Author: Michael J. Sosulski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351880152
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Book Description
In 1767, more than a century before Germany was incorporated as a modern nation-state, the city of Hamburg chartered the first Deutsches Nationaltheater. What can it have meant for a German playhouse to have been a national theater, and what did that imply about the way these theaters operated? Michael Sosulski contends that the idea of German nationhood not only existed prior to the Napoleonic Wars but was decisive in shaping cultural production in the last third of the eighteenth century, operating not on the level of popular consciousness but instead within representational practices and institutions. Grounding his study in a Foucauldian understanding of emergent technologies of the self, Sosulski connects the increasing performance of body discipline by professional actors, soldiers, and schoolchildren to the growing interest in German national identity. The idea of a German cultural nation gradually emerged as a conceptual force through the work of an influential series of literary intellectuals and advocates of a national theater, including G. E. Lessing and Friedrich Schiller. Sosulski combines fresh readings of canonical and lesser-known dramas, with analysis of eighteenth-century theories of nationhood and evolving acting theories, to show that the very lack of a strong national consciousness in the late eighteenth century actually spurred the emergence of the German Nationaltheater, which were conceived in the spirit of the Enlightenment as educational institutions. Since for Germans, nationality was a performed identity, theater emerged as an ideal space in which to imagine that nation.
Theater and Nation in Eighteenth-Century Germany
Author: Michael J. Sosulski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351880152
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Book Description
In 1767, more than a century before Germany was incorporated as a modern nation-state, the city of Hamburg chartered the first Deutsches Nationaltheater. What can it have meant for a German playhouse to have been a national theater, and what did that imply about the way these theaters operated? Michael Sosulski contends that the idea of German nationhood not only existed prior to the Napoleonic Wars but was decisive in shaping cultural production in the last third of the eighteenth century, operating not on the level of popular consciousness but instead within representational practices and institutions. Grounding his study in a Foucauldian understanding of emergent technologies of the self, Sosulski connects the increasing performance of body discipline by professional actors, soldiers, and schoolchildren to the growing interest in German national identity. The idea of a German cultural nation gradually emerged as a conceptual force through the work of an influential series of literary intellectuals and advocates of a national theater, including G. E. Lessing and Friedrich Schiller. Sosulski combines fresh readings of canonical and lesser-known dramas, with analysis of eighteenth-century theories of nationhood and evolving acting theories, to show that the very lack of a strong national consciousness in the late eighteenth century actually spurred the emergence of the German Nationaltheater, which were conceived in the spirit of the Enlightenment as educational institutions. Since for Germans, nationality was a performed identity, theater emerged as an ideal space in which to imagine that nation.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351880152
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Book Description
In 1767, more than a century before Germany was incorporated as a modern nation-state, the city of Hamburg chartered the first Deutsches Nationaltheater. What can it have meant for a German playhouse to have been a national theater, and what did that imply about the way these theaters operated? Michael Sosulski contends that the idea of German nationhood not only existed prior to the Napoleonic Wars but was decisive in shaping cultural production in the last third of the eighteenth century, operating not on the level of popular consciousness but instead within representational practices and institutions. Grounding his study in a Foucauldian understanding of emergent technologies of the self, Sosulski connects the increasing performance of body discipline by professional actors, soldiers, and schoolchildren to the growing interest in German national identity. The idea of a German cultural nation gradually emerged as a conceptual force through the work of an influential series of literary intellectuals and advocates of a national theater, including G. E. Lessing and Friedrich Schiller. Sosulski combines fresh readings of canonical and lesser-known dramas, with analysis of eighteenth-century theories of nationhood and evolving acting theories, to show that the very lack of a strong national consciousness in the late eighteenth century actually spurred the emergence of the German Nationaltheater, which were conceived in the spirit of the Enlightenment as educational institutions. Since for Germans, nationality was a performed identity, theater emerged as an ideal space in which to imagine that nation.
