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Bethany Shae McLemore

2012 The Report committee for Bethany Shae McLemore

Certifies that this is the approved version of the following report:

A German Woman in Indian Garb:

German Orientalism and Ideal Womanhood in Spohr’s Jessonda

APPROVED BY

SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:

Supervisor: ______Michael C. Tusa

______Andrew Dell’Antonio A German Woman in Indian Garb:

German Orientalism and Ideal Womanhood in Spohr’s Jessonda

by

Bethany Shae McLemore, B.A.

Report

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School

of the University of Texas at Austin

in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Master of Music

The University of Texas at Austin

August 2012 A German Woman in Indian Garb:

German Orientalism and Ideal Womanhood in Spohr’s Jessonda

by

Bethany Shae McLemore, M.M.

The University of Texas at Austin, 2012

SUPERVISOR: Michael C. Tusa

Though Louis Spohr’s Jessonda is primarily remembered for being an early attempt at a continuous opera, its portrayal of India presents an interesting perspective of orientalism in Biedermeier Germany. German orientalism in the early nineteenth century was not motivated by imperialism, and thus differed fundamentally from French and

British orientalism. Jessonda presents a unique opportunity to study these varying motivations, due to the story’s frequent translation and adaptation to different national stages: France, Germany, England, and America. A comparison of these possible sources for the opera reveals the authors’ varying political and/or cultural motivations. Spohr’s and his librettist’s alterations to the story were motivated in part by Biedermeier values, but also by Spohr’s classicist aesthetics. Spohr believed that an opera’s story should appeal to the everyman but music should remain elevated, untainted by popular elements-- more in line with Mozart than Spontini. The women portrayed in Jessonda, however, are constructed to particularly cater to Biedermeier values: they are stripped of iv their agency, left with only passive loyalty to Brahma and to the male characters.

Jessonda (the character) may visually represent the exotic but, in line with Spohr’s aesthetics, she acts and sings like a European. Spohr’s musical and dramatic constructions enhance the Indian-versus-European and male-versus-female binaries, and illustrate common German conceptions of both the Indian and female Other.

v CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION...... 1

Jessonda: Structure and Plot...... 3

Four Widows in Four Nations: Textural Comparison of Jessonda’s Possible Sources...... 9

India as German Spectacle: Possible Motivations...... 20

Understanding Jessonda in terms of Operatic Convention...... 28

Exoticizing Woman: Bayadères, Jessonda, and Amazili...... 38

CONCLUSION...... 51

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 53

vi Introduction

Louis Spohr’s opera Jessonda (Kassel, 1823) is primarily remembered in musicological literature for being an early attempt at a continuous opera (discussed by

Anna Amalie Abert1), for its formal construction through a series of scene-complexes and use of reminiscence melodies2 (Clive Brown), and for its impact on the remainder of

Spohr’s career and on Wagner. The manifest exoticism in Jessonda, however, has been left largely unexplored, with the exception of its inclusion in Anke Schmitt’s Der

Exotismus in der deutschen Oper zwischen Mozart und Spohr. This essay will build on

Schmitt’s work, aiming for an understanding of Jessonda’s exoticism in terms of a broader cultural understanding of the German conception of India and the female Other.

There has been ample research on exoticism since the 1970s-- Edward Said’s

Orientalism (1978) was a groundbreaking work in this field, and was quickly followed by countless other publications. In musicology, however, the study of exoticism is a comparatively recent development. Beginning in the 1990s, the study of musical exoticism became much more common, with works by Ralph Locke, Mary Hunter, and

Linda Austern. This essay will pull from these scholars’ works, while adding something new to the discussion through viewing Jessonda in terms of German exoticism rather than exoticism filtered by imperialist motives. The study of exoticism through Jessonda is particularly valuable because the opera shares its plot with four other stage works from

1 Anna Amalie Abert, “Webers “Euryanthe” und Spohrs “Jessonda” als grosse Opern,” in Festschrift für Walter Wiora (30 December 1966), ed. L. Finscher and C. H. Mahlingh (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1967), 435– 40. 2 Brown, 159. 1 four different countries. Analysis of the same story from various perspectives affords a unique opportunity to see how different “Western” authors treated the same plot and the same characters, and in the end sheds light on how this relates to individual artists’ agendas and, more generally, to the cultural/historical situation in each of these locales.

Finally, because Jessonda is centered on the plight of an Indian woman, this paper examines how her gender might mitigate or emphasize her musical and dramatic exoticization, and how her construction might speak to German notions of womanhood.

2 Jessonda: Structure and Plot

Spohr began sketching Jessonda during his trip to Paris in 1821. In his autobiography, Spohr relates the story of buying the “novel” La Veuve de Malabar from his landlady on a rainy day in Paris, claiming that he “turned over in my mind the most favourable form for the composition of the opera, and began immediately after my return to Gandersheim to make the cast of a scene.”3 The “novel” was actually a play by French playwright Antoine-Marin Le Mierre, and despite Spohr’s claim that it was the sole source for his opera, it seems likely that Spohr would have been aware of Le Mierre’s story prior to 1821. Indeed there were several versions inspired by Le Mierre: English adaptations in both the U.S. and England, a German adaptation by Carl Martin Plümicke, and a German sequel that later inspired Peter Winter’s opera Marie von Montalban.

Though it is unknown whether Spohr had access to all of these versions, he would have undoubtedly been aware of both the German adaptation by Plümicke and Winter’s opera; he does not mention either of these German adaptations, though he does discuss Winter’s

Das Unterbrochene Opferfest in his autobiography.

Although Clive Brown does call attention to other adaptions of the La Veuve du

Malabar story, he does not discuss variants or similarities in the stories, nor whether or not Spohr was influenced by them. Regardless of whether or not Spohr knew the English or American versions, a discussion of variants between Jessonda and all previous versions of the story will serve to illuminate varying motivations and contexts. The fact

3 Louis Spohr, Autobiography, ed. Frederick Freedan (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969): 2-140. 3 that this story enjoyed success in four different countries shows that it adapted well to different cultural contexts. In his article, “Sati in Philadelphia: The Widow(s) of

Malabar.” Jeffrey Richards writes,

If the interest in The Widow of Malabar were only ethnographic, the play would have been seen simply as a curiosity and no more for European audiences thousands of miles removed from the scene of action. That some versions or other remained in repertory in France, England, Germany, and the United States for as much as a decade or more in each case suggests that the local audiences saw something of themselves in the sati-and-rescue situation.4

Spohr’s and librettist Eduard Gehe’s opera is set in sixteenth-century Goa and centers on an Indian woman, Jessonda, who is expected to self-immolate on her dead husband’s funeral pyre. The opera opens inside a pagoda, with Brahmins and bayadères5 mourning the death of the rajah, who lies on his bier downstage (No. 1, Introduction).

Dandau, the High Priest, charges Nadori, a young Brahmin, to deliver a message to the rajah’s widow telling her she must undergo ritual sati (No. 2, Recitative). Despite

Nadori’s reservations, he agrees to deliver the message and will try to avoid his own corruption (through contact with women) in the process (No. 3, Duet). After his departure, an Indian officer informs Dandau that the Portuguese occupiers, who are bound by a peace treaty with the Indians, are entering the town led by their general,

Tristan d’Acunha (No. 4, Recitative; No. 5 Arie mit Chor). In scene two, the opera moves from the public sphere to the private, to Jessonda’s home. Jessonda is already

4 Jeffrey H. Richards, “Sati in Philadelphia: The Widow(s) of Malabar,” American Literature 80, no. 4 (December 2008): 664. 5 Bajadere (German), or bayadères (French). Word originates from Portuguese word “bailar”, “to dance.” Bayadères were dancers who lived in the temple-- they served a religious role-- but were also courtesans. Binita Mehta, Widows Pariahs, and Bayadères: India as Spectacle (Cranbury, NJ: Bucknell UP, 2002), 217. 4 aware of and resigned to her fate. She asks her sister, Amazili, to tell her the story of

Jessonda’s romance years before with a Portuguese man named Tristan (No. 6,

Recitative). This narrative recalls their history up to their eventual separation due to her betrothal to the rajah (No. 7, Recitative and Aria). Although Amazili retains hope for

Jessonda’s rescue by the Portuguese occupiers, Jessonda is prepared to die, and the bayadères prepare her for the ritual (No. 8, Recitative). Nadori enters and is overcome by the women’s beauty (especially Amazili’s) and is unable to deliver his message; he resolves to save Jessonda (No. 9, Finale).

