Book contents
- Music and the Sonorous Sublime in European Culture, 1680–1880
- Music and the Sonorous Sublime in European Culture, 1680–1880
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Musical Examples
- Acknowledgements
- Contributors
- Sonorous Sublimes: An Introduction
- 1 Thunder or Celestial Harmony: French Theological Debates on the Sonorous Sublime
- 2 ‘A Pleasing Rape’: John Dennis, Music and the Queer Sublime
- 3 The Idea of the Past in Eighteenth-Century British Music
- 4 C. P. E. Bach and the Neoclassical Sublime: Revisions of a Concept
- 5 Cherubini’s Médée and Sublime Vengeance
- 6 When Does the Sublime Stop? Cavatinas and Quotations in Haydn’s Seasons
- 7 Counterfeits, Contraltos and Harmony in De Quincey’s Sublime
- 8 The Consecration of Sound: Sublime Musical Creation in Haydn, Weber and Spohr
- 9 Commanding Performances: Opera, Surrogation and the Royal Sublime in 1848
- 10 Wagner’s Sublime Effects: Bells, Cannon and the Perception of Heavy Sound
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Commanding Performances: Opera, Surrogation and the Royal Sublime in 1848
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 April 2020
- Music and the Sonorous Sublime in European Culture, 1680–1880
- Music and the Sonorous Sublime in European Culture, 1680–1880
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Musical Examples
- Acknowledgements
- Contributors
- Sonorous Sublimes: An Introduction
- 1 Thunder or Celestial Harmony: French Theological Debates on the Sonorous Sublime
- 2 ‘A Pleasing Rape’: John Dennis, Music and the Queer Sublime
- 3 The Idea of the Past in Eighteenth-Century British Music
- 4 C. P. E. Bach and the Neoclassical Sublime: Revisions of a Concept
- 5 Cherubini’s Médée and Sublime Vengeance
- 6 When Does the Sublime Stop? Cavatinas and Quotations in Haydn’s Seasons
- 7 Counterfeits, Contraltos and Harmony in De Quincey’s Sublime
- 8 The Consecration of Sound: Sublime Musical Creation in Haydn, Weber and Spohr
- 9 Commanding Performances: Opera, Surrogation and the Royal Sublime in 1848
- 10 Wagner’s Sublime Effects: Bells, Cannon and the Perception of Heavy Sound
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter explores the links between opera’s sublime mode and political power through two case studies from London in 1848: a 4 May performance of Vincenzo Bellini’s La sonnambula at Her Majesty’s Theatre and a 20 July performance of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots at Covent Garden. In these instances, the sublime was routed mainly through the star singer-actresses Jenny Lind and Pauline Viardot-Garcia respectively, whose performances were judged immeasurably moving and powerful by several critics and fans. But in each case Queen Victoria, too, carried her aura of ‘natural power’ into the performative circuit: with Lind, through demonstrative gestures of royal protection; with Viardot, through the framing of Les Huguenots as a ‘command performance’. This chapter argues that at each performance the queen and diva, supported by their respective entourages, formed a circuit in which the ‘command’ of the opera diva and the queen’s innate sovereignty mutually constituted, or ‘surrogated’, one other.
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- Music and the Sonorous Sublime in European Culture, 1680–1880 , pp. 222 - 244Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020