Description
Book SynopsisA curated collection of Enlightenment operas, paintings, and literary works that were all marked by the "Telemacomania" scandal, a furious cultural frenzy with dangerous political stakes. Imaginatively structured as a guided tour, Opera and the Politics of Tragedy captures the tumultuous impact of the so-called Telemacomania crisis through its key artifacts: literary pamphlets, spoken dramas, paintings, engravings, and opera librettos (drammi per musica). Prominently featured in the gallery are two operas with direct ties to this aesthetic and political war: Mozart and Cigna-Santi's Mitridate (1770) and Mozart and Varesco's Idomeneo (1781). Reading and listening across the Enlightenment's cultural spaces (its new public museums, its first encyclopedias, and its ever-controversial operatic theater), this book showcases the Enlightenment's disorderly historical revisionism alongside its progressive politics to expose the fertile creativity that can emerge out of the ambiguous space between what is "ancient" and what is "modern."
Table of ContentsExhibition List Patrons of the Museum Guidebook A Mozartean Museum The Death of Tragedy Exhibiting Enlightenment Dramma per musica Map of the Exhibits Entrance Hall Arts, Letters, and Music Modern Antiquarian Spaces "La Poésie" and its Systems Arts and Letters The Lyrical Impulse Exhibit A The Poet's Prose: Mitridate Room 1 Literary Adventures in Télémacomania Treasonous Popularity Sensual Lyricism Tragic Prose on Trial Opera as Mediator Room 2 Mitridate's Operatic Poetry Allegorical Mithridates Political Mithridates Operatic Mithridates Transformative Farnace Exhibit B Paintings Unseen: Idomeneo Room 3 Imagi(ni)ng the Prose Epic Epic Values Painting Télémaque Myths Invisible and Unheard Epic Opera Room 4 Idomeneo's Operatic Canvas The Operatic Stage as Canvas The Composition of an Opera Portrait of a King Supernatural Angles Exit Regrets on Parting Decorative Luxury Prose Painting Declassification Bookshop
