Reading Henry Tresham's Theatre Curtain: Metastasio's Apotheosis and the Idea of Opera at London's Pantheon

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-62
Author(s):  
Michael Burden
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Visual Material ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Music Of The Spheres ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Opera House ◽  
Pietro Metastasio

AbstractWhen London's new Pantheon Opera opened in 1791, the artist Henry Tresham, not long returned from Italy, was paid to paint the ceiling and proscenium of the new auditorium and to provide a drop curtain. The curtain provided a focus for the new institution's aspirations and for the audience's attention on those inspirations when they arrived at the theatre. Its elaborate nature – the zodiac, the music of the spheres, ancient and modern composers, the passions, and with a centrepiece of the apotheosis of Pietro Metastasio – was the subject of a series articles in the press explaining the curtain's allegory. All visual material was thought to be lost, but the recent identification of a preparatory watercolour of the apotheosis has offered an opportunity to re-examine both its place in the context of late eighteenth-century iconography and the place of Metastasio in the late eighteenth-century London opera house.

The Practical and Symbolic Functions of Pre-Rameau Opera at the Paris Opéra before Gluck

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-50
Author(s):  
Michel Noiray
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter explains how a uniquely long-lived canon evolved in revivals of operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully and his immediate successors—chiefly André Campra and André-Cardinal Destouches—right up to the early 1770s. The Académie Royale de Musique was unique as the only theater to resist Italian repertory, except in two brief controversial periods. A dogmatic commitment to the old style and repertory survived after Lully’s death, quite separate from the operas of Jean-Philippe Rameau. Opposition to this unique practice broke out occasionally among the public, but such opinion was not widely supported in the press. It is striking that the main critics of ancienne musique, as it was called—Rousseau, Paul Henri d’Holbach, and Friedrich Melchior von Grimm—all came from outside France. This chapter is paired with Franco Piperno’s “Italian opera and the concept of ‘canon’ in the late eighteenth century.”

scholarly journals Architecture of Jesuit Churches in the Former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1564–1773

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-384
Author(s):  
Andrzej Betlej
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Homogeneous Element ◽  
The Third ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Relative Decline

The article presents the history and accomplishments of Jesuit architecture in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth century. The author sees Jesuit architecture as a distinct and homogeneous element within Polish architecture. The paper starts with a brief presentation of the existing research in the subject. It moves on to enumerate the activities of the Society in the field of construction, divided into three major booms: the first roughly between 1575 and 1650, the second between 1670 and 1700, and the third from 1740 to 1770, divided by periods of relative decline caused by a succession of devastating wars. The paper identifies the most important architects involved in the construction of Jesuit churches, as well as their most notable works. The paper ends with a brief note concerning the fate of the Jesuit churches after the suppression of the Society and the partitions of Poland.

John Bull and the American Revolution: The Transatlantic Afterlives of Arbuthnot's Character

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-69
Author(s):  
Leah Orr
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
British Government ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Eighteenth Century Britain ◽  
Newspaper Articles

AbstractHow did the character John Bull come to be so widely recognized as a stand-in for the British government or people? John Arbuthnot created the character in 1712 in a series of five pamphlets criticizing the British role in the War of the Spanish Succession, and for fifty years the character was mentioned only in references to Arbuthnot. In the late eighteenth century, John Bull began to appear in newspaper articles relating to other political contexts, eventually appearing in satires on all manner of British policies and characteristics, from taxes and the economy to xenophobia and imperialism. This essay argues that the American colonists adapted the character to their own purposes. This analysis contributes to the understanding of the content, political engagement, and spread of the press in eighteenth-century Britain and America. It also reveals one way that writers about British national identity and its symbolism accounted for an increasingly diverse global empire that could not be represented adequately by a single figurehead.

Crime News and the Press

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Carter Wood
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
Human Interest ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
General Readership ◽  
Crime News

This essay examines crime news between the late eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, focusing on the newspaper press in Great Britain. It lays out trends in crime and media historiography; describes the main press discourses about “crime,” “criminals,” and “criminal justice”; identifies the key agents who created crime news; and considers the press’s role in “moral panics.” Showing that the press has been a dominant source of crime information from the late eighteenth century and that crime reporting has constituted a substantial proportion of newspaper content, it argues that crime news has consistently offered a distorted view of crime, with the greatest attention being given to those crimes that least frequently appear in official statistics; this inaccuracy can reveal distinctive fears and attitudes in particular historical contexts. Moreover, “human interest” reporting, while often sensationalist, has sometimes contained quasi-political social critiques cast in a more digestible language for a general readership.

