The Melodramatic Moment: Music and Theatrical Culture, 1790–1820 PDF
Preview The Melodramatic Moment: Music and Theatrical Culture, 1790–1820
The Melodramatic Moment The Melodramatic Moment Music and Theatrical Culture, 1790–1 820 Edited by Katherine Hambridge and Jonathan Hicks The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2018 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2018 Printed in the United States of America 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 54365-9 (cloth) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 56309- 1 (e- book) DOI: https:// doi .org /10 .7208 /chicago /9780226563091 .001 .0001 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Hambridge, Katherine, editor. | Hicks, Jonathan, 1984– editor. Title: The melodramatic moment : music and theatrical culture, 1790– 1820 / edited by Katherine Hambridge and Jonathan Hicks. Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Non- Latin script record Identifiers: LCCN 2017038273 | ISBN 9780226543659 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226563091 (e- book) Subjects: LCSH: Melodrama— History and criticism. | Music— 19th century— History and criticism. | Music— 18th century— History and criticism. Classification: LCC ML2050 .M43 2018 | DDC 781.5/52— dc23 LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2017038273 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper). Contents Historical Newspapers and Journals Cited * vii Foreword * ix James Chandler Chapter 1 The Melodramatic Moment 1 * Katherine Hambridge and Jonathan Hicks Chapter 2 Forms and Themes of Early Melodrama 25 * Ellen Lockhart Chapter 3 Continental Trouble: The Nationality of Melodrama and the National Stage in Early Nineteenth- Century Britain 43 * Diego Saglia Chapter 4 Between the Sacred and the Profane: French Biblical Melodrama in Vienna c. 1800 59 * Barbara Babić Chapter 5 Scenography, Spéculomanie, and Spectacle: Pixerécourt’s La citerne (1809) * 79 Sarah Hibberd Chapter 6 Compositional Gestures: Music and Movement in Lenardo und Blandine (1779) * 95 Thomas Betzwieser Chapter 7 Music and Subterranean Space in La citerne (1809) * 117 Jens Hesselager Chapter 8 The First English Melodrama: Thomas Holcroft’s Translation of Pixerécourt 137 * George Taylor Chapter 9 Benevolent Machinery: Techniques of Sympathy in Early German Melodrama 151 * Matthew Head Chapter 10 Vienna, 18 October 1814: Urban Space and Public Memory in the Napoleonic “Occasional Melodrama” 171 * Nicholas Mathew Afterword: Looking Back at Rousseau’s Pygmalion * 191 Jacqueline Waeber Acknowledgments * 199 Notes * 201 Bibliography * 247 Contributors * 265 Index * 269 Historical Newspapers and Journals Cited English The Anti- Jacobin Review and Magazine Le Beau Monde The Drama The Edinburgh Magazine, or Literary Miscellany The Lady’s Monthly Museum The Mirror The Monthly Magazine The Monthly Mirror The Monthly Register The Monthly Visitor The New Monthly Magazine The New Universal Magazine The Poetical Register The Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashion, Politics The Satirist, or Monthly Meteor The Theatrical Inquisitor The Theatrical Observer French Courrier des spectacles Gazette de France Le globe: Recueil philosophique et littéraire Journal de l’empire Journal des dames et des modes Magasin encyclopédique, ou Journal de sciences, des lettres et des arts Le ménéstrel Revue et gazette musicale de Paris German Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek Allgemeine deutsche Theaterzeitung Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung Allgemeine Theaterzeitung und Originalblatt für Kunst, Literatur, Mode und geselliges Leben Baierische Beyträge zur schönen und nützlichen Litteratur Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung Haude- und Spenersche Zeitung Hesperus: Encyclopädische Zeitschrift für gebildete Leser Intelligenz Blatt Jahrbücher der preußischen Monarchie London und Paris Magazin zur Geschichte des Deutschen Theaters Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände Der Sammler Vossische Zeitung Wiener Theaterzeitung Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode Wiener Zeitung Foreword James Chandler Melodramatic names an aesthetic category that has a varied history ex- tending back two and a half centuries and considerable currency in our own time, a currency that bridges ordinary language and more specialized disciplinary discourse. Even within its more technical usage, however, one has difficulty delineating precisely what the term means— this despite our being able to chart in great detail the early circulation of melodrama and its cognates across several national contexts over the last third of the eighteenth century. The story of origin for this category, indeed, appears to be surprisingly straightforward. It can be traced to Jean- Jacques Rous- seau’s Pygmalion, an innovative composition in words and music of the early 1760s, the same remarkable two- year span in which he produced three diverse literary masterpieces: La nouvelle Héloïse, Le contrat social, and Émile. Rousseau’s Pygmalion was first staged in 1770 and then retro- actively christened with the neologism mélo- drame by its author in 1774. So far, so good. The first difficulty that arises is that even in the period of melodrama’s emergence—t he period on which this book focuses— the term was already associated very explicitly with two distinct kinds of com- position and performance, a fact that is central to the conception of the current volume. One was a generally recognizable form of (mostly Ger- man) opera that put together composed music and spoken words in a way influenced by Rousseau’s innovation in Pygmalion. The other was a form of (mostly French) boulevard theater that featured new combinations of pantomime, speech, and musical accompaniment. As Katherine Ham- bridge and Jonathan Hicks make clear in their excellent introduction, the first is most strongly associated with the German composer Georg Benda, the second with the French playwright René- Charles Guilbert de Pixeré- court. Neither was confined to the Continent. German melodrama circu- lated in Britain, for example, and Pixerécourt’s 1800 play Cœlina gave rise
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