Transmedial Politics of the Stage

On February 22, 1781, the Acadèmie Royale de Musique gave a performance of a new work called _La fête de Mirza_. This was the most lavish and expensive production at the Paris Opera in recent memory, combining a 4-act ballet, a complete symphony by Gossec, and a 1-act opera by Grétry into an avant-garde staging that was centuries ahead of its time. According to the traditional narrative, audiences and critics were not amused by its length or its novelties, and the following morning the Acadèmie announced that _La fête de Mirza_ had been withdrawn for revisions. The ballet would return in time, but Grétry's contribution – entitled _Émilie, ou la belle esclave_ – would not be staged again until 2020. In his memoirs, the composer omitted all mention of _Émilie_, and Grétry biographers passed over it as nothing more than an embarrassing failure.


A completely different narrative emerges from new discoveries in the Archives Nationales de France. This presentation uses documents from the Acadèmie, the finance ministry, and the royal households to show that _Émilie_ was originally written for Marie Antoinette and her Troupe des Seigneurs, but was repurposed as a propaganda piece for a massive wartime fundraising campaign masterminded by the queen and finance minister Jacques Necker. The opera thus has a triple and heretofore unrealized significance. First, it is the only musical-theatrical work known to have been composed expressly for the Troupe des Seigneurs, filling a conspicuous gap in their performance history. Second, the work's musical construction provides detailed insight into the musical abilities of the performers for whom it was originally written – an ensemble including Marie Antoinette and the future Charles X – and serves as a lens for re-evaluating conflicting contemporary accounts of their proficiency. Third, the actions relating to the opera's creation and performance provide new insights into Marie Antoinette's political savvy, statesmanship, and activity as a commissioner of opera well before her later patronage of the Comédie-Italienne.


This presentation includes live performances of musical excerpts and is linked to Really Spicy Opera's proposal to stage  _Émilie_ at AMS-Minneapolis.

In late-eighteenth century Madrid, musical theater composer Blas de Laserna aspired to be a critic and to edit his own journal. His ambition to join the Republic of Letters was never fulfilled, and he remained a public servant composing for the city theaters all his life. Nonetheless, he channeled his critical voice through the hundreds of tonadillas–short satirical entr'acte pieces–he wrote over more than two decades. This presentation focuses on Laserna's 1784 solo tonadilla El lente (The Lens), based on Discourse 54 of Spanish enlightened journal El Censor (1781), based in turn on Discourse 275 ("Dissection of a Beau's Head and of a Coquet's Heart") of The Spectator (1712). 
In El lente, the actress-singer shows the audience a prodigious lens through which she can see the truth of Madrid's people, beyond external appearances. Because this lens gives her the power of surveillance, she fears the public's backlash, so she presents her findings coyly. Through this example I discuss the transmedia nature of social critique in Enlightenment Spain, with special attention to the role of musical theater in the formation of the modern public sphere. I also present El lente as a concrete instance of Enlightenment ideas and formats that circulated between England and Spain, a path much traveled during the eighteenth century, but little studied so far in musicology. Finally, I propose that the gender switch from the male-dominated English and Spanish periodical press to the female-dominated musical stage made social criticism less threatening for the general public and for Laserna as a critic. Thus, the fictional character of this moral story goes from a coquet having his heart dissected in Addison's text to a coquette scrutinizing the hearts of others in Laserna's tonadilla.
Drawing on original archival research and newly discovered manuscript music, this paper contributes a new perspective about the interrelationship of music, print media and other technologies to emerging ideologies of gender and the public sphere in Enlightenment Europe.

Henri-Montan Berton's Les rigueurs du cloître was an immediate hit when it premiered at Paris's Opéra-Comique in 1790. The opera tells the story of a young nun who is condemned to be entombed alive by a tyrannical Mother Superior, but is saved at the last minute by a timely intervention from the Revolutionary National Guard. The success of Berton's opera launched a trend for operas, plays, and pornographic parodies involving Revolutionary forces rescuing young women from corrupt religious figures. 
It has been widely assumed that these operas capitalized on the anti-clerical sentiments which emerged as a key political facet of the Revolution. Indeed, Berton's opera followed a slew of unpopular religious policies passed in the early months of the Revolution, including the confiscation of church lands, the banning of monastic vows, and, most controversial of all, the Constitution civile du clergé, which rendered clergymen elected state officials. 
Examining the critical reception of these convent-themed opéras-comiques, it becomes clear that, although these works may be read as "anti-clerical" today, they were rarely understood as such at the time. Instead, these operas opened up new debates around genre and representation in revolutionary opera, revealing a degree of circumspection around portraying clerical figures on the operatic stage. Most critics ignored the political implications of these opéras-comiques altogether, focusing instead on the aesthetic implications of such terrifying and violent plots surfacing on Paris's comic stages. Others asserted that the despotic fanatics depicted in these operas bore no resemblance to the actual French clergy, urging readers not to conflate operatic fantasy with reality. Furthermore, the authors of these works held varied political allegiances, which colored the reception of their operas, drawing them into wider debates around revolutionary politics.
Although these convent-themed opéras-comiques may have capitalized on the scandal and fervor which surrounded the religious policies of the Revolution, this did not necessarily define what made them political or topical to their audiences. Instead, these works emerged as sites of aesthetic and political contention, demonstrating that the connections between operatic representation and revolutionary legislation were not always straightforward.