Music Theatre and the Holy Roman Empire
Author: Austin Glatthorn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009079948
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 391
Book Description
Packed full of new archival evidence that reveals the interconnected world of music theatre during the 'Classical era', this interdisciplinary study investigates key locations, genres, music, and musicians. Austin Glatthorn explores the extent to which the Holy Roman Empire delineated and networked a cultural entity that found expression through music for the German stage. He maps an extensive network of Central European theatres; reconstructs the repertoire they shared; and explores how print media, personal correspondence, and their dissemination shaped and regulated this music. He then investigates the development of German melodrama and examines how articulations of the Holy Roman Empire on the musical stage expressed imperial belonging. Glatthorn engages with the most recent historical interpretations of the Holy Roman Empire and offers quantitative, empirical analysis of repertoire supported by conventional close readings to illustrate a shared culture of music theatre that transcended traditional boundaries in music scholarship.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009079948
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 391
Book Description
Packed full of new archival evidence that reveals the interconnected world of music theatre during the 'Classical era', this interdisciplinary study investigates key locations, genres, music, and musicians. Austin Glatthorn explores the extent to which the Holy Roman Empire delineated and networked a cultural entity that found expression through music for the German stage. He maps an extensive network of Central European theatres; reconstructs the repertoire they shared; and explores how print media, personal correspondence, and their dissemination shaped and regulated this music. He then investigates the development of German melodrama and examines how articulations of the Holy Roman Empire on the musical stage expressed imperial belonging. Glatthorn engages with the most recent historical interpretations of the Holy Roman Empire and offers quantitative, empirical analysis of repertoire supported by conventional close readings to illustrate a shared culture of music theatre that transcended traditional boundaries in music scholarship.
Mozart's Operas and National Politics
Author: Martin Nedbal
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009257595
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 307
Book Description
This wide-ranging study explores how Czech and German nationalism influenced the reception of Mozart's operas in Prague over the centuries. It demonstrates the role of politics in the construction of the Western musical canon, revealing how both Czech and German factions in Prague used Mozart's legacy to promote their political interests.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009257595
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 307
Book Description
This wide-ranging study explores how Czech and German nationalism influenced the reception of Mozart's operas in Prague over the centuries. It demonstrates the role of politics in the construction of the Western musical canon, revealing how both Czech and German factions in Prague used Mozart's legacy to promote their political interests.
E. T. A. Hoffmann, Cosmopolitanism, and the Struggle for German Opera
Author: Francien Markx
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004309578
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 496
Book Description
In this first monograph on E. T. A. Hoffmann and opera, Francien Markx examines Hoffmann’s writings on opera and the challenges they pose to established narratives of aesthetic autonomy, the search for a national opera, and Hoffmann’s biography. Markx discusses Hoffmann’s lifelong fascination with opera against the backdrop of eighteenth-century theater reform, the creation of national identity, contemporary performance practices and musical and aesthetic discourses as voiced by C. M. von Weber, A. W. Schlegel, Heine, and Wagner, among others. The book reconsiders the traditional view that German opera followed a deterministic trajectory toward Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk and reveals a cosmopolitan spirit in Hoffmann’s operatic vision, most notably exemplified by his controversial advocacy for Spontini in Berlin.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004309578
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 496
Book Description
In this first monograph on E. T. A. Hoffmann and opera, Francien Markx examines Hoffmann’s writings on opera and the challenges they pose to established narratives of aesthetic autonomy, the search for a national opera, and Hoffmann’s biography. Markx discusses Hoffmann’s lifelong fascination with opera against the backdrop of eighteenth-century theater reform, the creation of national identity, contemporary performance practices and musical and aesthetic discourses as voiced by C. M. von Weber, A. W. Schlegel, Heine, and Wagner, among others. The book reconsiders the traditional view that German opera followed a deterministic trajectory toward Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk and reveals a cosmopolitan spirit in Hoffmann’s operatic vision, most notably exemplified by his controversial advocacy for Spontini in Berlin.
