The Singing Turk: Ottoman Power and Operatic Emotions on the European Stage from the Siege of Vienna to the Age of Napoleon
The Singing Turk: Ottoman Power and Operatic Emotions on the European Stage from the Siege of Vienna to the Age of Napoleon
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Abstract
This book explores the important cultural phenomenon of operas about the Ottoman Turks in eighteenth-century Europe—from the 1680s to the 1820s—and considers what the figure of the singing Turk signified to European publics in the context of European-Ottoman relations, the European Enlightenment, and Europe’s cultural perspective on the Orient. The research addresses the enormous extent of this largely forgotten repertory, beginning with the many tragic operas about the captivity of Bajazet (as in Handel’s Tamerlano), and then addressing the many comic operas that followed the precedent of Rameau’s “generous Turk”—operas about the ultimately magnanimous Ottoman masters of European captives. The book further considers the use of “Janissary” or alla turca style in operas by Gluck, Haydn, and Mozart, the paradigmatic aspects of Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio, and the Napoleonic context for the several operas composed by Rossini on Turkish themes. The creation, performance, and reception of operas about Turks were conditioned by the international circumstances of European-Ottoman relations, dating from the failure of the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683—which made Turks seem less fearsome to the European imagination. The singing Turk was never altogether exotic, Other, or alien to Europe, but, rather, addressed crucial issues of European political and cultural concern, especially issues of absolute power and extreme emotion. The Napoleonic age, with its agendas of conquest and empire, brought about a final flowering of operas about Turks, before Turkish themes disappeared altogether from the modern operatic repertory.
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Front Matter
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Introduction
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1
The Captive Sultan: Operatic Transfigurations of the Ottoman Menace after the Siege of Vienna
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2
The Generous Turk: Captive Christians and Operatic Comedy in Paris
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3
The Triumphant Sultana: Suleiman and His Operatic Harem
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4
The Turkish Subjects of Gluck and Haydn: Comic Opera in War and Peace
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5
Osmin in Vienna: Mozart’s ‘Abduction’ and the Centennial of the Ottoman Siege
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6
“To honor the Emperor”: Pasha Selim and Emperor Joseph in the Age of Enlightened Absolutism
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7
The Ottoman Adventures of Rossini and Napoleon: Kaimacacchi and Missipipi at La Scala
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8
Pappataci and Kaimakan: Reflections in a Mediterranean Mirror
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9
An Ottoman Prince in the Romantic Imagination: The Libertine Adventures of Rossini’s Turkish Traveler
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10
Maometto in Naples and Venice: The Operatic Charisma of the Conqueror
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11
Rossini’s Siege of Paris: Ottoman Subjects in the French Restoration
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12
The Decline and Disappearance of the Singing Turk: Ottoman Reform, the Eastern Question, and the European Operatic Repertory
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Conclusion
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End Matter
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