The Temptation of Opera

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-158
Author(s):  
Laurie McManus
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Negative Results ◽  
Gendered Discourse ◽  
A Site

This chapter explores opera—established as the antithesis of musical priesthood—as a site of debate over musical sensuality including the gendered discourse on opera and the critique of purity in those composers who, in Wagner’s words, “failed” to write opera with their “chaste and innocent hands.” A generation of revolutionary music critics, including Rudolf Benfey and Ludwig Eckardt, applied these Wagnerian values to Brahms with negative results, depicting purity as his weakest characteristic. Brahms’s own potential libretti and styles of opera in the 1860s and 1870s seem to explore alternatives to the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, from genres such as the oratorio to Singspiel, and topics including Carlo Gozzi’s eighteenth-century fairy-tale plays. Two of Brahms’s works from this period, the Op. 57 Daumer lieder and Op. 50 Rinaldo, contain dramatic and erotic elements that inspired some contemporaries to hope Brahms would take the next step toward an opera.

DELIGHTFUL COXCOMBS TO INDUSTRIOUS MEN: FASHIONABLE POLITICS IN CECIL AND PENDENNIS

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Nicolay
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class A ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Trade Office

THOMAS CARLYLE’S CONTEMPTUOUS DESCRIPTION of the dandy as “a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office, and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes” (313) has survived as the best-known definition of dandyism, which is generally equated with the foppery of eighteenth-century beaux and late nineteenth-century aesthetes. Actually, however, George Brummell (1778–1840), the primary architect of dandyism, developed not only a style of dress, but also a mode of behavior and style of wit that opposed ostentation. Brummell insisted that he was completely self-made, and his audacious self-transformation served as an example for both parvenus and dissatisfied nobles: the bourgeois might achieve upward mobility by distinguishing himself from his peers, and the noble could bolster his faltering status while retaining illusions of exclusivity. Aristocrats like Byron, Bulwer, and Wellington might effortlessly cultivate themselves and indulge their taste for luxury, while at the same time ambitious social climbers like Brummell, Disraeli, and Dickens might employ the codes of dandyism in order to establish places for themselves in the urban world. Thus, dandyism served as a nexus for the declining aristocratic elite and the rising middle class, a site where each was transformed by the dialectic interplay of aristocratic and individualistic ideals.

THE “HARD FORM” OF SCULPTURE: MARBLE, MATTER AND SPIRIT IN EUROPEAN SCULPTURE FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT THROUGH ROMANTICISM

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
LINDA WALSH
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
External Appearance ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Familiar World ◽  
A Site ◽  
Aesthetic Values

The apparently distinct aesthetic values of naturalism (a fidelity to external appearance) and neoclassicism (with its focus on idealization and intangible essence) came together in creative tension and fusion in much late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century sculptural theory and practice. The hybrid styles that resulted suited the requirements of the European sculpture-buying public. Both aesthetics, however, created difficulties for the German Idealists who represented a particularly uncompromising strain of Romantic theory. In their view, naturalism was too closely bound to the observable, familiar world, while neoclassicism was too wedded to notions of clearly defined forms. This article explores sculptural practice and theory at this time as a site of complex debates around the medium's potential for specific concrete representation in a context of competing Romantic visions (ethereal, social and commercial) of modernity.

Sugar Rush: Sugar and Science in the British Caribbean

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-150
Author(s):  
Nicole A. Jacoberger
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sugar Beet ◽  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Cane Sugar ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Foreign Competition ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
A Site

This article examines the contrasting evolution in sugar refining in Jamaica and Barbados incentivized by Mercantilist policies, changes in labor systems, and competition from foreign sugar revealing the role of Caribbean plantations as a site for experimentation from the eighteenth through mid-nineteenth century. Britain's seventeenth- and eighteenth-century protectionist policies imposed high duties on refined cane-sugar from the colonies, discouraging colonies from exporting refined sugar as opposed to raw. This system allowed Britain to retain control over trade and commerce and provided exclusive sugar sales to Caribbean sugar plantations. Barbadian planters swiftly gained immense wealth and political power until Jamaica and other islands produced competitive sugar. The Jamaica Assembly invested heavily in technological innovations intended to improve efficiency, produce competitive sugar in a market that eventually opened to foreign competition such as sugar beet, and increase profits to undercut losses from duties. They valued local knowledge, incentivizing everyone from local planters to chemists, engineers, and science enthusiasts to experiment in Jamaica and publish their findings. These publications disseminated important findings throughout Britain and its colonies, revealing the significance of the Caribbean as a site for local experimentation and knowledge.