5 Act Piece Key(s) Characters Overture eb, Bb, Eb -- Act I No. 1- Intro. c, Eb, c, C, a, C Bayadères, Braminen, Dandau, & Nadori No. 2 - Recit modulatory Dandau and Nadori No. 3 - Duet Eb Dandau and Nadori No. 4 - Recit ~~ c Dandau and Officer No. 5 - Arie mit Chor c, C Dandau and Officer I,ii No. 6 - Recit. modulatory Jessonda and Amazili No. 7 - Recit and Arie e, g, G, Ab Jessonda No. 8 - Recit. modulatory Jessonda and Amazili No. 9 - Finale b, ~C, ~G, ~Ab, C (a) Jessonda, Amazili, Nadori ACT 2 No. 10 - Intro. ~D Portuguese and Lopes (Recit) ~F,~b, D Tristan and Lopes Waffentanz D, G, D Portuguese Soldiers No. 11 - Recit. modulatory Lopes, Tristan No. 12 - Arie g, G, g, G Tristan No. 13 - Recit. modulatory Lopes, Tristan No. 14- Recit. F~ Jessonda and Amazili No. 15 - Duet A Jessonda and Amazili No. 16-Recit & Rondo ~F~ Introduction (Rondo) E Nadori No. 17 - Recit. modulatory Amazili enters No. 18 - Duet Ab, Eb, Ab Nadori and Amazili No. 19a/b ~A Amazili No. 20 - Finale F Jessonda and bayadères ~D + Tristan and Nadori Eb, C, F Dandau Enters ACT 3 No. 21 - Intro. ~C -- No. 22 - Recit. e~ Lopes No. 23 - Recit. modulatory Lopes, Tristan No. 24 - Recit F~Ab Nadori, Lopes, and Tristan No. 25 - Terzett E Nadori, Lopes, and Tristan No. 26 - Chor und Solo g, a Bayadères and Braminen d, g, c + Dandau No. 27 - Recit. und Arie ~a~ Jessonda and bayadères E~ Jessonda Arie Bb Jessonda No. 28 - Finale ~Eb Amazili and Jessonda modulatory + Dandau, bayadères, and Braminen ~c + Indischer Offizier Eb + Tristan and Portuguese soldiers

Figure 1. Jessonda Outline

6 Act II introduces the Portuguese soldiers, ready for battle, in an open space (No.

10, Introduction). Tristan’s arrival is celebrated with a Waffentanz. The colonel, Pedro

Lopes, reminds Tristan of the woman he fell in love with years earlier, and Tristan recounts their history and the hope that he might see her again (No. 11, Recitative; No.

12, Aria). The men see a group of women approaching, to whom Tristan had given his promise of safe passage to the ritual bath, and the Portuguese exit (No. 13, Recitative).

Still unaware of his presence in India, Jessonda and Amazili stop to weave a garland in

Tristan’s honor (No. 14, Recitative; No. 15, Duet). After they leave the area, Nadori appears, still resolute to save Jessonda, and decides to get the Portuguese general’s support (No. 16, Recitative and Rondo). When Amazili reenters, Nadori professes his love to her and Amazili returns his affection, in part because of his dedication to her sister’s life (No. 17, Recitative; No. 18, Duet). Nadori exits, and Amazili sings of her love for Nadori (No. 19, Recitative and Aria). Jessonda and the bayadères return, having finished the ritual bath, and Tristan and Nadori enter, prompting Jessonda and Tristan’s recognition and duet. Dandau and the Brahmins enter, interrupting the couple’s reverie, and attempt to separate them, but Tristan protects Jessonda. Jessonda’s reunion with

Tristan has given her a renewed desire to live. Though the Brahmins propose a battle to settle the issue, both Dandau and Tristan remind them that they are bound to peace by a treaty. For Tristan, the immolation now seems inevitable because he cannot intervene on

Jessonda’s behalf (No. 20, Finale).

7 The third act begins inside Tristan’s tent, where Pedro summarizes Tristan’s duty- versus-love predicament (No. 22, Recitative; No. 23, Recitative). Nadori enters with news that the Brahmins have set fire to the Portuguese ships, thereby breaking the truce and freeing Tristan to take action. Tristan is for a moment torn between leading his troops and saving Jessonda, but Nadori assures him the sati will not take place until dawn and leads Tristan through an underground tunnel to the town (No. 24, Recitative; No. 25,

Terzett). Back at the pagoda, a storm rages, and lightning strikes the picture of Brahma to the ground. The Brahmins and bayadères believe this to be a sign of Brahma’s wrath and decide to proceed with the sati right away in order to appease him (No. 26, Chor und

Solo). Jessonda appears and has a sudden vision of a fresh grave before her. She too calls on Brahma to let the pouring rain put out the fire of the pyre (No. 27, Recitative and

Aria). Amazili enters to tell Jessonda that the Portuguese are coming to rescue her, but

Dandau says that she will be dishonored unless she submits to the sati. An Indian officer rushes in with news of the Indian troops near defeat. Panicked, Dandau decides to kill

Jessonda himself rather than let the ritual be interrupted. Tristan rushes in just in time to save her, which causes the Indians to flee. Tristan gives Amazili to Nadori to reward his bravery, and they all praise God for their victory (No. 28, Finale).

8 Four Widows in Four Nations: Textural Comparison of Jessonda’s Possible Sources

Spohr’s adaptation of Le Mierre’s story departs from previous versions in many ways. Character names, the nationality of the European soldiers, and the setting differ in each version, as is shown in figure 2.

Version The Secondary The The Soldiers’ Setting Widow Female European Young Identity Character General Brahmin

Spohr/ Jessonda Amazili Tristan Nadori Portuguese 16th- Gehe century (1823) Goa

Le Mierre Lanassa, Fatime Montalban Jeune French Malabar (1770) “la veuve” Bramine Coast

Plümicke Lanassa Palmira Montalban Ein junger European Malabar (1789) Bramin Coast

Humphrey Lanissa Fatima Montalban Young French Malabar s (1790) Bramin Coast

Starke Indamora Fatima Raymond Young English Malabar (1799) Bramin Coast

Figure 2. Character Differentiation

Spohr departs from his only admitted source, La Veuve du Malabar, in several ways. Le Mierre’s play was first performed on 30 July 1770 by the Comédiens François, and then again with greater success on 29 April 1780. The widow, Lanassa, who is almost exclusively referred to as “la veuve,” was not married to the Rajah, but simply to a

“famous Indian.” The “Nadori” character, here called simply the “Jeune Bramine,” is again sympathetic to la veuve, but here the young Brahmin speaks at length on the unjust nature of India’s customs, especially for women, even in the first scene. He says that the 9 sati is “un spectacle cruel” and “barbare.”6 In view of the likelihood that Le Mierre conceived of his play as a symbolic critique of rigid clericalism in France, Roberts writes that “the cumulative effect of such language may have less to do with the literal enactment of sati than it does with the interest of the French audience to be aware of cruelty and barbarism at home.”7 The young Brahmin thus steps outside his own culture and is portrayed as a sympathetic figure, possessing qualities similar to an enlightened

European, capable of seeing the faults of his own culture. In this way, perhaps Le Mierre wrote himself into the young Brahmin, as a critic-from-within.

The young Brahmin’s motivation for saving the widow is different than Nadori’s.

Instead of gaining greater sympathy for Jessonda through his love of her sister, Amazili, in La Veuve du Malabar he realizes that Lanassa is in fact his own sister from whom he was separated in his youth. Originally, the secondary female character, Fatime in Le

Mierre’s play, is not the widow’s sister, but her friend. The impetus behind the young

Brahmin’s determination to save the widow is thus attributed to love for his sister, the widow, rather than romantic love for the widow’s sister. It is important to point out, however, that the young Brahmin recognizes the injustice of the ritual long before he realizes his relationship to the widow. These changes to the plot in Jessonda can in part be attributed to Spohr and Gehe’s desire to have two couples (Jessonda-Tristan; Amazili-

Nadori) in line with traditional operatic practice. Perhaps they also believed romantic love to be a stronger motivation than sibling fidelity and a more believable motivation for

6 Richards, 650. 7 Richards, 650. 10 the young Brahmin’s actions. The creation of the second couple also enables the use of

Amazili as a sort of objectified reward for Nadori’s bravery, mirroring Tristan’s reward of

Jessonda. Or perhaps a blood relation between Jessonda and Nadori would connect her too closely to the High Priest, since he acts as Nadori’s adoptive father.

Spohr and Gehe also change the nationality of the occupying soldiers from French to Portuguese. The fact that they did not make them German soldiers probably reflects the lack of any German involvement in India, but it could also be Spohr’s attempt to distance himself from his sources. Though France was no longer a colonial power in

India by the time of La Veuve du Malabar, it had been within Le Mierre’s memory, and it hoped to become one again. Spohr and Gehe are the only authors to set the story in a remote historical time period. This turn to historical topics reflects the current vogue for presenting modern history in opera, and also reveals that Gehe did some research on

India’s colonial history. The Portuguese actually did occupy Goa in the sixteenth century and in fact were the first colonial power to outlaw sati in 1510.8 The change may also reflect lingering anti-French sentiment caused by the French occupation of German lands which ended in 1814.9

Another major difference between Spohr’s opera and its source is at what moment recognition occurs between the widow and the general. In the opera, the mutual recognition occurs at the end of the second act, when Tristan first learns about the sati and is reunited with Jessonda. In Le Mierre’s version, Montalban learns of the impending

8 Sakuntala Narasimhan, Sati: A Study of Widow-Burning in India (Delhi: Penguin India, 1990), 109. 9 James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770-1866 (Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, 1989), 257. 11 sati and the widow’s identity in Act III from a French officer. This action corresponds to the point in the opera when Nadori reports the ships being burned. When the young

Brahmin informs him of Lanassa’s upcoming self-immolation, Montalban is immediately emboldened in his quest to save Lanassa and, again, by way of an underground tunnel, is able to sneak into the city and arrive just before Lanassa throws herself on the pyre. It is only in this last scene that Lanassa knows Montalban is even in India; her only hope prior to his arrival lay with her brother.

