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Les Opéras Parfumés: Aspects of Orientalism in Nineteenth-Century French Opera
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
Extract
In his introduction to Orientalism, Edward Said defines the West's conceptualization of the East as a European invention which had been ‘since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences’. He further posits that this conceptualization has formed a basis on which western civilizations build self-definition. The Orient, therefore, has shifted from the imaginary to the actual. This creation of a culture in opposition has enabled Europeans to construct an impression of their collective ‘Self’ as reflected by the oriental ‘Other’. In this regard, Said formulates the notion of the orientalization of the Orient. Europe, in creating the demarcation of the world into East and West, has sought to locate its own proper topological and cultural place within a global scheme. While setting up the parameters of ‘western civilization’, the West defines the East. Since the known world at the time of this demarcation consisted of Europe, Asia, and the northern extremities of Africa, everything outside these designated parameters becomes the ‘Other’. Philosophies and concepts disorienting to western thought become the Orient.
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References
Notes
1. Said, Edward W., Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978), p. 1.Google Scholar
2. Dates refer to the first productions of the operas and not necessarily the dates of composition.
3. Said, , Orientalism, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar
4. Brody, Elaine, Paris, the Musical Kaleidoscope 1879–1925 (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1987), p. 66.Google Scholar
5. The most lasting stage work placed within an oriental frame is the Gilbert, and operetta, SullivanThe Mikado (1885)Google Scholar. In spite of its sham Japanese and unifying oriental musical motifs, however, and in keeping with its satirical purpose, the piece is more a lampoon of the constructions of British society than a meaningful exploration of Japanese culture.
6. ‘The audience and the stage complement each other, throwing back to each other the same gilded reflection: to the brilliant spectacle, to the stage costumes correspond the long gowns and ostentation of the bourgeois at play, searching for a forgotten nobility’, (my translation). See Clément, Catherine, L'Opéra ou la défaite des femmes (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1979), p. 11.Google Scholar
7. Said, , Orientalism, pp. 54–5.Google Scholar
8. Smith, Patrick J., The Tenth Muse (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), p. xviii.Google Scholar
9. Said, , Orientalism, p. 272.Google Scholar
10. All citations are from the various libretti which accompany the recordings in the discography provided. Due to the absence of page numbers in most of these booklets, I have tried to be specific as to a passage's location in the operas in the body of the article.
11. Smith, , The Tenth Muse, p. xixGoogle Scholar
12. ‘At Thaïs's. In the foreground is a statue of Venus, and in front of it an elaborate incense burner. The floor is covered with Byzantine rugs, embroidered pillows and lion skins. There are large onyx vases full of decorative reeds.’
13. An arid and wild beach on the island of Ceylon. There are a few huts made of bamboo and palm leaves; in the distance, on a rock overhanging the sea, the ruins of an old Hindu pagoda and the ocean sparkling under a dazzling sun. Some pearl-fishers are busy setting up their tents while others are dancing and drinking to the sounds of Hindu instruments.
14. Brody, , Musical Kaleidoscope, p. 67.Google Scholar
15. Barraud, Henri, La France et la musique occidentale (Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1956), p. 165Google Scholar: ‘In its historical development, in its essential character and its larger extension, western music is polyphonic music; that which bases itself on a system born in medieval France, which, arranging sound in a particular comparative hierarchy, gives the listener a sense of simultaneity and produces a synthesis of [the sounds'] multiple individualities within a spiritual unity experienced by the auditor as an absolute value. […]
But this definition is not sufficient in reviewing western music. Its boundaries are not so distinct. Harmonic language is [western music's] own creation, but the melodies, which from the outset were its raw material, came to it from the Orient.’ (my translation)
16. Said, , Orientalism, p. 190.Google Scholar
17. Brody, , The Tenth Muse, pp. 152–3.Google Scholar