Noi credevamo (We Believed): Story and history of emotions

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Patat
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Historical Film ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

In the last ten years, Noi credevamo (We Believed) (Martone 2010) has been the subject of a very careful criticism interested not only in its historical-ideological implications but also in its semiotic specificities. The purpose of this article is to summarize the cardinal points of these two positions and to add to them some critical observations that have not been noted so far. On the one hand, it is a matter of highlighting how, as a historical film, the work is connected with the history of emotions, a recent historiographical trend that aims to detect the narrative devices of ideological propaganda and the diffusion of feelings since the late eighteenth century. On the other hand, the article proposes a new interpretation of Mario Martone’s film, starting with the analysis of phenomena that are not only historical but also technical and structural.

Can One Speak of Narrativity in Music?

1990 ◽  
Vol 115 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Jacques Nattiez
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New Hampshire ◽  
Round Table ◽  
Dartmouth College ◽  
Annual Conference ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
The Subject

The question of musical narrativity, while by no means new, is making a comeback as the order of the day in the field of musicological thought. In May 1988 a conference on the theme ‘Music and the Verbal Arts: Interactions’ was held at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. A fortnight later, a group of musicologists and literary theorists was invited to the Universities of Berkeley and Stanford to assess, in the course of four intense round-table discussions, whether it is legitimate to recognize a narrative dimension in music. In November of the same year, the annual conference of the American Musicological Society in Baltimore presented a session entitled ‘Text and Narrative’, chaired by Carolyn Abbate, and, at the instigation of Joseph Kerman, a session devoted to Edward T. Cone's The Composer's Voice. A number of articles deal with the subject in our specialized periodicals: I am thinking in particular of the studies published in 19th-Century Music by Anthony Newcomb – ‘Once More “Between Absolute and Programme Music”: Schumann's Second Symphony’ and ‘Schumann and Late Eighteenth-Century Narrative Strategies’ – or, on the French-speaking side of musicology, of Marta Grabocz's article ‘La sonate en si mineur de Liszt: une stratégie narrative complexe’ and the essays of the Finnish semiologist Eero Tarasti. No doubt a good many articles will emerge from the above conferences. And we are awaiting the appearance of Carolyn Abbate's book Unsung Voices: Narrative in Nineteenth-Century Music.

James Byres of Tonley: Jacobites and Etruscans

2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-274
Author(s):  
Peter Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Art History ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Art Dealers ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

James Byres of Tonley (1734–1817) is a pivotal figure in many respects, whose life as a virtuoso has been the subject of exemplary scholarship in the fields of art history and the history of archaeology. For three decades, he was close to the centre of the circle of artists, antiquarians and art-dealers who guided and advised the grand tourists and student artists visiting Rome, then the unchallenged capital of the visual arts worldwide. His fortunes, and those of his family, are typical of those of the last generation of Aberdeenshire Catholics before the Relief Acts of the late eighteenth century and the death of Henry Benedict, Cardinal York, in 1807. Like many Scots, whose cultural or military achievements were enacted in continental exile, he is not particularly remembered nor celebrated in Scotland itself.

scholarly journals El precio de leer a los clásicos en el siglo XVIII: los lectores españoles de versiones vendidas por suscripción

2018 ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
María Jesús García Garrosa
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Eighteenth