Spohr’s and Gehe’s most significant change is in what constitutes the difference between the European and Indian characters. In Jessonda, it is clear that Nadori, and to a lesser extent, Jessonda and Amazili, harbor a sort of inherent Christianity and thus are characterized more in line with the Portuguese than the Indians. Because of their almost

Christian morality, Nadori, Amazili, and Jessonda recognize the immorality of sati, just as the young Brahmin’s internal enlightened views enabled him to criticize Indian ritual in

Le Mierre. But Le Mierre never glorifies Christian values through his play. The general is not fighting to convert anyone; rather, Montalban is simply “a sensitive caring human being”.10

This fundamental difference is clearly related to the authors’ different historical place. In pre-revolutionary France, Le Mierre depicted sati in order to “criticize religious despotism, fanaticism and the excesses of the clergy, and to further the values of the

Enlightenment.”11 Actually, Le Mierre was not the first to use sati as an allegory for

10Mehta, 59. 11 Mehta, 58. 12 clerical fanaticism. Le Beau de Schosne’s Melézinde (1758) centers around a husband who fakes his death to test if his wife is faithful and will perform sati. But Le Mierre’s situation is much more serious: the threat of death is much more real for Lanassa and there is no reason to expect that she will fail to fulfill her duty. The threat must be legitimate in order for Le Mierre to show how humanity triumphs over oppressive religious fanaticism.

Considering the opera’s premiere in Biedermeier Germany, the shift to promoting

Christian over Enlightenment ideology is fitting. But Spohr was not the first to make this change. Indeed, in a German version by Carl Martin Plümicke that premiered over thirty years before the opera, the shift to Christian values is already in place. Plümicke adapted

Le Mierre’s play into a German version entitled Lanassa, which premiered in Berlin in

1789. Though he retained the five-act structure, setting, and characters of La Veuve du

Malabar, Plümicke extended the third act and added musical numbers in Act V, composed by Johann André. Plümicke’s most significant alteration to Le Mierre’s plot comes in the final scene, in which the High Priest, instead of being exiled, commits suicide with the line “Fluch dir--und mir selber!” / “Curse you-- and myself!”12

This addition may have been Plümicke’s attempt to strengthen the last scene by providing a sense of justice for Lanassa without sacrificing the pure goodness of

Montalban or the young Brahmin. Perhaps this justice is made more appropriate because it fits his crime: the suicide the High Priest expects of Lanassa he suffers himself. His

12 Carl Martin Plümicke, Lanaßa: Trauerspiel in fünf Akten (Berlin: Friedrich Maurer, 1789), 93. 13 suicide also makes clear his dedication to Brahminic law: he would rather die than see the end of Indian ritual. The victory of Montalban over the High Priest can be read as the victory of Christianity over paganism, which is especially evident in the changes to

Montalban’s last lines of the play. Whereas in Le Mierre’s version, Montalban ends the play scorning cruelty, pride, and violence in favor of humanité, Plümicke’s Montalban ends the play exhorting the Indians: “Verbergt [verbürgt] euch, Unglückliche! Entflieht in Felshöhlen! Dort fällt auf euer Antlitz--und betet Ihn an!”/ “Prove yourselves, unfortunate! Escape to caves! There, fall on your face--and worship Him!”13

This shift can be explained by contrasting Le Mierre’s original purpose, to criticize clerical inhumanity, with Plümicke’s; the latter reworked Le Mierre’s play so that it fits the standard dramatic trope of heathen barbarians redeemed by Christian colonizers. As with Spohr and Gehe, Plümicke’s purpose is not social or political reform.

He turns Le Mierre’s play into a standard conversion narrative that influences all subsequent versions of the story, including Jessonda. It seems likely that Spohr knew this version of the play, since it was popular well into the nineteenth century. Indeed, Simon

Mayr produced a version of Lanassa in Italy in 1817, and it was likely that Spohr was aware of this production, since he had met Mayr in Italy just before this performance.14

A year after Plümicke’s Lanassa opened in Berlin, an English adaptation by an

American playwright, David Humphreys, was premiered in Philadelphia. Humphreys’ play, The Widow of Malabar, closely follows Le Mierre’s play, but subtle changes create

13 Plümicke, 96. 14 Brown, 157. 14 a uniquely American work in the post-revolutionary, still Francophile capital of the U.S.

Given the German lands’ recent history with the French in the American Revolution, a

French play could easily be seen as a nationalist work. In his article, “The Widow(s) of

Malabar”, Jeffrey Richards writes, “[Humphreys’] play is, first of all, a nationalist act, not only as a claim for the validity of American letters but also for its comprehension of

Le Mierre’s theme of liberty in an American context.”15 Humphreys is able to keep the

French soldiers French and still communicate American concerns.

An added prologue and epilogue written by Humphreys and John Trumbull

“explicitly compare the situation of American women with that of those in the play.”16

The widow’s entrapment serves as a metaphor for the traditional limitations women faced in the Western world. This feminist angle that Humphreys highlights in the prologue and epilogue are carry-overs from Le Mierre’s original and play to America’s self- identification as “the universal asylum for women.”17 Yet the story does not depict women breaking from suffering, but being heard and saved by men. Indeed, though both

Le Mierre and Humphreys speak on behalf of women’s rights, their heroines are passive.

Of all the versions, only Mariana Starke’s English adaptation, The Widow of Malabar, depicts a widow capable of effecting her own freedom.

Starke, a minor English playwright better known for her later travel guides, created her own English adaptation which premiered in London in 1799. Starke was

15 Richards, 648. 16 Richards, 652. 17 Richards, 656. 15 familiar with both Le Mierre’s La Veuve and Plümicke’s adaptation, but that she did not know about Humphrey’s version is evident from her “advertisement” preceding the printed edition of the play, which claims her version as the first in English. Interestingly,

Starke actually lived in India in her childhood, because her father, Richard Starke, was the governor of Fort St. George in Madras. Thus Starke’s play represents the most personal adaptation; Starke had first-hand experience with British colonization of India through her father, and she treats the widow with more sympathy, as Starke herself was dealing with inequity in England. Marie Dakessian writes,

Unlike male writers, who frequently describe satis with admiration as they focus upon the devotion and selflessness of the Hindu wife, a figure whose striking exotic beauty charms and captivates, women writers explore the complex material and physical realities involved in sati.... women poets, playwrights, and diarists exhibit a keen awareness of the social, religious, and ethical constraints imposed upon a woman who ‘decides’ to die on her husband’s funeral pyre... They do so as part of a larger commentary on their own experiences as British women and thereby reveal both complicities with and resistances to contemporary patriarchal colonial discourse.18

In contrast to Le Mierre’s critique of the clergy, Plümicke’s promotion of

Christianity over barbarism, and Spohr’s promotion of the ideal Biedermeier woman through portraying the “the devotion and selflessness of the Hindu wife,”19 Starke uses the story to critique British patriarchy and imperialism, while retaining Plümicke’s pro- conversion agenda. Indeed, Dakessian points out that the Christian aspect of the play is of vital importance to this adaptation, since a conversion motive was key to moral

18 Marie A. Dakessian, “Envisioning the Indian Sati: Mariana Starke’s The Widow of Malabar and Antoine Le Mierre’s La Veuve du Malabar,” Comparative Literature Studies 36, no. 2 (1999): 110. 19 Dakessian, 110. 16 legitimization of England’s continuing presence in India. And while Starke may be progressive in some respects, it is important to keep in mind that her personal connection with colonialism keeps her from outright criticism. Starke’s debt to Plümicke can also be seen in her retention of the High Priest’s suicide.

Even in the prologue, the powerlessness of the widow is made explicit. She is

“by double chains confined”: she must choose between death or disgrace. Dakessian asserts that this powerlessness reflects the powerlessness of British women, who were completely reliant on men because of their inability to handle their own finances and would be ostracized if they were to break from this patriarchal system. Starke’s changes give the widow, here named Indamora, far more agency. As in earlier versions, she is resigned to undergo the sati, yet here it is not simply because it is her duty to her husband. She “remakes sati on her own terms” through believing that she deserves death because she loved Raymond secretly while she was married to someone else.20 Indamora also places conditions on her ritual, by insisting that her brother lead her to the pyre. And in the last scene, when the High Priest threatens her brother’s life, Indamora intervenes on his behalf, threatening not to go through with the ritual unless her brother’s life is spared. The ritual is thus “reduced to an instrument of negotiation, one which Indamora now gladly takes up as the only means, however costly, to secure an end, namely her brother’s life.”21 In Starke’s version, Indamora only reaches the platform, and never actually climbs on the pyre as she does in La Veuve. Finally, as Indamora stands on the

20 Dakessian, 121. 21 Dakessian, 124. 17 platform, she thinks of Raymond, and thus privately transgresses the proper dutiful death expected of her. Dakessian writes, Le Mierre’s “helpless widow stands in sharp contrast to the portrait of the intelligent, resilient, and dynamic Indamora.”22

Though Le Mierre is the principal point of comparison for Dakessian, there are still proto-feminist aspects to the original La Veuve that also translate into Plümicke’s and

Humphrey’s versions. Le Mierre’s version depicts a widow who is resigned to her fate, but she is willing to question her duty after she discovers her brother. The young

Brahmin presents the true feminist musings, questioning ritual and bemoaning the plight of women. Spohr’s and Gehe’s opera, in contrast, represents the most patriarchal depiction, and thus represents the clearest contrast to Starke. By replacing the sibling relationship with a second romantic couple, Spohr and Gehe reduce the women to rewards for male bravery. In the Act III finale, Tristan says,

Seht hier den Mann, der uns geführet, den jetzt der Sieg mit Kränzen schmücket. Er trug für uns’re Leiden ein fühlend Herz und theile jetzt das Glück der Liebe. (zu Amazili) Du lächelst sanft, (sie zu Nadori führend) dein Lohn blüht hier.

