UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Repetitive Novelty: Italian Opera in Paris and London in the 1830s and 1840s Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2521w43c Author Cloutier, Eleanor Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Repetitive Novelty: Italian Opera in Paris and London in the 1830s and 1840s By Eleanor Clare Cloutier A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Music in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Mary Ann Smart, Chair Professor James Davies Professor Nicholas Mathew Professor Carla Hesse Fall 2016 Abstract Repetitive Novelty: Italian Opera in Paris and London in the 1830s and 1840s by Eleanor Clare Cloutier Doctor of Philosophy in Music University of California, Berkeley Professor Mary Ann Smart, Chair My dissertation connects music, politics, and society by focusing on the cultural life of the Théâtre Italien in Paris and the King’s Theatre in London. I claim that a culture of “repetitive novelty” emerged at the Italian opera houses as a means of managing the gap between the reality of a fractured, rapidly changing society and the ideals of a stable political and social situation. I argue that the need to stabilize rapid change was a particular civic imperative in Paris after the July Revolution and in London after the Reform Act of 1832. The worrying success of a repetitive work, the proliferation of ways to enjoy a celebrity, or the struggle of audience members to belong to an elite crowd all required people in Paris and London to reconcile their experiences of disorienting pace and change. My dissertation explores the ways in which politics pervaded social and fashionable life and the ways elite opera goers experienced, celebrated, and resisted change. The first chapter addresses the composition of the audience at the Théâtre Italien, drawing on archival documents written by opera-goers in combination with newspaper articles written about opera-goers. In the following chapter, I examine what these audiences listened to and saw in order to explore what the experience of repeated spectacles meant to them. My third chapter concerns the sheet music and objects that people bought to remember performances, which I use to open up the range of meaning that one opera singer could have in a burgeoning celebrity culture. Each of these chapters draws on a broad understanding of politics, which I treat as more than mere state governance and top-down official policy, but as something lived and experienced. I argue that the politics of intimate relations and the politics of music must be examined through texts and objects that provide glimpses into everyday life: letters bargaining for better seats, gifts between friends, gossip columns, and reviews of the twentieth performance of an opera. These ephemera, far from eschewing politics, supply the key to understanding a new and quietistic kind of modern political life. 1 For Bernard H. Mangelsdorf and Tili Boon Cuillé i Acknowledgments This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and love of friends, family, archivists, librarians, institutions, mentors, colleagues, and all the people who refuse to stay neatly within those boundaries. Thank you for combining scholarship and pleasure. At UC Berkeley, the Music Department, Graduate Division, Berkeley Connect, and the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program all supported me institutionally or financially as I worked and traveled. Thanks especially to my research assistants: Simrath Matharu, David Pankratz, Bret Hart, Catherine Swaidan, Elodie Yuan, Jacob Bjorseth, Jacob Barczak, Frank Yu, Kelly Dell, Yida Wang, Adela Waton, and Jeremy Lam - you made data a lot more fun. My grateful thanks to the librarians and archivists at Berkeley and abroad who helped me find and reproduce the content necessary for this enterprise: Susan Powell in the UC Berkeley maps library, and all the people at the British Library, John Rylands Library, Bodleian Library, Bibliothèque Nationale, and Archives Nationales. The D-Lab at Berkeley provided a wonderful second home for me, and I’m so grateful to those who collaborated and commiserated, including Camille Villa, Cindy Nguyen, Brendan Mackie, Brooks Ambrose, and Janet Torres. Thank you to those who have helped me work through ideas, whether at conferences or in seminars. I presented excerpts from Chapter One at the Digital Humanities Faire in April 2015 and 2016 and at “EZ Music” in March 2016, all at UC Berkeley. Parts of Chapter Two were presented at “Consuming Passions,” a conference organized by the French department at Washington University in St Louis (October 2013). Special thanks to the participants in Mary Ann Smart’s seminar on Italian Opera who workshopped Chapter Three in the fall of 2014, and to Ben Walton and the anonymous reviewers at the COJ who strengthened that chapter’s arguments and footnotes. The