RESUMENEl estudio aborda los aspectos comercial y sociológico de la difusión de los clásicos en la España dieciochesca. Utilizaré dos tipos de fuentes: anuncios en la prensa sobre la puesta a la venta de ciertas obras significativas y listas de suscripción. El análisis de los precios y formas de comercialización supone un primer acercamiento al grado de difusión que pudieron alcanzar los autores clásicos en traducciones contemporáneas o en reediciones (normalmente revisadas, ampliadas o anotadas) de versiones del siglo XVI. Posteriormente estudiaré las listas de suscripción a cuatro obras vendidas por este sistema en la última década del siglo; los datos que esos listados proporcionan y la identificación de los nombres que figuran en ellos ayudarán a trazar un perfil sociocultural de sus compradores, permitiendo presentar una aproximación al público lector de las versiones españolas de autores clásicos en el último tercio del siglo XVIII.PALABRAS CLAVELibros vendidos por suscripción, autores grecolatinos, anuncios en la prensa, precios, perfil sociocultural de los lectores, España de finales del siglo XVIII. TITLEThe Price of Reading the Classics in the Eighteenth Century: Spanish Readers of Translations Sold by SubscriptionABSTRATCThe present study focuses on commercial and sociological features of the dissemination of classical texts in eighteenth-century Spain. It makes use of two types of source material: press advertisements detailing the sale of certain major works and subscription lists. The analysis of prices and retail methods in the press enables an initial calculation of purchase statistics for Spanish buyers achieved by new translations or re-editions(usually revised, amplified or annotated) of translations carried out in the sixteenth century. There follows an examination of subscription lists of four works sold by this method in the final decade of the eighteenth century. The data provided by such lists and the identification of those whose names they include permit a social and cultural profile of their purchasers to be constructed, providing a picture of the reading public for Spanish translations of classical authors in the final third of the eighteenth century.KEY WORDSBooks sold by subscription, Greek and Roman authors, press advertisements, prices, social and cultural profile of readership, late eighteenth-century Spain.

scholarly journals Foucault, Ferguson, and civil society

2015 ◽  
pp. 36-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha Ashenden
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Way Of Thinking

In contrast to those who trace civil society to “community” per se, Foucault is keen to locate this concept as it emerges at a particular moment in respect of specific exigencies of government. He suggests that civil society is a novel way of thinking about a problem, a particular problematization of government that emerges in the eighteenth century and which combines incommensurable conceptions of the subject as simultaneously a subject of right and of interests. This article takes up Foucault’s discussion of the Scottish Enlightenment in The Birth of Biopolitics to trace the distinctiveness of his discussion of civil society, but also in order to suggest that we ought to pay closer attention to the tensions between commercial-civilizational and civic republican themes in the literature of the late eighteenth century than does Foucault. It is my tentative suggestion that Foucault’s account leaves out significant aspects of these debates that offer counter-valences to the dominant models of the subject available to contemporary political discourse.

scholarly journals The Paradox of Kant’s Transcendental Subject in German Philosophy in the Late Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-25
Author(s):  
M. V. Rouba
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Transcendental Object ◽  
Subject Of Cognition ◽  
Relationship Of

The study of the “first wave” of reactions to the Critique of Pure Reason in Germany from the second half of the 1780s until the beginning of the nineteenth century reveals the paradoxical status of the Kantian transcendental subject. While the existence of the transcendental subject, whatever the term means, is not open to question since it arises from the very essence of critical philosophy, the fundamental status of the subject is sometimes questioned in this period. Although the meaning of the concept of transcendental subject seems obvious today (the subject of cognition, bearer of transcendental conditions of experience) it lends itself to various interpretations in the late eighteenth century. To achieve my goal I have undertaken a textological analysis of the works of the earliest opponents and followers of the Kantian critique and a reconstruction of the conceptual field in the midst of which the transcendental subject has been planted. Among others I draw on the works of J. S. Beck, J. A. Eberhard, J. G. Hamann, F. H. Jacobi, S. Maimon, K. L. Reinhold, G. E. Schulze and A. Weishaupt. The authors of the period are grouped depending on the common themes and questions that prompted them to turn to the concept of the transcendental subject, even though the results of their reflections did not always coincide. These authors think of the transcendental subject in its relationship to the transcendental object, or as “something = х”, and in terms of the relationship of representation to the object. It is characterised sometimes as something absolutely hollow, and sometimes as the fullness of true reality. The status ascribed to the transcendental subject is sometimes that of a thing-in-itself and sometimes that of a “mere” idea. Finally, Kant’s transcendental subject was sometimes seen as something to be overcome and sometimes as an infinite challenge to understanding.

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