Behold here the man who led us, whom now victory adorns with garlands. For our woes he had a sympathetic heart, and now shares the happiness of love. (to Amazili) You smile sweetly, (leading her to Nadori) here blossoms your reward.23

22 Dakessian, 126. 23 Louis Spohr and Eduard Gehe, Jessonda, 1823, Act III finale. 18 Even Amazili objectifies herself as a mere inducement for Nadori’s bravery:

Nadori: Alles könnt’ ich für dich wagen, sprächst du: Ich dank’ es dir! A: Mehr noch wird mein Herz dir sagen, rettest du die Schwester mir.

N: I could dare anything for you if you said, “I thank you!” A: My heart will say still more to you if you rescue my sister for me.24

In addition, Jessonda regrets the necessity of her death only after she reunites with

Tristan, and she is powerless to stop it, and is reduced to weaving garlands and praying for Brahma’s and the Portuguese soldiers’ intervention. The action ending in her eventual rescue rests entirely with the male characters.

24 Spohr and Gehe, Act II, no 18 Duet. 19 India as German Spectacle: Possible Motivations

A precedent for Indian subjects in the German-speaking world existed before

Spohr selected Le Mierre’s play for the subject of his opera Jessonda, and his audience was certainly familiar with the La Veuve story through Plümicke’s adaptation. Why did

Spohr choose to depict a story that had already enjoyed success on stage-- through both its theatrical adaptations and Winter’s operatic sequel--for the work that he hoped would finally jumpstart his career as an operatic composer and help change German opera altogether?

The answer to this question can be found in Spohr’s most important essay on opera, his Aufruf an deutsche Komponisten published in the 16 July 1823 issue of

Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, just twelve days before the premiere of Jessonda in

Kassel. The Aufruf was meant specifically to promote Jessonda as a model for the new direction of German opera. Among Spohr’s recommendations were the omission of spoken dialogue in favor of recitative, brevity, simplicity of plot and characters, and better librettos. Spohr believed that the weaknesses of recent German opera had been largely the result of poor librettos that did not appeal to the public. He writes,

Our first object... must be to select a subject that shall have sufficient interest to attract the multitude, otherwise our opera will have no chance of standing its ground long. If it attracts only the small number of the elect--the cultivated sons of taste-- the manager’s pocket will soon be left empty, and it will very shortly be quietly laid on the shelf.25

25 Louis Spohr, “Aufruf an deutsche Komponisten,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung no. 29 (16 July 1823): 462. Translation quoted from Louis Spohr, “An Address to German Composers,” The Harmonicon I (1898): 160. 20 Spohr believed that, in order to attract an audience, operas must be “enlivened with broad humour, or strongly seasoned with witcheries and incantations” and include “scope for splendid decorations, marches, and processions, to gratify the eye.”26 Clearly La Veuve’s emphasis on ritual fit these requirements and thus partially explains Spohr’s interest. Le

Mierre’s story possessed an even greater attraction because of its setting. In selecting this story, Spohr was not only catering to a desire for spectacle, but to a rising German interest in the Orient that was bolstered by Orientalist studies such as Josef Görres’s

Mythengeschichte der asiatischen Welt (History of the Myths of the Asiatic World) (1810) and Das Heldenbuch von Iran (The Book of Heroes of Iran) (1820).27

The German-speaking world’s absence from the Indian colonies formed a very different understanding of India than that held in France and Britain. German knowledge of India was hindered by their lack of direct involvement available to colonial powers.

Indeed, Suzanne Marchand writes, “the German world relied on the citizens of other imperial regimes to learn modern languages and extract texts for them.”28 Because of this restriction to secondary material, German orientalism has often been thought simply to mimic French and British sources. As a result, there has been relatively little scholarship regarding German orientalism, and major works such as Edward Said’s

Orientalism leave Germany out entirely. Said asserts that orientalism is a product of

French and British imperialism-- that depictions of the Orient were created in part to

26 Spohr, “Aufruf,” 462; 160. 27 Suzanne Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Race, Religion, and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009), 55. 28 Marchand, 57. 21 reinforce colonial power. Whereas German adaptations of French and British exoticism may retain the power differentials embodied in the original sources, Germans cannot be indicted for imperialist motives. Marchand presents an alternative view of orientalism, arguing that knowledge is not always used for power. She writes,

I do not think that all knowledge, orientalist or otherwise, inevitably contributed to the building of empires, or even to the upholding of Eurocentric points of view. . . . knowledge can be used in this way, but knowledge as understanding can also lead to appreciation, dialogue, self-critique, perspectival reorientation, and personal and cultural enrichment.29

While I believe it is important to recognize the Imperialist intentions inherent in French and British influence, the cause of Germans’ interests in India and the intent behind

German orientalist art must be examined further.

The upsurge in the German interest in India can be understood in part through historicism: the romantic’s desire to reconstruct one’s past in order to establish historical validity or to critique present-day materialism. Indeed, German romantics “became some of the Orient’s best champions in the period between about 1800 and 1820.”30 Romantics believed that the degeneration of contemporary culture could be improved by “a return to the past, to the origins, to the original, ‘pure’ language of man.”31 Thus the Orient’s common association “with the origins of humankind, language, and culture, with spirituality, mystery, and sensuality, with magical, iconoclastic, and esoteric forms of

29 Marchand, xxv. 30Marchand, 55. 31 Indra Sengupta, From Salon to Discipline: State, University and Indology in Germany 1821-1914 (Heidelberg, 2005), 1. 22 wisdom” 32 catered to the historicist impulse. India did not always represent a criticized

Other, but could also be used to signify an idealized Other, akin to “the pristine, moral state of man” that was “necessary to Europe’s self-understanding, to restore its lost self.”33

The German concept of India was largely fictional, however. Marchand points out that Germans’ reliance on secondary sources allowed “older romantic interests in folk poetry, ancient religions, original languages, and universal revelations to form the enduring core of scientific inquiry.”34 In other words, Germans used knowledge based on a mythical Indian past as representative of India at present, complete with barbarous religious ritual.

Spohr’s choice of a French story with an Indian subject must be viewed in this context. Clearly Spohr was attracted to the story not only for its visual potential, but also for its capacity to appeal to the public’s penchant for romanticized Oriental spectacle. As mentioned earlier, Spohr’s and Gehe’s changes to the setting and nationality of the colonizers show that they did some research. But the image of India presented in

Jessonda is a construction influenced by translated literary sources like Le Mierre’s drama and possibly by other versions of the La veuve story and other popular depictions of India. Spohr and Gehe did not intend to relate an accurate picture of India, but to represent artistically an almost mythical conception in line with the popular imagination.

32Marchand, 55-6. 33 Sengupta, 1. 34 Marchand, 57. 23 Regardless of Spohr’s and Gehe’s intentions and the German, less political brand of exoticism, however, Jessonda still reinforces the us-versus-them model, rather than an idealized, primordial image of India.

Although the attraction of the subject can be understood in these terms, what about the story’s musical potential attracted Spohr? The musical aesthetics revealed in his Aufruf helps answer this question and helps us understand the opera’s music as it was intended: not as music for the masses, but as cultivated music unsullied by the popular appeal of the subject.

Spohr believed that while considerations of subject should hinge on public taste, musical style should not be influenced by what is popular:

if we have been compelled to sacrifice the subject to the taste of the multitude, still we ought to be independent in the choice of our style, and clothe it in such music as is solid and expressive; this will at once be tolerated by the crowd, and indemnify the chosen few for the loss they sustained in the choice of subject.35

Spohr cites Weber’s Freischütz to demonstrate that while the use of popular melodies may make for a nationally beloved opera, it is often at the expense of quality and beauty.

Spohr believes music for the theater should remain refined and untainted by lower genres.

He writes, “as valuable as a national song is as such, still it is not fit for the more ennobled music of our theaters, from which the music of an ale-house ought as scrupulously to be excluded as its jests and vulgarity.”36 It is not solely the use of such

“vulgar” tunes but the mixture of high and low that Spohr finds problematic. This

35 Spohr, “Aufruf,” 462; 160. 36 Spohr, “Aufruf,” 462; 160. 24 sentiment is not exclusive to Spohr’s writings. Rather it is part of the aesthetic debate, with Spohr and Weber representing the principal representatives of the opposing sides, that was central to Jessonda’s reception.

Carl Dahlhaus describes this opposition as one between beauty and realism. Here, the term “realism” signifies music that possesses “the element of radicalism... the principle of mixing ‘high’ and ‘low’ styles, in contravention of the aesthetic and social rules requiring their separation; finally, the postulate that in the depiction of social phenomena their historical conditioning must be apparent.” 37 This sort of realism, often referred to as the “descriptive” in contemporary criticism, was most often attributed in the mid-nineteenth century to Berlioz and Liszt. But Spohr and fellow critics in the 1820s also censured Weber’s Der Freischütz for its descriptive musical language. The mocking chorus in Act I was harshly criticized by Hegel, and others criticized the “‘mocking laughter of the crowd, brilliantly supported by the realistic cackle of the two oboes playing in seconds,’... ‘the terrifying derisive laughter of Hell, where the two piccolos trill and squeal together’” in Kaspar’s drinking song, and “the folk-music colouring of the scoring in the waltz.” 38 Despite Spohr’s disapproval of Weber’s aesthetics, John

Warrack writes that the composer “may have been spurred to new efforts by [Der

Freischütz’s] popularity... (which he admitted his own music lacked)... [Spohr] cannot be blamed for setting his sights on what he regarded as something higher than the

37 Carl Dahlhaus, Realism in Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge UP, 1982), 9-10. 38 Dahlhaus, 35. Quoting Hermann von Waltershausen (1920). 25 sensationalism of the Wolf’s Glen.” 39 Spohr’s intentions for Jessonda in many ways mirror what Weber hoped to achieve in Euryanthe: both composers “gathered ingredients into his concept of German grand opera as a genre absorbing and transcending outside influences.” 40

The principal difference lies in Spohr’s unwillingness to sacrifice beauty for “the descriptive,” despite its potential popularity. Spohr’s views were in line with Goethe’s,

Humboldt’s, and Hegel’s “classicist maxim... that the descriptive should not obtrude as an isolated and autonomous phenomenon, but must be contained and subsumed in the superior category of the beautiful.” 41 His aesthetic was based on the works of masters from previous generations; Spohr himself foregrounds his indebtedness to Mozart throughout his writings.

