions

1933 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 175-177
Author(s):  
Marcus N. Tod
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Common People ◽  
The Public ◽  
Extant Literature ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City ◽  
Of Greece

The inscriptions to which I have called attention in previous issues of this journal have all been ‘historical’ in the sense that they relate to men whose names are well known to us from the literary records of Greece and Rome. But it must constantly be borne in mind that, of the many services rendered by inscriptions to classical studies, not the least is that of illuminating certain obscure tracts of ancient life, on which the extant literature sheds little or no light, and of recalling to our minds some of its aspects which we are in danger of overlooking. For historical literature tends to concentrate our thought upon the city rather than upon the countryside, upon rulers and governments to the neglect of the common people, upon wars and abnormal occurrences to the exclusion of the everyday occupations and interests of the average citizen. And so no apology is, I hope, needed if, out of the mass of recent epigraphical discoveries, I select one which, at first sight, can claim but little importance, one which, found in an obscure sanctuary, records the concerns not of a people but of a parish, and affords a glimpse of a local temple, priest and festival, suggesting the opportunities of ambition and distinction open to men who, maybe, rarely attended the meetings of the Athenian ecclesia and played little or no part in the public life of the State.

‘The Venerable Head’

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
D.H. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Politics And Culture ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
European Civilization ◽  
The Revolution

This introductory chapter sets out the argument of The Idea of Europe and the Origins of the American Revolution. It gives an overview of the ways in which colonial thinking about European geopolitics and European civilization shaped American politics and culture during the century prior to the Revolution. The introduction then reflects on the current historiographical consensus on the origins of the Revolution and the interplay of international relations with political culture in the eighteenth century. It concludes with some remarks on the challenges of writing histories of political culture and discusses the methodological problems of writing about the public sphere.

Ninety Years Ago

Antiquity ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 23 (91) ◽  
pp. 115-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Evans
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Societies ◽  
Learned Societies ◽  
The Many ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

No one, so far as I know, has as yet made any particular study of the many local learned societies that were founded up and down France in the years after the French Revolution, and of their effect upon contemporary thought. These Sociétés d’Émulation differed from the local archaeological and historical societies of England in being more all-embracing ; they included in their scope pure literature, philosophy and science as well as the history and antiquities of the district, and often developed a philanthropic side as well. At the time of their foundation they were often of a free-thinking colour ; but as the balance of French life came to be restored after the Revolution this element was forgotten, and the more learned priests of the neighbourhood were often included among their members.These societies fostered a peculiar polymathic quality among those who regularly attended their frequent meetings. They were to a great extent self-supporting in the provision of papers and communications, and it would have been pure selfishness for any member with any claim to versatility to specialize too deeply. Their standards, too, were not those of the Metropolis, where a new professionalism was bringing higher and more exact criteria into every branch of knowledge and speculation. Rather, we can see in the Sociétés d’Émulation of the nineteenth century the continuance of the amateur spirit that in the eighteenth century had flourished in the aristocratic circles of Court and château : a spirit surviving in a less polished form among the lesser gentry of the provincial towns.

Parliamentary Government in Chile

1909 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 507-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul S. Reinsch
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Factor ◽  
The Public ◽  
Parliamentary Government ◽  
Political Drama ◽  
Material Interests ◽  
Political Principles ◽  
Economic Motives

In the public life of modern states, political and economic motives of action are so closely interwoven that the student of politics rarely encounters a situation or institution in which he can trace and study purely political principles. Indeed, the struggle for political power and for recognized authority, the effort to give the stamp of public sanction to this or that policy, is always the focus of public life; but the action of the participants in the political drama is determined largely by non-political motives. We have to go back to the Athenean republic or to the Whig rule in eighteenth century England to see the political factor in its clearest and most detached manifestations. It is there that we see a society highly capable and cultivated, concentrating all its attention upon that dramatic struggle for power, that attempt to gain leadership over other men by ascendancy in counsel, which form the true essence of politics. Among modern nations, with their democratic organization, with vast material interests clamoring for attention, purely political considerations are apt to be overshadowed by those of economic and social import, although it always remains interesting to compare and measure nations with regard to their ability to express and deal with the principles of their life in the forms and activities of political counsel.

Hoe verlicht waren de genootschappen? - De achttiende-eeuwse sociabiliteit in recent historisch onderzoek

2014 ◽  
Vol 127 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-209
Author(s):  
Jordy Geerlings
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Important Object ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Many ◽  
Traditional Understanding

The many forms of sociability that flourished during the eighteenth century have long been viewed as vehicles of the Enlightenment. Not only were societies, clubs, and lodges permeated by a spirit of egalitarianism, secularism, and religious tolerance, they were also essential factors in the dissemination of knowledge and new ideas. Additionally, sociability has been associated with the rise of the public sphere and civil society, as various societies provided important platforms for the new bourgeois public to discuss and address the issues of the day. However, recent research has challenged these views. Historians are increasingly finding that many societies were permeable to a variety of worldviews and practices, not all of which can be meaningfully associated with the Enlightenment. New insights also suggest the importance of local restrictions and social conventions influencing many societies, further complicating the traditional understanding of the progressive, enlightened nature of sociability during this period. At the same time, sociability remains an important object of research in its own right, as well as an indispensible window onto an ever increasing variety of historical phenomena. This article explores the ways in which recent research has transformed our understanding of sociability and its place in the Enlightenment.

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