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Nineteenth-Century Music
The Sociability of History in French Grand Opera: A Historical Materialist Perspective
Peter Mondelli
19th-Century Music, Vol. 37 No. 1, Summer 2013; (pp. 37-55) DOI: 10.1525/ncm.2013.37.3.37
Peter Mondelli is an assistant professor of music history at the University of North Texas. He holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. His current research examines the transformation and commodification of opera through print culture in nineteenth-century Paris. Other areas of interest include philology and the politics of nineteenth-century musicology, and oral singing traditions in lateeighteenth-century Germany and France.
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Abstract

French grand opera relied heavily on historical sources for its stories, settings, and characters. This article reexamines why representations of the past captivated Parisian audiences. For these spectators, history was not just a purely factual discourse about what happened centuries ago, it was also a social phenomenon. As such, grand opera's appropriation of historical subjects depended on new social spaces formed by new patterns in text production and consumption. When these spaces first emerged, historical grand opera became socially feasible, and as they were transformed, the genre began to wane. Focusing on Auber's La Muette de Portici, this article reconsiders the emergence of historical grand opera in terms of such material conditions of possibility. It then outlines how new material conditions in the middle decades of the nineteenth century reshaped attitudes toward operatic history, drawing on the historical materialist philosophy of Walter Benjamin to clarify the effects of these social and technological changes.

Keywords
  • French grand opera
  • Daniel Auber
  • historical materialism
  • sociability
  • Walter Benjamin
  • © 2013 by the Regents of the University of California
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Vol. 37 No. 1, Summer 2013

19th-Century Music: 37 (1)
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The Sociability of History in French Grand Opera: A Historical Materialist Perspective
Peter Mondelli
19th-Century Music, Vol. 37 No. 1, Summer 2013; (pp. 37-55) DOI: 10.1525/ncm.2013.37.3.37
Peter Mondelli is an assistant professor of music history at the University of North Texas. He holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. His current research examines the transformation and commodification of opera through print culture in nineteenth-century Paris. Other areas of interest include philology and the politics of nineteenth-century musicology, and oral singing traditions in lateeighteenth-century Germany and France.

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The Sociability of History in French Grand Opera: A Historical Materialist Perspective
Peter Mondelli
19th-Century Music, Vol. 37 No. 1, Summer 2013; (pp. 37-55) DOI: 10.1525/ncm.2013.37.3.37
Peter Mondelli is an assistant professor of music history at the University of North Texas. He holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. His current research examines the transformation and commodification of opera through print culture in nineteenth-century Paris. Other areas of interest include philology and the politics of nineteenth-century musicology, and oral singing traditions in lateeighteenth-century Germany and France.
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