Spohr first encountered Mozart’s operas during his stint in the Brunswick Theatre

Orchestra between 1797 and 1800.42 In his autobiography, Spohr writes that in this first experience, “the grandeur of Mozart’s operatic music burst upon me, and Mozart now became for my whole lifetime my ideal and model.” 43 Brown believes Spohr’s final work, his Requiem, is his most significant tribute to his idol. According to Brown, the fact that Spohr ended his Requiem at the Lacrymosa, leaving it unfinished at “the exact point at which Mozart had broken off his setting -- is appropriately symbolic of Spohr’s

39John Warrack, German Opera: From the Beginnings to Wagner (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge UP, 2001), 312. 40 Warrack, 313. 41 Dahlhaus, 30. 42Brown, Louis Spohr: A Critical Biography, 11. 43 Spohr, Autobiography, 12. 26 lifelong allegiance to the ideals of pure beauty which Mozart’s music embodied for him, and his reluctance, indeed refusal, to go beyond the bounds of what he understood as

Mozart’s aesthetic.”44 Spohr’s self-construction as Mozart’s heir accounts for his favoring of the elevated over the bawdy, the beautiful over the descriptive, and his aversion to Weber and even late Beethoven.

44 Brown, Louis Spohr: A Critical Biography, 338. 27 Understanding Jessonda in terms of Operatic Convention

As discussed previously, Spohr’s (and Germany’s) lack of first-hand, authentic experience of the Orient makes it necessary to view the subject of the opera in terms of its source(s). But an examination of the Jessonda’s operatic influences is also warranted.

In terms of subject, Jessonda fits a common operatic paradigm described by Ralph

Locke:

Young, tolerant, brave, possibly naive, white-European tenor-hero intrudes, at risk of disloyalty to his own people and colonialist ethic, into mysterious, dark- skinned, colonised territory represented by alluring dancing girls and deeply affectionate, sensitive lyric soprano, incurring wrath of brutal, intransigent tribal chieftain (bass or bass-baritone) and blindly obedient chorus of male savages.45

In Jessonda, Spohr deviates from the above noted standard voice parts. Tristan is a baritone, akin to Don Giovanni, without the antihero justification. Certainly pairing a baritone and soprano is unusual, and Spohr’s motivations for doing so are uncertain.

Perhaps he wanted Tristan to carry more authority than Lopes or Nadori (both tenors) or perhaps he wanted to create possibilities for SATB texture in quartets involving the four leads. Regardless, Spohr maintains Locke’s archetype to a degree that makes it clear he was influenced by dramatic convention.

Spohr pulls from conventional tropes for exotic musical sound in his construction of his Indian (and Portuguese) characters. Mozart’s exoticism, which is particularly evident in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, seems to have provided an important model

45 Ralph Locke, “Constructing the Oriental ‘Other’: Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila,” Cambridge Opera Journal III (1991): 263. Quoted in “Exoticism," in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie (Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/ subscriber/article/grove/music/O006528 (accessed February 16, 2012). 28 for Jessonda. Mozart’s aesthetic aims are consistent with Spohr’s: an opera should be based on a subject with popular appeal, but contain music that is refined-- though clearly, some pieces in Mozart’s operas do allow comedic, popular elements. In a letter to his father about Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Mozart clearly annunciates his views: “the passions, powerful or not, must never be expressed to the point of disgust, and music, even in the most horrifying situation, must never offend the ear but give pleasure and so always remain music.”46 Thus in order to differentiate Spanish from Turkish characters,

Mozart does not use authentic music to designate the Other, but conventional

Europeanized tropes for Turkish Other.

By the late eighteenth century, musical symbols for the “Turkish” exotic Other were fairly standard. Composers sought to express “Turkish subjects in their music without actually copying Turkish music itself.”47 Traditional signifiers for “Turkish” characters or setting included percussion instruments influenced by Ottoman military music, such as bass drum, cymbals, and triangle, and occasionally piccolo. In addition,

“Turkish” effects were also created through “characteristic methods of writing such as repeated notes, scale runs, unison writing, striking interval leaps, simple harmonies and sudden changes in dynamics.” 48

46 Warrack, 152. From Mozart’s letter to his father, 26 September 1781. 47 Michael Pirker, “Janissary Music,” Grove Music Online. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezproxy.lib. utexas.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music4133q=janissary+music& search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit (accessed June 25, 2012). 48 Pirker. 29 “Turkish” musical tropes would not have been understood as “descriptive” but as common elements in operas appealing to a vogue for Turkish topics. Mozart believed the use of “Turkish” elements was part of the opera’s popular appeal. He wrote, “The

Janissary Chorus is all that one can wish for from a Janissary Chorus, short and lively, and entirely written for the Viennese.”49 Warrack adds that Mozart could not “let slip the chance of delighting the Viennese with the glowing tone of the well-loved Ludwig

Fischer, and flattering their taste with a drinking song and a Janissary Chorus and even with their habits of applause.”50

Mozart’s characters are divided along a strict binary: Turkish vs. European. Pasha

Selim acts as Die Entführung’s Nadori character: he is technically labeled as an Other who turns out to be a compassionate leader, and sympathetic to the two leading couples.

Here, however, Pasha is also revealed to be European, and thus his good qualities can be attributed to his natural European morality. Mozart’s musical exoticism is not always used to demonize the Turkish, rather it is used for both sympathetic and evil Turkish characters. For instance, the Janissaries’ Chorus in celebration of the arrival of the Pasha and Konstanze in Act I features typical “Turkish” percussion, as well as unison choral writing, frequent scalar runs offset by phrases consisting of repeated notes, and dynamic contrasts. But “Turkish” elements are also used to represent Osmin, as in the Act III finale. Blonde, taking over a simple, lyrical melody from Belmonte, Konstanze, and

Pedrillo, is interrupted by Osmin, who accelerates the tempo of the couples’ melody, to

49 Warrack, 152. From Mozart’s letter to his father, 26 September 1781. 50 Warrack, 155. 30 which “Turkish” percussion is added, creating a sharp contrast between the two happy couples and generous ruler and the vengeful Osmin. And yet, “Turkish” elements return for the triumphant final chorus, creating a militaristic sound. Though Osmin’s music in the finale is set apart from the couples’ music, the use of the same effects for Pasha and the chorus establish a “Turkish” trope that does not necessarily evoke negative qualities.

Indeed, Michael Pirker believes Die Entführung is not intended to portray the Turkish as evil, but rather the opera “is a masterpiece of humanist thinking, not only musically but in its content: it is an appeal for better understanding between peoples and a condemnation of the hostile image of other nationalities.” 51

The “Turkish” sound originally developed to denote Turkish characters became the conventional sound to denote any exotic Other in opera. Operas such as Gasparo

Spontini’s Fernand Cortez and Jessonda use “Turkish” instrumentation even though there are no Turkish characters, in order to aurally mark barbarism, and also to portray militaristic scenes or heighten a ritual. While Spohr himself does not acknowledge a debt to Spontini, Jessonda shows many similarities to both Fernand Cortez and La Vestale.

That Spohr knew Fernand Cortez is likely because of the popularity of both the 1809 and

1817 versions of the opera in the German-speaking world, and the many dramatic parallels between Jessonda and Cortez: Cortez is set in the early sixteenth century and depicts Spanish occupiers in Mexico; the opera centers on lovers on opposite sides of the conflict; the occupiers’ ships are set on fire by the indigenous people; the life of the

51 Pirker. 31 female lead (named Amazily) is ultimately threatened by her own people; and she is saved in the end by her European lover.

Warrack has shown that Spohr’s

awareness of French grand opera in general, and of Spontini in particular, is reflected in the statuesque opening scene of mourning over the body of the dead Rajah, in some of the characters’ rather formal emotional stances, in the superfluous ballet opening Act II, and in the nocturnal scene when a vast statue of Brahma is struck by lightning.52

Spohr also often creates an Italianate vocal melody, which is evident in the Act I Trio.53

But perhaps Spohr’s most overt nod to Cortez is his appropriation of the name Amazili for his secondary female character. Although the popularity of Cortez may have influenced Spohr’s selection of Le Mierre’s story, however, his approach to musical characterization is completely different. Spontini clearly depicts foreignness by musical means, as in Act III, scene I, “Choeur et Danses Barbares.” 54 Frequent shifts between major and minor and bolero and fandango influences are used to depict Mexican

Otherness. “Turkish” instrumentation is present throughout this piece as well as almost constant repeated eighth notes, unison voices, and frequent sudden dynamic shifts.

