The Melodramatic Moment: Music and Theatrical Culture, 1790–1820

295 Pages·2018·4.368 MB·English

by  Katherine G. Hambridge, James Chandler, Jonathan Hicks

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
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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