Music Department at UC Berkeley has been a welcoming home for scholarship and teaching. Thank you to all the staff, and especially to Jim Coates and Lisa Robinson, for making our work possible. I’ve been lucky enough to have wonderful mentors and colleagues who generously shared with me: thanks to James Davies for his wit and his dog, Nick Mathew for advice and his family, Richard Taruskin for office hours al fresco, and Carla Hesse for her valuable time. Mary Ann Smart was there from day one, asking questions, finding insights that I’d inadvertantly written, and bringing out the best, both in prose and personal development. Her belief in this project and unflagging energy improved my ideas and my life immeasurably. This work was supported by the generousity of friends and family. Thanks to the IPH crew, who has been there since the beginning: Ben Sales with his irreverance and Emma Cohen with her incisive questions and unwavering support made the best cohort I could ask for. Joe Loewenstein, Jamie Ake, Amy Lehman, Deva Estin, and Shelby Carptenter (who added Caitlin Brown to the mix) got us all through. At UC Berkeley, Melanie Gudesblatt and Jamie Apgar proofed both bread and drafts, while Anicia Chung Timberlake guided, supported, and humored me. I was also lucky enough to have the company of Emily Frey, who is a master of well-timed jokes, Alexandra Pressman, who makes everything better with her sense of perspective and fun, and Linda Louie, who is the best companion for cozy nights and train rides. Jen Wang provided very necessary “real talk,” while Rachel Vandagriff and Rachana Vajjhala went on countless walks with me. You’ve all made this chapter of my life much more enjoyable. ii My parents and siblings (both by birth and by marriage) encouraged me, buoyed me, and shared their love of words and playing with ideas. Thanks especially to Lory for setting my musical examples, to Mom for opera dates, and to Dad for reading aloud the good bits from Opera News. Regards to all. Noah Bronstein has supported me in so many ways and has been a stalwart companion in dealing with the vicissitudes of married and academic life. Thank you. My grandfather, Bernard Mangelsdorf, bought me my first cassette tape—a recording of Madama Butterfly, one of his favorite opera--when I was little. This dissertation is dedicated to the person who started my love of opera, and to the person who encouraged me to see opera as a viable course of study: Tili Boon Cuillé (with assistance from Herbert Lindenberger, tea and cookies, and her wonderful family). Thanks to both of them for sharing their love with me. All translations and errors are my own, unless otherwise marked. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgments ii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Musical Chairs 9 Chapter 2. The Queen of Elegance and Ennui 36 Chapter 3. How to Possess a Singer (Appropriately) 52 Works Cited 72 Figures 80 iv Introduction: Three Ways of Looking This dissertation asks who these people were, who went to the opera in Paris and London night after night, and what Italian opera meant to the different factions of society in the 1830s. Whether singing, spectating, or socializing, people at the opera mattered. They mattered socially: who met with whom, how they were dressed, and how they listened could determine where someone fell in the social hierarchy. They mattered politically: the rising middle class was not just a social issue, but one with practical and political consequences. Finally, people mattered musically and materially, as they sang, bought souvenirs, and sang again. At its most basic level, my argument is that Italian opera was central to the lives of the elite (and aspiring elite) in both cities, and that by examining relationships fostered at the theater from multiple angles, we can gain insight into the political and social situation of the 1830s. The political ramifications of music and theater are generally considered in terms of revolutionary change. Did theatergoers riot during the French Revolution? Did Verdi cause the Risorgimento? I consider instead the role music played during the relative peacetime of the July Monarchy and of the transition from late Georgian to early Victorian England. With Napoleon safely defeated, travel and relations could resume between the two countries, and the two Italian opera houses I examine entered into an agreement to share singers between them. This relative stability, and the singers who returned year after year to theaters in both capitals, allows for a different kind of inquiry. My study proceeds not from a theory of opera as a political catalyst or incendiary force, but from a conception of opera as both entertainment and social glue. Thus, the kinds of questions that ground these chapters are those that interrogate such concepts as stability, musical sociability, celebrity, and consumption.