In contrast, Warrack writes that Jessonda “incorporates the appeal of the exotic at the centre of the plot, though Spohr, with his gift for colourful orchestration and his delight in expressive harmony, is curiously reluctant to exploit this.”55 Spohr’s reluctance to differentiate musically between non-normative and normative is due to his aesthetic

52 Warrack, 313. 53 Warrack, 313. 54 This refers to the 1809 version. This piece was altered and moved to Act 1, scene 1 for the 1814 version. 55 Warrack, 312. 32 views. Unlike his possible operatic models like Cortez, Spohr cannot use the

“‘descriptive’ and the ‘ugly’”56 even to differentiate the “barbaric” Indians from the

Christian Europeans. Thus an examination of musical characterization in Jessonda results in subtle musical differentiations between East and West, more in line with Mozart than Spontini.

Spohr’s Act I Introduction depicts bayadères and Brahmins mourning the death of the rajah, who is laid out on stage. At the opening of this piece, Spohr stipulates, “Einige von ihnen tragen kleine Trommeln mit Schellen behängt, auf welche sie bei den in der

Partitur bezeichneten Stellen schlagen; andere haben Gefässe mit Rauchwerk, noch andere Korbe mit Blumen.” / “Some of them [bayadères and Braminen] carry small drums with hanging bells, which they strike at designated points in the score, while others have containers of incense and others have baskets of flowers.” 57 Having onstage instruments is a traditional practice that bolsters the exoticism of the ritual and is also evident in Cortez.

The piece begins in a solemn C minor in 3/4, with full chorus singing a chorale- like melody accompanied by constant eighth-notes in the strings, much like scene with the two armed men in the Act II finale of Die Zauberflöte. At measure 37, the piece transitions to 6/8 and Eb Major, with only the bayadères singing an upbeat, dancelike melody about the beauties of nature the rajah can no longer enjoy. Bass drum, cymbals, and triangle are added into the orchestration at this point, as well as the cue designating

56 Dahlhaus, 29. 57 Louis Spohr, Jessonda (Leipzig: C.F. Peters, 1870), 18. 33 the singers to play their onstage instruments. When Dandau enters in measure 85, the music modulates back to C minor in cut time, and the “Turkish” percussion drops out. In this passage, Dandau reflects on the rajah’s inability to enter heaven without his wife. The bayadères and Brahmin full choir enters again in measure 114; they are happy that the rajah’s resolution will come in his wife’s sacrifice. It is not until the next section, for bayadères alone in A minor, that the “Turkish” percussion and onstage instruments return, again in 6/8 time (measure 143). In measure 192, the full choir returns in a triumphant C

Major, in which everyone praises Brahma, and this time the “Turkish” percussion and onstage instruments remain.

Spohr uses “Turkish” percussion to differentiate characters of the same nationality, revealing exoticization along gender lines. The addition of “Turkish” instrumentation, the shift to compound meter, and the use of onstage instruments in the

Introduction are reserved solely to exoticize the female Indian characters. In No. 26, Chor und Solo in Act III, a similar trade-off between male and female occurs. Again, the women are distinguished by a shift to compound meter, a faster tempo, and the addition of “Turkish” percussion. The solemn, hymn-like music associated with the full chorus emphasizes (almost Christian) ritual, while the music associated exclusively with the bayadères is in compound meter and dancelike. The feminization of the exotic is not unusual,58 but stands in contrast to Die Entführung, in which both female leads are

European.

58 Linda Phyllis Austern, “Forreine Conceites and Wandring Devises”: The Exotic, the Erotic, and the Feminine,” in The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Jonathan Bellman (Boston: Northeastern UP, 1998), 27. 34 The Portuguese soldiers are differentiated from the Indians through instrumentation. For example, in the Waffentanz in Act II, the Portuguese soldiers celebrate Tristan’s arrival in India with a dance. The “Turkish” percussion and the three trombones from the Act I introduction are not included. The absence of these instruments is typical for the opera; they are used exclusively for the Indian characters. However, piccolo is used for both Indian ritual scenes and in pieces for the Portuguese soldiers and seems to be more a signifier for militaristic scenes, independent from the other “Turkish” instruments.

Another major difference is that the musical language in the Waffentanz is lighter and more jubilant than similar sections involving the Indian characters. The central motives in the celebratory sections for each group may be intended to distinguish the characters: the Indians’ contour tends to be stepwise (figure 3) while the Portuguese are given more disjunct lines (figure 4).

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Some key associations are also exclusive to their respective sides of the binary. C

minor is only used for Indian characters while D and G major are only used for the

Portuguese characters, with the exception of Jessonda and Amazili. The link between the

Portuguese and Jessonda and Amazili is fitting, since they are constructed more in line

with the Portuguese than the Indians. Nadori is another character who straddles the East/

West binary, which is more significant because he is male and is the protege of the High

Priest. Despite this, his musical constructions convey his European sensibilities evident in

the libretto from the first scene. This is most evident in the musical connection between

Tristan and Nadori created through Spohr’s use of the Polonaise rhythm in both Tristan’s

No. 12 Aria in Act II and Nadori’s No. 16 Rondo in Act III. Warrack sees the proximity

between these two pieces as a weakness in the opera; he writes, “[Spohr’s] longer-term

timing is not so secure, allowing him to give Tristan and Nadori in quick succession two

arias in Polacca rhythm.”59 Perhaps the similarity of these two pieces is intended to

connect the characters. Nadori, who has from the beginning exhibited sympathy for

59 Warrack, 313. 36 Jessonda and disdain for Indian custom has now fully adopted Tristan’s European musical idiom. The Polacca was a popular dance for operas by the end of the eighteenth century,60 dating back to Johann Adam Hiller’s use of a Polacca to distinguish the King in

Die Jagd (1770).61 Notable uses of the Polonaise in operas by Weber (Der Freischütz and Abu Hassan) and Cherubini (Lodoïska and Faniska) were probably known to Spohr and his audience, and helped solidify his use of this dance rhythm as a symbol for

European musical practice. The similarity between the two pieces also may serve to link them in terms of subject, since both Tristan and Nadori sing of their love for Jessonda and

Amazili, respectively. Nadori’s appropriation of Tristan’s musical style serves to complete his transformation to wholly European sensibilities that were evident in the libretto from the beginning of the opera.

60 Warrack, 176. 61 Warrack, 89. 37 Exoticizing Woman: Bayadères, Jessonda, and Amazili

As evident in both the Act I Introduction and the Chor und Solo in Act III (No.

26), Spohr attaches characteristic “exotic” markers primarily to the female chorus members, maintaining more normative, semi-religious music for the male or combined chorus. This association of female characters with the exotic was common in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art, as the colonized nation itself was often conceived as a feminine entity in need of control by masculine colonizers. Indeed, Mary Hunter writes,

It is almost a truism of current considerations of Orientalism that ‘the Orient,’ ‘the Other,’ and ‘the feminine’ are inextricably tied up with each other, and that the Orient itself plays the feminine role of the to-be-penetrated object to the Occident’s masculine role of the exploring and subduing subject.62

The bayadères are the figures that most closely “embody foreign locales as exotic, sexually available women;” through musical exoticization they are “transformed... quite literally into foreign territory.” 63 The bayadères are constructed as typical exotic women but remain submissive to their masculine counterparts, giving up their exoticized music in favor of the male choir’s more normative chorale.

The bayadères’ association with musical performance is also revealing. Music, like the colonized Other, is gendered. John Shepherd has pointed out that “Music, with its implicit qualities of social interaction, has long been considered more feminine and thus

62 Mary Hunter, “The Alla Turca Style in the Late Eighteenth Century: Race and Gender in the Symphony and the Seraglio,” in The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Jonathan Bellman (Boston: Northeastern UP, 1998), 55. 63 Austern, 29. 38 in need of control.” 64 Thus the women’s onstage performance enhances their Otherness, which is reined in by the return of the male chorus. But perhaps the chorale could have been seen as exotic by contemporary audiences as well. Hunter points out contemporary conceptions of Otherness are not restricted to janissary music. She writes,

Anecdotal and theoretical writings describe the janissary bands, of course, but they also often note both the religious music of the dervishes and a more domestic or “chamber” style chiefly distinguished by “pathetic and touching . . . soft and languorous” qualities.65

Perhaps the distinction among the exotic characters along gender lines serves to emphasize their varying roles in society: the male choir’s chorale-like music could serve to emphasize their place in the public sphere, whereas the bayadères’ dance-like music emphasizes the feminized use of music purely for entertainment.66 Linda Austern writes,

music itself can be divided into the appropriately manly and the softly effeminate by its purpose, either as an incidental aspect of some higher calling or duty, or as the pure entertainment for the senses. Such a division represents the very one between the sexes, for men are creatures of public action where women are creatures of, or for, private pleasure.67

Both the “Turkish” music accompanying the female entrances and the chorales associated with male or mixed chorus could be seen as exotic in terms of nationality. Yet the more overt exoticization of the female chorus serves in part to show that they are even further removed from the normative European male Self, and in part to reconstruct the common fantasy surrounding the exotic woman.

64Austern, 32. Paraphrasing John Shepherd, Music as Social Text. 65 Hunter, 55. Quoting Jean-Baptiste de La Borde. 66 Austern, 35. 67 Austern, 35. 39 In light of this, it is notable that Spohr does not exoticize all his female characters along the same lines. Though male and female are aurally separated, both men and women are further differentiated in terms of class. Jessonda and Amazili, although musically elevated above the bayadères in order to reflect their higher social status, are still constructed differently than male characters. Contrasting Amazili and Jessonda with both the music of the bayadères and their male counterparts (Tristan and Nadori) helps distinguish which tropes Spohr intended to signify the exotic and which were meant to bolster a character’s femininity.

