This chapter provides an introduction to how Vaughan Williams’s music was received in interwar continental Europe, particularly within music magazines and scholarly periodicals. It is in two sections. The first considers the different contexts in which it was heard: choral performances of the Mass and folk-song arrangements, pieces played at International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) festivals, and performances of large-scale works in ‘seasonal’ orchestral concerts and recitals. For the most part, Vaughan Williams’s music was well received, even at ISCM festivals, where he might have been overshadowed by more radical figures; and the increased number of European performances that he received during the period reflected a growing interest among leading continental performers. The chapter then examines some of the writing on Vaughan Williams by continental critics, primarily those from France and Germany. These reveal two contrasting but not necessarily mutually exclusive narratives: one in which Vaughan Williams is presented as the leader of a new English school of composition that is underpinned by the language of English folk song, and another in which Vaughan Williams is considered in a pan-European context, where the influence of French impressionism is more keenly felt. A table of selected performances is also included.

In 2016, France celebrated Shakespeare in the aftermath of devastating terrorist attacks which questioned the very notion of citizenship. In this context, the Institute for research on the Renaissance, the Neo-Classical Era and the Enlightenment (IRCL), together with the Printemps des comédiens, the second biggest theatre festival in France in terms of attendance and international visibility, launched an innovative and experimental educational project on Shakespeare and citizenship, involving five secondary schools with different social profiles in Montpellier. Throughout the year, six classes of students aged 14 to 15 worked on a Shakespeare play with their English, French and Civic Education teachers, researchers from the IRCL, actors and the staff of the festival, to put on their own school festival. Its preparation is as important as the result, since it allows the partners to address the three main values attached to the notion of citizenship: civility, civic rights and duties, and solidarity.

To meet these objectives, the IRCL, the festival and the schools progressively opened the collaborative project to other partners, and now have to find common ground between scientific, artistic, educational and socio-political logics. Shakespeare is the nexus between the various institutions working together on a project that reaches far beyond its initial educational purpose to confront and question methods, practices and policies, suggesting new, cross-bordering paths to explore collaboratively – all this in the jovial atmosphere of the Montpellier festival.

The introduction provides an overview of certain recurring subjects of the study, including music’s role in fostering the “good cheer” of the banquet, the power of metasympotic representations, the use of music for communication and display, the social and political aspects of self- and class-display through social music, ways in which elite music-making at archaic and classical symposia influenced customs of later periods and their interpretation, and the interconnections between dining and the festival/theater in all periods.

Religious networks were part of the Ancient Greek economy and formed the basis of the Greek expansion in the Mediterranean. From the archaic period onwards, emporia and port cities were cosmopolitan environments in which different rituals and cults coexisted. Sanctuaries hosted cults, which often supported the activity of traders, but they were themselves economic centers under the authority of Greek cities. The property of the gods soon became the basis of economic development, including building activity, lending, and renting practices. As business units, Greek sanctuaries easily attracted large numbers of people, especially during religious festivals. They facilitated the development of commercial activities thanks to their financial capacity. The interactions of a sanctuary thus created several forms of sociability not limited to trade with the gods. Through several institutional mechanisms, as for instance asylia, many Greek cities were able to make their sanctuaries protected places where common codes of behavior applied to all participants. Myths and cults also supported the initiatives of cities to build new networks.

Positing that African countries willingly commemorate the transatlantic slave trade but forget the legacies of domestic slavery, this chapter examines the continuation of slavery in the shadows of the House of Slaves at Gorée Island. To examine these hidden legacies of slavery, this chapter looks at the history of the mixed-race Signares and their historical implication in the slave trade and domestic slavery. One of the moral conundrums in the legacy of the Signares is their mixed parentage of European fathers and subordinate Black mothers, placing race at the heart of the cultural creolization (métissage) that is celebrated today as the legacy of Signares. This chapter establishes that the heritages of the slave trade and the Signares are framed as irreconcilable discourses that lead to divergent interpretations of the material culture of the island. Examining a controversial statue, the island’s architectural legacies, the impersonators of Signares, and the Festival of Return, this chapter establishes that the antinomies between the legacies of the slave trade and the Signares are occasionally overcome in rituals of reconciliation.

Many festivals and celebrations take place worldwide on a regular basis. What is of special interest to us is not only the nature of those diverse festivities but also their origin and evolution. How did those festivals begin? How and why might they have changed over time? Several intriguing festivals in Spain provide fertile material for attempting to answer these questions. Four Spanish festivals stand out for their uniqueness and audacity: the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, made famous by Ernest Hemingway in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises; the tomato-throwing festival (La Tomatina) in Buñol; the construction of Human Towers in Catalonia; and, the Baby Jumping festival in Castrillo de Murcia. To one degree or another, the origins of these unforgettable celebrations involve religion, color, risk, and serendipity.

Chapter 8 of The Cambridge Companion to Sappho interrogates the question of how Sappho’s poems were performed, looking at different theories put forward by modern scholars and the difficulties involved in advancing a fully convincing hypothesis.

This chapter introduces the book and the questions which it asks: how individuals took part in the Panathenaia, why participating in these festivities called ‘all-Athenian’ was so important and how doing so created identities for the individuals and groups involved. It provides some basic information about the celebration and its history, as well as a discussion of previous scholarship. Then it introduces some key concepts and approaches used in the study: the importance of sacrifice, ritual and community and the ways in which social identities are created for individuals and groups. It discusses problems of the evidence for the Panathenaia, and it ends with a summary of the overall monograph.

The premiere of the Ring and the opening of the Bayreuth Festival in 1876 was the most significant European cultural event of the later nineteenth century. The idea of a festival after the model of classical Greek theatre was integral to the Ring. Performances were to be given free of charge under ideal conditions in a temporary theatre constructed for the purpose in a location away from the corrupting influence of modern industrial civilisation. The festival idea as finally realized was, however, far removed from the utopian ideals of the original conception. The scale and practical demands of Wagner’s enterprise forced him to compromise with shifting political paradigms and harsh economic reality. The first Bayreuth Festival thus became a meeting place not for Wagner’s classless society dedicated to the ideals of art, but of aristocracies and plutocratic elites. The democratic festival, originally conceived in the white heat of revolutionary fervour, became a symbol of artistic hegemony and the aggrandisement of the newly founded German Reich. The resulting artistic, cultural and highly potent political legacy was to extend far beyond the historical context in which the festival first came about.

Set in a fictional Shakespeare festival, Slings and Arrows, a short-lived Canadian series produced on a constrained budget, is often cited by US and Canadian critics and fans as one of the best television series of recent decades. The three seasons revolve around a main-stage production of a Shakespearean tragedy (Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear, respectively), the themes of which infuse hilarious and heartbreaking backstage plots interweaving the festival’s actors, directors, stage crew and business staff. The main arc of the show involves the festival’s struggle to stay culturally relevant and financially solvent, resulting in a paean to the power and importance of live theatre. Even as it knowingly winks at its own status as a television series, Slings and Arrows – which, in the decade since it originally aired, has garnered far more viewers and far greater critical acclaim through rebroadcasts, DVD releases and streaming digital availability – embodies the tension between the ephemeral nature of live theatre and the lasting media of film and television. This chapter conjoins an examination of the tension between television and live theatre with the exploration of culture; ‘culture’ both in terms of ‘high culture’ artistic productions such as Shakespearean theatre, and national culture.