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8 - Reimagining Rossini

Obituaries as Transnational Narratives of Italian Opera

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2022

Axel Körner
Affiliation:
University College London
Paulo M. Kühl
Affiliation:
University of Campinas, Brazil
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Summary

As the first textual document to be produced following an individual’s death, the obituary is often the starting point of any biography, a work which by nature requires a retrospective assessment of the experiences of a concluded life. Yet despite the value and relevance of biographical literature to the field of musicology, the obituaries of composers are rarely employed as source material by historians of music. The death of Gioachino Rossini, one of the first true global celebrities in the history of music, provoked a tremendous international media response whose full extent may only be speculated upon. This chapter examines and compares obituaries of the composer from the French, English, German and Austrian press, bringing to light in condensed form the then-predominant narratives of Rossini’s life. The reading of these obituaries reveals a general transnational perspective on Italian opera, typical of the first half of the nineteenth century, as well as the national peculiarities of Rossini’s reception.

Type
Chapter
Information
Italian Opera in Global and Transnational Perspective
Reimagining Italianità in the Long Nineteenth Century
, pp. 147 - 166
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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