Comedy between Two Revolutions: Opera Buffa and the Risorgimento, 1831-1848

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Izzo
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
National Character ◽  
Giuseppe Verdi ◽  
The Political ◽  
Italian History ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Opera Buffa ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Scene

For more than a century discussions of the relationship between the operatic stage and the socio-political scene of the Risorgimento have relied almost exclusively on serious operas (particularly those of Giuseppe Verdi) and especially on the period after 1848. Roger Parker's recent revision of Verdi's ostensibly exclusive role as "Bard of the Risorgimento" provides an opportunity to reassess the politics of Italian opera during this period, considering also other composers and works. The purpose of this study is to discuss the interaction between opera and the Risorgimento in a group of comic works composed between the revolutions of 1831 and 1848, focusing in particular on the representation and implications of national identity in Luigi Ricci's Il nuovo Figaro(1832) and in two Italian versions of Donizetti's La Fille du rgiment (1840), as well as on the significance of military themes. Furthermore, relevant cases of censorship in these and other comic works are examined. These operas uncover numerous affinities with the political discourse in contemporary serious melodrama, showing that warlike themes, choruses, and other statements of patriotism were not a prerogative of Verdi's operas, nor an exclusive feature of the serious genre. Their authors used conventional buffa procedures, such as modern European settings and encoded allegories of national character, in ways that reveal connections with the tensions and aspirations of the Risorgimento. A better knowledge of this repertory can only improve our understanding of the politics of opera during this crucial period of Italian history.

Could Populism Be Good for Constitutional Democracy?

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bojan Bugaric
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
Single Form ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Scene

Populism is Janus-faced. There is not a single form of populism but rather a variety of different forms, each with profoundly different political consequences. Despite the current hegemony of authoritarian populism, a much different sort of populism is also possible: democratic and antiestablishment populism, which combines elements of liberal and democratic convictions. When we examine the relationship between populism and constitutional democracy, populism should not be considered in isolation from its host ideology. Examples of democratic, liberal, socially inclusive forms of populism quite clearly show that authoritarianism and anti-pluralism are not necessarily the key elements of populism. However, the paucity of democratic populism also suggests that we have to look at factors other than ideology to understand why nativist and authoritarian populism currently dominates the political scene. Without understanding the political economy of the populist revolt, it is difficult to understand the true roots of populism and, consequently, to devise an appropriate democratic alternative to authoritarian populism. The ascendancy of right-wing nationalist populism today is a symptom of the failure of progressive politics.

The nation and the South in the work of Rosario Romeo: A debate between John Dickie, Lucy Riall and Giuseppe Galasso: The idea of nation in Romeo

Modern Italy ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-84
Author(s):  
John Dickie ◽  
Lucy Riall ◽  
Giuseppe Galasso
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
National Character ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Italian History ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Public Sphere

The last seven or eight years have brought a flood of printer's ink dedicated to the issue of national identity in Italy. At the same time, the new political forces that have emerged since Tangentopoli have all, in various ways, contributed to the re-emergence of patriotism in the language of the public sphere. What would Rosario Romeo have said about this new cultural and political climate? How would he have sought to intervene? It seems likely that he would have turned his famously acerbic critical intelligence on many of the volumes published. A signi. cant number of them merely offer versions of the same old pathologizing version of Italian history, or even, ahistorically, of the Italian national character. All the Sicilian historian would have to do would be to dust off his criticisms of those Anglo-American and Marxist historians who portrayed Italy, in his view, as having had the ‘wrong’ history, of having certain aboriginal defects.

THE ITALIAN MENACE: OPERA BUFFA IN REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE

2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL E. MCCLELLAN
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Opera Buffa ◽  
Comedie Italienne

The Parisian premiere of Paisiello’s Nina, o sia la pazza d’amore on 3 September 1791 triggered a hostile reaction from French librettists and composers. Since the opéra comique on which Paisiello had based his opera remained in the active repertory of the Comédie-Italienne, Nina was considered an infringement of copyright legislation recently passed by the National Assembly. In the controversy that followed, matters involving intellectual property and opera aesthetics were linked to revolutionary struggle. At a time when clarity and transparency were identified as republican virtues in France, the carefully wrought balance between music and text that was associated with French operatic genres acquired new political resonance. Simultaneously, the perceived emphasis on sensual musical pleasure – at the expense of a coherent libretto – in Italian operas like Nina was eyed with suspicion, deemed a potential symptom of counterrevolution. In this way, the relative merits of French and Italian opera were superimposed on issues of revolution, reaction and national identity.