Contextualizing Melodrama in the Czech Lands
Author: Judith Mabary
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000168913
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Book Description
The mention of the term "melodrama" is likely to evoke a response from laymen and musicians alike that betrays an acquaintance only with the popular form of the genre and its greatly heightened drama, exaggerated often to the point of the ridiculous. Few are aware that there exists a type of melodrama that contains in its smaller forms the beauty of the sung ballad and, in the larger-scale works, the appeal of the spoken play. This category of melodrama is one that surfaced in many cultures but was perhaps never so enthusiastically cultivated as in the Czech lands. The melodrama varied greatly at the hands of its Czech advocates. While the works of Zdeněk Fibich and his contemporary Josef Bohuslav Foerster, a composer best known for his songs, remained closely bound to the text, those of conductor/composer Otakar Ostrčil reveal a stance that privileged the music and, given their creator’s orchestral experience, are more reminiscent of the symphonic poem. Fibich in his staged works and Josef Suk (composer/violinist and Dvořák’s son-in-law), in his incidental music reflect variously late nineteenth-century Romanticism, the influence of Wagner, and early manifestations of Impressionism. In its more recent guise, the principles of the staged melodrama reside quite comfortably in the film score. Judith A. Mabary’s important volume will be of interest not only to musicologists, but those working in Central and East European studies, voice studies, European theatre, and those studying music and nationalism.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000168913
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Book Description
The mention of the term "melodrama" is likely to evoke a response from laymen and musicians alike that betrays an acquaintance only with the popular form of the genre and its greatly heightened drama, exaggerated often to the point of the ridiculous. Few are aware that there exists a type of melodrama that contains in its smaller forms the beauty of the sung ballad and, in the larger-scale works, the appeal of the spoken play. This category of melodrama is one that surfaced in many cultures but was perhaps never so enthusiastically cultivated as in the Czech lands. The melodrama varied greatly at the hands of its Czech advocates. While the works of Zdeněk Fibich and his contemporary Josef Bohuslav Foerster, a composer best known for his songs, remained closely bound to the text, those of conductor/composer Otakar Ostrčil reveal a stance that privileged the music and, given their creator’s orchestral experience, are more reminiscent of the symphonic poem. Fibich in his staged works and Josef Suk (composer/violinist and Dvořák’s son-in-law), in his incidental music reflect variously late nineteenth-century Romanticism, the influence of Wagner, and early manifestations of Impressionism. In its more recent guise, the principles of the staged melodrama reside quite comfortably in the film score. Judith A. Mabary’s important volume will be of interest not only to musicologists, but those working in Central and East European studies, voice studies, European theatre, and those studying music and nationalism.
