The Politics of Opera in Handel's Britain
£105.00
- Author: Thomas McGeary
- Date Published: April 2013
- availability: Available
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781107009882
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The Politics of Opera in Handel's Britain examines the involvement of Italian opera in British partisan politics in the first half of the eighteenth century, which saw Sir Robert Walpole's rise to power and George Frideric Handel's greatest period of opera production. McGeary argues that the conventional way of applying Italian opera to contemporary political events and persons by means of allegory and allusion in individual operas is mistaken; nor did partisan politics intrude into the management of the Royal Academy of Music and the Opera of the Nobility. This book shows instead how Senesino, Faustina, Cuzzoni and events at the Haymarket Theatre were used in political allegories in satirical essays directed against the Walpole ministry. Since most operas were based on ancient historical events, the librettos - like traditional histories - could be sources of examples of vice, virtue, and political precepts and wisdom that could be applied to contemporary politics.
Read more- Corrects the mistaken approach to finding politics in Italian opera and opens the way for a more fruitful understanding of politics in opera in Britain
- Identifies benchmarks for assessing the partisan politics of Italian operas and opens the way for a more plausible interpretation of opera politics
- Relates Italian opera to political events in Britain, revealing how essays about events at the opera house had political objectives
Reviews & endorsements
'McGeary's argument is convincing throughout not only because he argues his points with great consistency, but because he documents them meticulously with evidence from an unusually large number of both primary and secondary sources.' The Newsletter of the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music
See more reviews'… [a] detailed and well-referenced study … it is certain to become essential reading not only for those interested in new directions for Handel scholarship but also for anyone with an interest in better understanding the impact of the turbulent political times on the cultural life of early eighteenth-century London.' Andrew Pink, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research
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×Product details
- Date Published: April 2013
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781107009882
- length: 422 pages
- dimensions: 244 x 170 x 24 mm
- weight: 0.93kg
- contains: 4 b/w illus. 5 tables
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Opera and political allegory: when is it an allegory? When is it political?
3. Politics in the Royal Academy of Music
4. The opera house, allegory, and the political opposition
5. Handel's Second Academy
6. Rival opera companies and Farinelli at the Court of Madrid
7. Politics, theatre, and opera in the 1730s
8. The opera stage as political history
Epilogue
Appendices:
1. Directors of the Royal Academy of Music
2. Operas of the Royal Academy of Music
3. Directors of the Opera of the Nobility
4. Operas of the Opera of the Nobility
5. Hanoverian celebratory pieces.
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