scholarly journals The ‘new’ League success in the red belt and its post-fascist inheritance: evidence from 2018 National Elections

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moreno Mancosu ◽  
Riccardo Ladini
Keyword(s):  
Unemployment Rate ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Lega Nord ◽  
First Republic ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

In 2018 national elections, the Lega, an Italian xenophobic right-wing party, has dramatically increased its consensus in the ‘red belt’, the central part of the country traditionally ruled by center-left parties. Pundits have argued that this performance can be attributed to the effect of the new leadership of Matteo Salvini, who shifted the ideological location of the party (that now aims at being a national right-wing party), combined with the drop in preferences of Forza Italia, the ally/competitor in the right-wing ideological spectrum. This paper aims at providing new insights in the explanation of these electoral outcomes, by hypothesizing that geographical trajectories of diffusion of the party are correlated with the presence of geographically clustered post-fascist minorities present in the region since the First Republic age. By employing official figures at the municipality level, the paper analyses the relationship between the percentages of votes for the MSI (the most relevant post-fascist force during the First Republic) in 1976 and the Lega Nord in the 2006-2018 period. Consistent with our hypothesis, the post-fascist inheritance is significantly correlated with the local prevalence for the Lega Nord in 2018, after the change in the political discourse and leadership of the party. Empirical analyses provide evidence of our expectations, even when controlling for unemployment rate and percentage of immigrants.

scholarly journals The Spanish Plurinational Labyrinth. Practical Reasons for Criticising the Nationalist Bias of Others While Ignoring One’s Own Nationalist Position

Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Carmelo Moreno
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
National Question ◽  
Political Cost ◽  
Suitable Concept ◽  
The Relationship

To analyse the Spanish national question requires considering the relationship between the idea of the nation and the phenomenon of nationalism on one side, and the question of political plurality on the other. The approval of the Constitutional text 40 years ago was achieved thanks to a delicate semantic balancing act concerning the concept of nation, whose interpretation remains open. Academic studies of public opinion, such as the famous Linz-Moreno Question—also known as Moreno Question—that measures the possible mixture of Spanish subjective national identity, are equally the object of wide controversy. The extent to which political plurinationality is a suitable concept for defining the country is not clear because, amongst other reasons, the political consequences that might derive from adopting the concept are unknown. This article sets out the thesis that Spain is a plurinational labyrinth since there is neither consensus nor are there discursive strategies that might help in forming an image of the country in national terms. The paradox of this labyrinth is that, since the approval of the Constitution in 1978, the political actors have accepted that nationality in Spain is insoluble without taking the plurinational idea into account. But, at the same time, it is not easy to assume such plurinationality in practical terms because the political cost to those actors that openly defend national plurality is very high. For this reason, political discourses in Spain on the national question offer a highly ambiguous scenario, where the actors seek windows of opportunity and are reluctant to take risks in order to solve this puzzle situation. The aim of this paper is to analyse which indicators are most efficient for testing how the different actors position themselves facing the phenomenon of the Spanish plurinational labyrinth. The clearest examples are what we refer to here as the concepts of (i) intersubjective national identity and (ii) plurinational governments.

‘Is It Family or Politics?’ Reflections on Gender and the Modern Tamil Subjectivity Constitution in the Discourse of C. N. Annadurai

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-281
Author(s):  
G. Sujatha
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Founding Member ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

This article attempts to investigate the relationship between the domestic and the politics in the modern Tamil subjectivity constitution during the period spanning from the 1940s to the 1960s. More specifically, it takes up the political discourse of C. N. Annadurai—a significant founding member of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and a man who played a decisive role in shaping the culture and politics of the state—and attempts to examine the spatial tension, that is, the fusion and commonalities between the domestic sphere and political space in modern Tamil subjectivity construction and the implications it had for gender.

scholarly journals MULTICULTURALISM AND POLITICAL INTEGRATION IN MODERN NATION STATES