Woodwinds, horn, and strings are the standard accompaniment for Jessonda and

Amazili, as can be seen in Jessonda’s first recitative and aria in Act I (No. 7). Aside from being in compound meter, the piece is clearly set apart from the music of the bayadères; though not virtuosic, it is very lyrical with wider leaps, more embellishments, and a lighter orchestral texture. Spohr’s music for Jessonda is no different than Spohr’s music for his other heroines, like Kunigunde in Faust or Zemire in Zemire und Azor, with some moments of coloratura and obbligato woodwind parts that help portray femininity. The central key, G Major, ties Jessonda to both the Portuguese Waffentanz and Tristan’s No.

12 Aria in Act II, solidifying her status as somehow “European.”

The distinction between male and female sound is also evident in individual pieces that encompass both sides of the binary. For example, there is a timbral distinction between Tristan and Jessonda in their only duet in the opera in the Act II finale. Tristan’s opening section is accompanied almost entirely by strings but at Jessonda’s entrance, the

40 accompaniment shifts to only winds. Tristan’s Polonaise (No. 12) alternates between sections that feature piccolo, martial rhythms, percussive eighth-note accompaniment, and syllabic text setting with sections in which the piccolo drops out completely, flute and clarinet are featured with string legato arpeggiation, and the melody is more lyrical with frequent ornaments and even some coloratura passages. These strict alterations correspond to shifts in the text; Tristan shifts from reminiscing about wartime, his adventurous spirit, and “feur’ge Triebe” / “fiery urges” to remembering how meeting

Jessonda tamed him, “führte mich zu Friedens Thalen, zu dem wahren, stillen Glück” /

“leading me to valleys of peace, to true quiet happiness.” The changes in instrumentation, rhythm, and vocal style suggest this change in nature caused by encountering femininity, as the music appropriately alternates from masculine rhythms and accompaniment to display his innately wild nature and feminine lyricism to show the effect Jessonda has had over him.

Jessonda and Amazili’s Act III duet at the beginning of the finale stands in sharp contrast to their other pieces, especially the No. 27 Aria immediately preceding it. The sisters speak of the combat that is happening off-stage, and urge the Portuguese to victory, taking up the motive from Nadori, Lopes, and Tristan’s Trio (no. 25) (figures 5 and 6).

41

42

to the European audience’s ability to sympathize with the leading female character(s), character(s), female leading the with sympathize to ability audience’s European the to and thus call on a range and depth of associations unavailable for the Turks.” This is key key is This Turks.” the for unavailable associations of depth and range a on call thus and

58

“women remain part of ‘our’ expressive world, world, expressive ‘our’ of part remain “women

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^R because she (they) must be constructed along the same lines as the leading male character(s). Hunter writes, “as captives [in the seraglio], the women deserve sympathy; that is why the basic musical means used are not ‘Oriental.” 68 In Spohr’s opera, Jessonda serves as the “captive” that deserves sympathy and therefore must be relatable in musical terms.

This need to construct a female Other in terms of European desirability relates to visual art of the same period. Rana Kabbani writes that in nineteenth-century Orientalist paintings, “the harem keepers and guards are often dark skinned and fearsome, while the female inhabitants of the seraglio are almost always light skinned (they are often identified as Circassian) and indistinguishable from paintings of European women.” 69

This tradition is reflected in an 1838 engraving of a sati, which accompanied the 1991 CD program book of the Hamburg Production of Jessonda.70

68 Hunter, 72. 69 Hunter, 68; paraphrasing Rana Kabbani, Imperial Fictions: Europe's Myths of the Orient (1994). 70Gerd Albrecht, dir., Jessonda, by Louis Spohr, performed by Philharmonishes Staatsorchester Hamburg and Chor der Hamburgischen Staatsoper, Orfeo W 73335, 1991. 43 Figure 7. Sati of the widow of a Brahmin, Wood engraving,1838 (Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin).

In this engraving, not all the women are light-skinned; one can see Indian women over the widow’s shoulder who are visually exoticized like the men, with dark skin and

Oriental dress. The widow is clearly the outsider in the scene, completely unable to resist the ritual. This portrayal is in line with Spohr’s musical construction of the women in the opera: the bayadères are exoticized through “Turkish” tropes while Jessonda and Amazili are aurally white Europeans.

Jessonda’s and Amazili’s normative musical construction should also be questioned in terms of more specific contemporary conceptions of ideal womanhood. As the principal female characters who ultimately have happy endings, Spohr’s and Gehe’s

44 leading women reflect German Biedermeier conceptions of womanhood, despite the story’s origin in 1770 France.

The contemporary conception of ideal femininity was constructed in terms of women’s domestic duties. What Marjanne Goozé calls the “cult of domesticity” had a

firm hold on the German mindset, exalting the “ideal bourgeois housewife at its center… relegated… to non-productive economy.” 71 German men and women occupied “separate spheres” 72—women were confined to household duties, while men played a role outside the home. While in the mid-eighteenth century the largely agrarian society made these spheres separate but regarded them as equally necessary to maintain a productive lifestyle, the urbanization that occurred starting in the late eighteenth century created the

“availability of manufactured goods and the separation of work space from home life

[that] did not always result in an improvement of women’s status.”73 On the contrary, women lost power and agency as the urbanization of their society made many of their household duties obsolete. Women were still confined to the private sphere, even though their duties became less labor- and time-intensive74 and they were made completely dependent on husbands and fathers who gained power through their public lives. Though on the surface the domestic ideal for women did not change, with urbanization they were

“transitioning from a position of relative power to one marked by powerlessness.” 75

71 Marjanne E. Goozé, ed., Challenging Separate Spheres: Female Bildung in Eighteenth and Nineteenth- Century Germany (Oxford; Bern; New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 15. 72 Both Marion W. Gray and Marjanne Goozé use the term “separate spheres” to differentiate between masculine public space and feminine domestic space. 73Goozé, 14. 74 Goozé, 14. 75 Goozé, 14. 45 This inequality was justified by the belief that men and women had “different character[s] predetermined by nature.” 76 Society began to see women as little more than an “emotional support” for her husband, and a wife’s beauty was thought to be among her most valuable assets.77 The German Biedermeier woman was expected to be devoted to her husband, supervise the maintenance of her home and the education of her children, and be faithful to God.

Jessonda fits this image even before Tristan arrives back in India. Jessonda is portrayed as remaining appropriately devoted to both the rajah and Tristan, despite all odds. In Act I, she says, “An jenes greisen Rajah Seite, als seine Tochter hab’ich nur gelebt, bin meiner ersten Liebe treu geblieben.” / “I lived only as a daughter beside that aged rajah, and have remained true to my first love.” 78 Spohr and Gehe added this confession of virginity probably because, for Biedermeier audiences, Jessonda’s virginity was essential for a happy ending with Tristan to be possible. But despite never truly loving the rajah and remaining loyal to Tristan, Jessonda is still willing to do her civic and wifely duty through suicide, perhaps because of her devotion to Brahma which was only heightened through her hardship. She says,

Jahre kamen und vergingen, stiller, heil’ger ich empfand, und das Herz erhob die Schwingen zu des Friedens gold’nem Land Bald bin ich ein Geist geworden, reiner Äther mich umwallt’,

76 Julie D. Prandi, Spirited Women Heroes: Major Female Characters in the Dramas of Goethe, Schiller, and Kleist (Bern; Las Vegas: Peter Lang, 1983), 4. 77 Prandi, 4. 78 Spohr and Gehe, Act I, no. 6. 46 und im himmlischen Accorden Segen auf mich niederschallt’.

Years came and went; quieter, more pious I became, and my heart took wing to the golden land of peace. Soon I became a spirit, enveloped in pure ether, and in heavenly harmony blessing was echoed to me.79

This turn to religious devotion is one of Jessonda’s sole means to act on her own behalf. As discussed previously, Jessonda is completely unable to resist her sati. Tristan and Nadori alone are capable of heroism, and Jessonda’s and Amazili’s dialogue shows that in their suffering, instead of taking action they turn to their faith in the gods and in the male leads. Their displays of religious devotion are in line with Biedermeier convention, but it is to Brahma, not the Christian God that they pray. This devotion is specifically stated in Act III: in Jessonda’s No. 27 aria and Amazili and Jessonda’s duet at the beginning of the finale. In the second half of Jessonda’s No. 27 aria, Jessonda’s prayer to Brahma is mingled with calls to “Hohe Götter” in general and to her “Lieb’”:

Hohe Götter schauet nieder, ach erbarmt euch meiner Not. Gebt mir den Geliebten wieder, rettet mich vom Flammentod! Mit muthigem Verlangen, Lieb’, ruf ich nach dir! Mit sehnsuchtsvollem Bangen harr’ ich der Rettung hier! Laß, Brahma, Regen gießen aus Wolken mild herab;

79 Spohr and Gehe, Act I, no. 7. 47 laß Ströme löschend fließen bei meinem Flammengrab!

Ye gods on high, look down: ah have pity on my distress! Give me back my beloved save me from the fiery death! With courageous longing O love, I call on thee! With anxious yearning I wait for rescue here! Brahma, let rain pour gently from the clouds; let quenching streams flow on my fiery grave!80

This aria’s rondò form, coloratura passages (this piece has more than any other piece), and late position in the opera conforms to operatic convention for arias depicting female suffering. In the second half of the eighteenth century, composers often used rondò (slow-fast) form for arias expressing two differing moods marking an emotional climax near the end of the opera.81 The Countess’s “Dove sono i bei momenti” in Le

Nozze di Figaro, Donna Anna’s “Non mi dir” in Don Giovanni, and Vitellia’s “Non più di

fiori” in La clemenza di Tito all conform to this model, and probably influenced

Jessonda’s Act III aria.

