The Singing Turk: Ottoman Power and Operatic Emotions on the European Stage from the Siege of Vienna to the Age of Napoleon

505 Pages·2016·7.4 MB·English

by  Larry Wolff

The Singing Turk

Larry Wolff
The
Singing
Turk
Ottoman Power and
Operatic Emotions
on the European Stage
from the Siege of Vienna
to the Age of Napoleon
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2016 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without
the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wolff, Larry, author.
Title: The singing Turk : Ottoman power and operatic emotions on the
European stage from the siege of Vienna to the age of Napoleon /
Larry Wolff.
Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2015047458 | isbn 9780804795777 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: lcsh: Opera—Europe—18th century. | Turks in opera. |
Exoticism in opera. | Operas—Characters.
Classification: lcc ml1720.3 .w65 2016 | ddc 782.1094—dc23
lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047458
isbn 9780804799652 (electronic)
Text composition: by Stanford University Press in 10/14 Minion
Cover design: by Bruce Lundquist
Cover image: Mahomet II, costume design for Le siège de Corinthe by artist
Hippolyte Lecomte. Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Operatic excerpts relevant to this text are indicated with appropriate links
on the web site www.singingturk.com
For Anatol
who moved to New York with us
and responded to the marketing survey
and was there for every stage of imagining and preparing this book
and sat across the table from me while I wrote it
Beaver: Are ya’ finished yet, Wally?
Wally: Well, I don’t know if I’m finished, but I think I
better stop.
—Leave It to Beaver, “Beaver’s Haircut”
“Pappataci dee mangiar! Pappataci dee dormir!”
Pappataci must eat! Pappataci must sleep!
—Rossini, L’italiana in Algeri
Tintin: Klow at last!
Milou: When are we going to eat?
—Hergé, King Ottokar’s Sceptre
“Arrive Renard en costume de religieuse.”
Renard arrives in the costume of a nun.
—Stravinsky, Renard
“It’s none of my business, but I think there’s a brace of
woodpeckers in the orchestra.”
—Otis B. Driftwood in A Night at the Opera
“A man never gets so old that he forgets how it was being a
little boy.”
—Ward Cleaver in Leave It to Beaver

Contents
Acknowledgments, ix
Introduction 1
1 The Captive Sultan: Operatic Transfigurations of the Ottoman
Menace after the Siege of Vienna 13
2 The Generous Turk: Captive Christians and Operatic Comedy
in Paris 51
3 The Triumphant Sultana: Suleiman and His Operatic Harem 79
4 The Turkish Subjects of Gluck and Haydn: Comic Opera in
War and Peace 108
5 Osmin in Vienna: Mozart’s Abduction and the Centennial of the
Ottoman Siege 146
6 “To honor the Emperor”: Pasha Selim and Emperor Joseph in
the Age of Enlightened Absolutism 188
7 The Ottoman Adventures of Rossini and Napoleon: Kaimacacchi
and Missipipi at La Scala 227
8 Pappataci and Kaimakan: Reflections in a Mediterranean Mirror 250
9 An Ottoman Prince in the Romantic Imagination: The Libertine
Adventures of Rossini’s Turkish Traveler 283
10 Maometto in Naples and Venice: The Operatic Charisma of the
Conqueror 305
11 Rossini’s Siege of Paris: Ottoman Subjects in the French Restoration 337
12 The Decline and Disappearance of the Singing Turk: Ottoman
Reform, the Eastern Question, and the European Operatic Repertory 359
Conclusion 389
Notes, 407 Index, 461

Acknowledgments
The Singing Turk is the first book that I have fully conceived, researched,
and written since moving to New York and NYU in 2006, a move that also
brought me a much greater involvement in the world of opera than my pre-
vious life in Boston (a life much more focused on symphony, baseball, and
parking). At NYU I was from the very beginning beholden to and inspired by
the brilliance, originality, and generosity of my friend Mike Beckerman, in
the Music Department. He encouraged me to be brave about taking on this
project involving music and gave me hugely helpful comments on several of
the chapters. My colleagues in the NYU History Department have also helped
me to think outside my usual comfort zone. I am grateful to Stef Geroulanos
who has encouraged me to think more creatively about the history of ideas. I
owe so much to Leslie Peirce who has generously offered me her guidance and
insight as I have tried to find my way around Ottoman subjects about which
she knows so much and I so little—and especially the subject of Suleiman
and Roxelana. I thank Katy Fleming who co-taught with me a course on the
eastern Mediterranean at exactly the moment when I was thinking through
the Mediterranean issues of this book. I have also benefited greatly from her
own analysis of the web of cultural constructions surrounding the Ottoman
figure of Ali Pasha of Ioannina, himself the subject of an opera.
I have been exceptionally lucky to work in the NYU History Department
under a series of chairs whose friendship and support have made it possible
for me to research and write this book: many thanks to Laurie Benton, Joanna
Waley-Cohen, and Barbara Weinstein. I am also hugely grateful to my asso-
ciates at the NYU Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, and want
to mention especially my assistant director, Mikhala Stein, with whom I am
so happy to be working again, in New York as previously in Boston, and our
ix