2017 ◽  
pp. 305
Author(s):  
Milena Manojlović
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Theoretical Position ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This article is an analysis of the complex relations between concept of multiculturalism and modern liberal nation states, which are based on a principle of common citizenship. Consequently, in this article we question the impact of multiculturalism on the process of integration in these societies, which inevitably brings us to a contemplation of the complex relations of modern liberal democracy and nationalism. The author presents the most influential ideas of the political philosopher Brian Barry who, as a liberal egalitarian, criticized multiculturalism from the theoretical position of liberalism that seeks to provide social justice. The structure of this paper reflects his prominent ideas on this matter. In three separate chapters, the author discusses the impact of public policies with a multicultural agenda on the equal treatment of citizens, the relationship between liberalism and assimilation and liberalism, and national identity perceived as a necessary precondition for achieving integration. The last chapter of article considers the positions of other theorists on the subject of relations between a liberal state and national identity, which leads to concluding reflections of the conception of politics as a space for self-expression.

scholarly journals THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CONCEPTS “MOSCOW, THIRD ROME” AND “MOSCOW, NEW ISRAEL” AND THEIR ROLE IN THE EPILOGUE TO COLLECTION OF 1647

2020 ◽  
pp. 122-127
Author(s):  
Alyona E. Isakhanyan
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Specific Content ◽  
Alternative Concept ◽  
Old Russian ◽  
New Jerusalem ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
New Israel

In the ancient Russian writings of the Moscow State era, the formulas “Moscow, third Rome” and “Moscow, new Israel” or “new Jerusalem” are noticeably widespread. By the early 17th century they developed into full-fledged concepts that serve as means of self-identification. The idea of “Moscow, new Jerusalem” did not receive a clear theoretical form, although it was more widespread in writings. This leads to the fact that it is often understood by researchers only as a verbal formula. In the article, it is considered as an original alternative concept that allows to adjust the specific content of the theory “Moscow, third Rome”. The genesis of these two concepts, their theoretical and ideological content, as well as their fate in the literature and historical and political discourse of the 17th century are traced. The question of the relationship between the political and church ambitions of Muscovy, expressed in these theories, is investigated. This perspective allows us to consider the choice of the scribes of the formula «new Jerusalem» in the epilogue to the Collection of 1647 as a kind of marker indicating the sociopolitical tonality of the writing. The author of the article proceeds from the conviction that extraliterary factors are of no less importance than literary factors in studies of Old Russian literature.

scholarly journals Semantics of Saudi Political Discourse: A Significations Study of Prince Saud Al-Faicel Speeches

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (14) ◽  
pp. 245-273
Author(s):  
د. عبد اللطيف السلمي د. عبد اللطيف السلمي
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
The Political ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Textual Approach ◽  
Language And Politics ◽  
Political Model ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Rhetorical Tools

the present study p urports to shed light on the problematics of the relationship between language and politics in general and on the semiotic formulation, in particular, of Prince Saud Al-Faicel political discourse. It attempts to explain how this discourse succeeded to formulate a political model capable, thanks to its argumentative and rhetorical tools, to decode or unlock regional crises and international transformations in order to make historical decisions. Such problematics reflect our particular perception of political discourse in its relationship with textual linguistics, along with the powerful semiotic discursive strategies and practices ever present in the analysis and interpretation of the political discourse of Prince Saud Al-Faicel. The Present study relied on an analytic frame following Norman Fairclough's model and other semiotic studies structured around lexicon and language construction. It also paid attention to analyzing the intricacies characterizing relations and strategies within power relations. The originality of the present study can be seen in its combination of the textual approach with the analytical one when dealing with political discourse.

“Illegal Religious Activities” and Counter-Terrorism in China

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Chi Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Religious Policy ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The fight against terrorism prompts governments to differentiate between “good” religious practices and the “bad” ones. The simplistic dichotomy of “good” and “bad” Muslims has led to a cascade of criticism, but a fallacy underlying this dualism remains underexplored. This paper examines the “no true Scotsman” fallacy that is prevalent in the political discourse surrounding terrorism and religion. It argues that China's attempt to counteract the essentialist assumption about Uyghurs leads to a reinforced “good-versus-bad” dichotomous categorization of Muslims, reflected in the binary of “normal” and “illegal” in China's religious policy. This is a major contribution to the existing literature on politics and religion because, theoretically, this paper applies the “no true Scotsman” fallacy and “good” and “bad” Muslims dichotomy to explain the relationship between politics and religion; empirically, it provides a rich overview of the political nature of religious policy in China.

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