Morality and Viennese Opera in the Age of Mozart and Beethoven
Author: Martin Nedbal
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317094093
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
This book explores how the Enlightenment aesthetics of theater as a moral institution influenced cultural politics and operatic developments in Vienna between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Moralistic viewpoints were particularly important in eighteenth-century debates about German national theater. In Vienna, the idea that vernacular theater should cultivate the moral sensibilities of its German-speaking audiences became prominent during the reign of Empress Maria Theresa, when advocates of German plays and operas attempted to deflect the imperial government from supporting exclusively French and Italian theatrical performances. Morality continued to be a dominant aspect of Viennese operatic culture in the following decades, as critics, state officials, librettists, and composers (including Gluck, Mozart, and Beethoven) attempted to establish and define German national opera. Viennese concepts of operatic didacticism and national identity in theater further transformed in response to the crisis of Emperor Joseph II’s reform movement, the revolutionary ideas spreading from France, and the war efforts in facing Napoleonic aggression. The imperial government promoted good morals in theatrical performances through the institution of theater censorship, and German-opera authors cultivated intensely didactic works (such as Die Zauberflöte and Fidelio) that eventually became the cornerstones for later developments of German culture.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317094093
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
This book explores how the Enlightenment aesthetics of theater as a moral institution influenced cultural politics and operatic developments in Vienna between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Moralistic viewpoints were particularly important in eighteenth-century debates about German national theater. In Vienna, the idea that vernacular theater should cultivate the moral sensibilities of its German-speaking audiences became prominent during the reign of Empress Maria Theresa, when advocates of German plays and operas attempted to deflect the imperial government from supporting exclusively French and Italian theatrical performances. Morality continued to be a dominant aspect of Viennese operatic culture in the following decades, as critics, state officials, librettists, and composers (including Gluck, Mozart, and Beethoven) attempted to establish and define German national opera. Viennese concepts of operatic didacticism and national identity in theater further transformed in response to the crisis of Emperor Joseph II’s reform movement, the revolutionary ideas spreading from France, and the war efforts in facing Napoleonic aggression. The imperial government promoted good morals in theatrical performances through the institution of theater censorship, and German-opera authors cultivated intensely didactic works (such as Die Zauberflöte and Fidelio) that eventually became the cornerstones for later developments of German culture.
Theatre Histories
Author: Phillip B. Zarrilli
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0415462231
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 656
Book Description
Providing a clear journey through centuries of European, North and South American, African and Asian forms of theatre and performance, this introduction helps the reader think critically about this exciting field through fascinating yet plain-speaking essays and case studies.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0415462231
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 656
Book Description
Providing a clear journey through centuries of European, North and South American, African and Asian forms of theatre and performance, this introduction helps the reader think critically about this exciting field through fascinating yet plain-speaking essays and case studies.
Performing Unification
Author: Matt Cornish
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472037560
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 263
Book Description
Since the moment after the fall of the Berlin Wall, important German theater artists have created plays and productions about unification. Some have challenged how German history is written, while others opposed the very act of storytelling. Performing Unification examines how directors, playwrights, and theater groups including Heiner Müller, Frank Castorf, and Rimini Protokoll have represented and misrepresented the past, confronting their nation’s history and collective identity. Matt Cornish surveys German-language history plays from the Baroque period through the documentary theater movement of the 1960s to show how German identity has always been contested, then turns to performances of unification after 1989. Cornish argues that theater, in its structures and its live gestures, on pages, stages, and streets, helps us to understand the past and its effect on us, our relationships with others in our communities, and our futures. Engaging with theater theory from Aristotle through Bertolt Brecht and Hans-Thies Lehmann’s “postdramatic” theater, and with theories of history from Hegel to Walter Benjamin and Hayden White, Performing Unification demonstrates that historiography and dramaturgy are intertwined.
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472037560
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 263
Book Description
Since the moment after the fall of the Berlin Wall, important German theater artists have created plays and productions about unification. Some have challenged how German history is written, while others opposed the very act of storytelling. Performing Unification examines how directors, playwrights, and theater groups including Heiner Müller, Frank Castorf, and Rimini Protokoll have represented and misrepresented the past, confronting their nation’s history and collective identity. Matt Cornish surveys German-language history plays from the Baroque period through the documentary theater movement of the 1960s to show how German identity has always been contested, then turns to performances of unification after 1989. Cornish argues that theater, in its structures and its live gestures, on pages, stages, and streets, helps us to understand the past and its effect on us, our relationships with others in our communities, and our futures. Engaging with theater theory from Aristotle through Bertolt Brecht and Hans-Thies Lehmann’s “postdramatic” theater, and with theories of history from Hegel to Walter Benjamin and Hayden White, Performing Unification demonstrates that historiography and dramaturgy are intertwined.
Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation
Author: Anselm Heinrich
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317628861
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
The Second World War went beyond previous military conflicts. It was not only about specific geographical gains or economic goals, but also about the brutal and lasting reshaping of Europe as a whole. Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation explores the part that theatre played in the Nazi war effort. Using a case-study approach, it illustrates the crucial and heavily subsidised role of theatre as a cultural extension of the military machine, key to Nazi Germany’s total war doctrine. Covering theatres in Oslo, Riga, Lille, Lodz, Krakau, Warsaw, Prague, The Hague and Kiev, Anselm Heinrich looks at the history and context of their operation; the wider political, cultural and propagandistic implications in view of their function in wartime; and their legacies. Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation focuses for the first time on Nazi Germany’s attempts to control and shape the cultural sector in occupied territories, shedding new light on the importance of theatre for the regime’s military and political goals.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317628861
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
The Second World War went beyond previous military conflicts. It was not only about specific geographical gains or economic goals, but also about the brutal and lasting reshaping of Europe as a whole. Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation explores the part that theatre played in the Nazi war effort. Using a case-study approach, it illustrates the crucial and heavily subsidised role of theatre as a cultural extension of the military machine, key to Nazi Germany’s total war doctrine. Covering theatres in Oslo, Riga, Lille, Lodz, Krakau, Warsaw, Prague, The Hague and Kiev, Anselm Heinrich looks at the history and context of their operation; the wider political, cultural and propagandistic implications in view of their function in wartime; and their legacies. Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation focuses for the first time on Nazi Germany’s attempts to control and shape the cultural sector in occupied territories, shedding new light on the importance of theatre for the regime’s military and political goals.
Staging Blackness and Performing Whiteness in Eighteenth-Century German Drama
Author: Wendy Sutherland
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 131705086X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 277
Book Description
Focusing on eighteenth-century cultural productions, Wendy Sutherland examines how representations of race in philosophy, anthropology, aesthetics, drama, and court painting influenced the construction of a white bourgeois German self. Sutherland positions her work within the framework of the transatlantic slave trade, showing that slavery, colonialism, and the triangular trade between Europe, West Africa, and the Caribbean function as the global stage on which German bourgeois dramas by Friedrich Wilhelm Ziegler, Ernst Lorenz Rathlef, and Theodor Körner (and a novella by Heinrich von Kleist on which Körner's play was based) were performed against a backdrop of philosophical and anthropological influences. Plays had an important role in educating the rising bourgeois class in morality, Sutherland argues, with fathers and daughters offered as exemplary moral figures in contrast to the depraved aristocracy. At the same time, black female protagonists in nontraditional dramas represent the boundaries of physical beauty and marriage eligibility while also complicating ideas of moral beauty embodied in the concept of the beautiful soul. Her book offers convincing evidence that the eighteenth-century German stage grappled with the representation of blackness during the Age of Goethe, even though the German states were neither colonial powers nor direct participants in the slave trade.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 131705086X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 277
Book Description
Focusing on eighteenth-century cultural productions, Wendy Sutherland examines how representations of race in philosophy, anthropology, aesthetics, drama, and court painting influenced the construction of a white bourgeois German self. Sutherland positions her work within the framework of the transatlantic slave trade, showing that slavery, colonialism, and the triangular trade between Europe, West Africa, and the Caribbean function as the global stage on which German bourgeois dramas by Friedrich Wilhelm Ziegler, Ernst Lorenz Rathlef, and Theodor Körner (and a novella by Heinrich von Kleist on which Körner's play was based) were performed against a backdrop of philosophical and anthropological influences. Plays had an important role in educating the rising bourgeois class in morality, Sutherland argues, with fathers and daughters offered as exemplary moral figures in contrast to the depraved aristocracy. At the same time, black female protagonists in nontraditional dramas represent the boundaries of physical beauty and marriage eligibility while also complicating ideas of moral beauty embodied in the concept of the beautiful soul. Her book offers convincing evidence that the eighteenth-century German stage grappled with the representation of blackness during the Age of Goethe, even though the German states were neither colonial powers nor direct participants in the slave trade.