Ornamentation

2018 ◽  
pp. 408-426
Author(s):  
Michael Yonan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Baroque Art ◽  
A Site ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Architecture And Music

In the minds of many, the word “baroque” calls to mind one thing: ornamentation, and particularly, to modern viewers, what seems like a generous employment of ornamentation in the Baroque era’s art, architecture, and music. Exactly why seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe embraced decoration so eagerly has been difficult to explain. This is particularly true in the modern era, when prevailing aesthetic discourses worked to villainize ornament as unnecessary, wasteful, or degenerate. This chapter examines the role of ornament in baroque art, architecture, and music in order to understand the function it played in each. To achieve this, the chapter concentrates on two areas: ornamented interiors, particularly ecclesiastical ones, and the ornamented musical lines of vocal compositions. Baroque ornament emerges a site of communication and psychic expansion.

Borderlands of Identity and the Aesthetics of Disjuncture: An Introduction to Scottish Gothic

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Carol Margaret Davison ◽  
Monica Germanà
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
British History ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Cultural Image ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
A Site ◽  
Enlightenment Philosophy

The idea of a ‘Gothic Scotland’, however, did not prove difficult to conceptualise in the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth when a Romanticised portrait of Scotland furnished the nation’s most prevalent cultural image. As Ian Duncan astutely observes in regard to the politics of literary history, it was ‘Scotland’s fate to have become a Romantic object or commodity’ rather than a site of Romantic production (Duncan et al. 2004: 2). Such an objectification was ironic given the existence of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy and its rationally fuelled preoccupations. That objectification was also, notably, expressed in two forms – in both the lighter and darker, more Gothic, shades of Romanticism. Despite the differences in these two manifestations, the Highlands served in both as a synecdoche for a Scotland that exemplified two primary attitudes towards ‘British’ history and rapid modernisation.

The Loving Community

Caritas ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 31-59
Author(s):  
Katie Barclay
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Cultural Norm ◽  
Family Household ◽  
The Family ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
A Site

Caritas was an idea with resonance across early modern Europe, but given shape and form within particular national or religious contexts. This chapter introduces how the Scottish Kirk envisioned caritas as an embodied ethic—an experience of love that was manifested in deportment, thought, feeling, and behaviour—as well as its widespread take-up as a cultural norm. It particularly highlights that the family—the holy household—was imagined as the basis of a social order founded on caritas and introduces how the idea of caritas shaped the practice of the family-household relationships in eighteenth-century Scotland. It explores how the family was located not just as a site of patriarchal discipline, but also of peace and comfort, where fighting and quarrelling (excesses of passion) should be minimized. The family-household was not formed in private, however: its loving behaviours were interpreted and given meaning by a watching community.

RECUPERATION, TRANSFORMATION AND THE TRANSCENDENCE OF MAJOR OVER MINOR IN THE FINALE OF HAYDN’S STRING QUARTET OP. 76 NO. 1

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
FLOYD GRAVE
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
A Site ◽  
Tonal System

ABSTRACTWhen the French critic Bernard Germain Lacépède identified minor harmony with inner pain, restlessness and torment (La poétique de la musique, 1785), he was recognizing what had evolved as a lopsided dichotomy within the tonal system: rather than viewing major and minor as equivalent, mutually defining opposites, later eighteenth-century musicians often viewed the latter as a site of disturbing associations and thus potentially problematic as the foundation for large-scale instrumental compositions. Against this backdrop, it is notable that Haydn ended most of his later minor-key works in major, and in the finales of his quartets Op. 76 Nos 1–3 he exploits modal reversal as a special theme by having each begin in minor before undergoing an artfully contrived switch to major. Because the tonality of two of these quartets was major to begin with, Nos 1 in G and 3 in C, this entailed a double reversal: from major to minor as the finale began, from minor to major at a crucial moment prior to the end. The finale of Op. 76 No.1 surpasses the others of this group in tonal range, intricate play of symmetries and palpable connections to its preceding movements. Crowning it is a coda that turns the movement’s stark opening unison into a cheerful rustic tune. Thus opening theme and coda, although diametrically opposed in topic and imagery, are heard to share the same underlying identity. The result may be read as a vividly evoked musical subject whose vicissitudes trace a path from darkness to light, from turmoil and confusion to a state of pastoral joy and contentment.

''John Bull, pit, box, and gallery, said No!'': Charles Macklin and the Limits of Ethnic Resistance on the Eighteenth-Century London Stage

2002 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Goring
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Minority Ethnic Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
A Site ◽  
Cultural Shifts ◽  
Minority Ethnic ◽  
London Stage

THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES REPRESENTATIONS of Irishness on the eighteenth-century London stage as a basis for reconsidering the theater's role as a site of interethnic contest and negotiation. Ethnic interaction is thematized in numerous eighteenth-century plays - a tendency that highlights the function of the stage as a mediator of the social and cultural shifts that followed urban expansion, the growth of the British empire, and, with immigration, the increasing multiculturalism of Britain and particularly London. The theaters of the period have consequently been presented as spaces in which minority ethnic groups were able to express forceful antihegemonic resistance - both from the stage and from the auditorium. That such resistance typically inspired vigorous counterresistance has received minimal critical attention. The article examines several Irish-themed plays, particularly those by the celebrated Irish actor-playwright Charles Macklin (1699?-1797), and it investigates their reception by the heterogeneous London public. Exploring issues of both authorship and reception - and presenting previously unpublished writings by Macklin - it uncovers a dialogue between ethnic resistance and counterresistance, and thus it interrogates the radicalism attributable to London theaters as sites of ethnic negotiations. It argues that the ethnic voice gained only circumscribed legitimacy during the eighteenth century, and that, despite the efforts of writers such as Macklin, traditional modes of representing Irishness were not radically overturned.

scholarly journals Vestidos y adornos: la crítica a las apariencias exernas a través de la prensa española (finales del siglo XVIII- siglo XIX) = Dresses and ornaments: criticism of outward appearances through the Spanish press (late eighteenth century-nineteenth century)

2017 ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Francisco Javier Crespo Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
External Appearance ◽  
Negative Results ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Family ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Siglo Xix ◽  
Spanish Press ◽  
Newspaper Articles

<p>Este trabajo estudia los discursos que sobre la moda y el lujo recogió la prensa española (especialmente la cercana al pensamiento religioso) entre finales del siglo XVIII y el siglo XIX con el objetivo de entender qué motivos se indicaban para querer controlar la apariencia externa. Así, elementos como la moralidad, la economía o los resultados negativos que provocaba en la mujer y en la familia, han sido los principales temas analizados a través de los artículos periodísticos.</p><p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>This paper studies the discourses about fashion and luxury appeared in the Spanish press (especially in the religious press) between the late eighteenth century and the nineteenth century in order to understand what reasons were indicated to control the external appearance. Thus, elements such as morality, economy or the negative results caused in women and the family, have been the main topics discussed through newspaper articles.</p>

scholarly journals Roses in Amber: Gendered Discourse in Disney’s 2017 Adaptation of Villeneuve’s Fairytale Beauty and the Beast

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atoof Abdullah Rashed ◽  
Laila. M. Al-Sharqi
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
Beauty And The Beast ◽  
Diversity And Inclusion ◽  
Action Film ◽  
Feminist Discourse ◽  
Gendered Discourse ◽  
Live Action ◽  
Made In

This study considers the dialogic relationship between the 2017 Disney live-action film Beauty and the Beast with Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve’s fairy tale and Disney’s 1991 animated version. Drawing on cultural and feminist discourse, the study seeks to examine Disney’s live-action film for incidents of cultural appropriation of gender representation compared to Villeneuve’s fairy tale and Disney’s 1991 animated version. The Study argues that the 2017 film adaptation reverses the traditional patriarchal notions and embraces a transgressive feminist discourse/approach as part of Disney’s strategy of diversity and inclusion of gender, race, class, and sexual orientation as constantly evolving cultural categories. This study finds significant alterations made to the physical and psychological attributes of the 2017 film’s three characters: Beauty/Belle, the Beast, and the Enchantress, changes that align with the film’s gendered discourse. By reversing the characteristic privileging of the male and the empowerment of the female, the live-action succeeds in addressing the contemporary audience demands of diversity and inclusion. The study concludes that the changes made in the 2017 film adaptation displace the oppressive patriarchal notions and stereotypical modes of representing the male and female as they have been perceived in the original fairy tale, for they are no longer compatible with contemporary cultures’ assumptions on gender.

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