Jessonda’s call on both her love and Brahmin gods shows her sense of desperation and powerlessness leading to her sati. When Amazili delivers the news of Jessonda’s impending rescue, again Jessonda shows devotion to Tristan as well as reliance on

Brahma. Jessonda says:

80 Spohr and Gehe, Act III, no. 27. 81 Cliff Elsen and Simon P. Keefe, eds., The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge UP, 2006), 14. 48 Ich bau’ auf ihn, den Heißgeliebten, er folgte’ dem Ruf der Ehre!

I rely on him, my ardently loved one, he always followed the call of honour!82

Jessonda and Amazili then pray to Brahma: “Brahma, Brahma, gieb Gelingen gieb des Sieges schöne Lust!” / “Brahma, Brahma, grant success, grant the great joy of victory!” Jessonda’s brief evocations of Brahmin gods are all mingled with calls to

Tristan, thus giving the impression that though she calls on the only god she knows, she is aware that ultimately only Tristan has the capacity to save her. Jessonda’s devotion to

Brahma seems threatened by her faith in Tristan, and perhaps ultimately is replaced entirely by it. This is evident through her rejection of her sati (which would please the gods) as soon as she realizes a life with Tristan is again possible.

The Portuguese devotion to the Christian God is seen after their victory, when they sing “Bekämpft, gestürzt das Götzenthum, dem Gott der Schlachten Preis und

Ruhm!” / “Idolatry has been attacked and overthrown: praise and glory to the God of battles!” Nadori joins in this chant, showing his conversion, and even Dandau, the

Brahmins, and the Bayadères question their faith before they flee, singing, “Giebt es größere Götter noch als Brahma?” / “Are there still greater gods than Brahma?” 83 Spohr and Gehe decide not to show Jessonda’s and Amazili’s conversion, however. During their praise of “the God of battles” that closes the opera, Jessonda and Amazili simply sing “Hell wie die Morgenröthe glüht, im Herzen Lust und Liebe blüht.” / “In our hearts

82 Spohr and Gehe, Act III finale. 83 Spohr and Gehe, Act III finale. 49 joy and love bloom as brightly as the glow of dawn,” showing that while the men thank

God for their victory, Jessonda and Amazili are only overwhelmed by their love for

Tristan and Nadori. This puts Spohr and Gehe’s Jessonda in sharp contrast to Starke’s

Indamora, who, after hearing of Christian grace and sympathy, asks, “If such its doctrines, who wou’d not be Christian?” 84 The absence of an immediate conversion seems odd, given that Christian faith is a key facet of Biedermeier feminine virtue, and perhaps serves to communicate that men (even idolaters) are more capable of religious understanding than women. The audience is left to believe that conversion lies in

Jessonda’s and Amazili’s future, appropriately facilitated through their husbands.

84 Mariana Starke, The Widow of Malabar (London: Dramatic Repository, Covent Garden, 1799), 45. 50 Conclusion

The character Jessonda does not represent the threatening, seductive Other that is portrayed in later nineteenth-century operas, such as Thaïs, Carmen, or Salome, but presents a German Biedermeier fantasy through both her dramatic role and her musical performance. This is heightened by the emphasis on her virginity despite her marriage to the rajah, something that is absent from all other versions of the story--both Jessonda and

Amazili represent perfect, untainted wives for Tristan and Nadori. Their musical performances in the opera only serve to situate the women more thoroughly among

“normal” European women: non-virtuosic lines, compound meter, and frequent association with woodwind accompaniment.

Just as Spohr refused to compromise his music to the “descriptive” or the

“bawdy”, he avoided compromising Jessonda to the exotic. Brown writes,

Jessonda... became a concrete statement of his artistic creed, standing in sharp contrast to Der Freischütz, and it was to achieve a degree of success that must have helped confirm Spohr in his beliefs.85

Feminist musicologists have often noted the affiliation of music with the female body.

Ruth Solie writes, “Music may stand for the unthought, may be a relic of the metaphysical... Music is gendered feminine, that is, because of its difference.”86 Music and women are linked in terms of difference; both must be distanced from, and controlled by, the male Self. Perhaps, then, Jessonda the woman, as well as Jessonda the work, is a statement of Spohr’s aesthetics, since maintaining the purity of Jessonda’s character

85 Brown, 149. 86 Ruth Solie, “Introduction: On Difference,” in Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. Ruth Solie (Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 14. 51 despite the fact that she is Indian is as important to the work as maintaining elevated music despite an orientalist subject. While the former condition is present in the spoken plays (the widow is consistently imbued with normative characteristics, whether moral, religious, or political), Spohr and Gehe bring it to extremes through emphasizing her virginity, and underscoring her Biedermeier qualities through musical means.

52 Bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCES

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55 Spohr and Mozart

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Heussner, Horst. “Louis Spohr und W.A. Mozart.” Mozart-Jahrbuch, 199–206. Salzburg: Mozarteum, 1958.

Rushton, Julian. “Die Entführung aus dem Serail.” The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/subscriber/ article/grove/music/O006411?q=entfuhrung&search=quick&pos=3&_start=1# (accessed June 24, 2012).

Exoticism

Bellman, Jonathan, ed. The Exotic in Western Music. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1998.

Clayton, Martin and Bennett Zon, eds. Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s to 1940s: Portrayal of the East. Aldershot, Hampshire, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007.

Leask, Nigel. British Romantic Writers and the East : Anxieties of Empire. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge UP, 2004.

Locke, Ralph. “Constructing the Oriental ‘Other’: Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila.” Cambridge Opera Journal III (1991): 261-302.

Locke, Ralph. Musical Exoticism. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge UP, 2009.

Marchand, Suzanne. German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Race, Religion, and Scholarship. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009.

Mehta, Benita. Widows, Pariahs, and Bayadères: India as Spectacle. Cranbury, NJ: Bucknell UP, 2002. 56 Morris, Rosalind C., ed. Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea. New York: Columbia UP, 2010.

McCabe, Ina Baghdiantz. Orientalism in Early Modern France: Eurasian Trade, Exoticism, and the Ancient Regime. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2008.

Nayar, Pramod K. English Writing and India, 1600-1920: Colonizing Aesthetics. London; New York: Routledge, 2008.

Pirker, Michael. “Janissary Music.” Grove Music Online. http://www.oxfordmusiconline. com.ezproxy.lib. utexas.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music4133q=janissary +music& search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit (accessed June 25, 2012).

Sengupta, Indra. From Salon to Discipline: State, University and Indology in Germany 1821-1914. Heidelberg: Universität Heidelberg, 2005.

Szabolcsi, Bence, 'Exoticisms in Mozart', Music and Letters 37, no. 4 (October 1956), 323-332.

Rousseau, G.S. and Roy Porter, eds. Exoticism in the Enlightenment. Manchester; New York: Manchester UP, 1989.

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Sati

Datta, V.N. Sati: Widow-Burning in India. Delhi: Manohar, 1988.

Hawley, John S., ed. Sati: the Blessing and the Curse. Oxford UP, 1994.

Major, Andrea. Sovereignty and Social Reform in India: British Colonialism and the Campaign against Sati, 1830-1860. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2010.

Mani, Lata. Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India. California UP, 1998.

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57 Roy, Ram Mohan. Sati: Dialogues by Ram Mohan Roy, ed. by Mulk Raj Anand Delhi, 1989.

Sen, Mala. Death by Fire: Sati, Dowry Death, and Female Infanticide in Modern India. Rutgers UP, 2001.

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Weinberger-Thomas, Catherine. Ashes of Immortality: Widow-Burning in India. Chicago UP, 1999.

Relevant Feminist Scholarship

Fout, John C., ed. German Women in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History. New York; London: Holmes & Meier, 1984.

Goozé, Marjanne E., ed. Challenging Separate Spheres: Female Bildung in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Germany. Oxford; Bern; New York: Peter Lang, 2007.

Gray, Marion W. Productive Men, Reproductive Women: The Agrarian Household and the Emergence of Separate Spheres during the German Enlightenment. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000.

McClintock, Anne. “Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family.” Feminist Review 44: Nationalisms and National Identities (Summer 1993): 61-8.

Pal-Lapinski, Piya. The Exotic Womam in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction and Culture: A Reconsideration. Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2004.

Prandi, Julie D. Spirited Women Heroes: Major Female Characters in the Dramas of Goethe, Schiller, and Kleist. Bern; Las Vegas: Peter Lang, 1983.

Solie, Ruth, ed. Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship. Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993.

Other Versions of the Play

Dakessian, Marie A. “Envisioning the Indian Sati: Mariana Starke’s The Widow of Malabar and Antoine Le Mierre’s Le Veuve du Malabar.” Comparative Literature Studies 36, no. 2 (1999): 110-130.

58 Humphreys, David. The Widow of Malabar; or, The Tyranny of Custom: A Tragedy. Imitated from the French of M. Le Mierre. Philadelphia: publisher unknown, 1815. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge UP, 2003

Le Mierre, Antoine-Marin. Le Veuve du Malabar. Paris: La Veuve Duchesne, Libraire, rue Saint Jacques, au Temple du Goût, 1780.

Mellor, Anne K. “Embodied Cosmopolitanism and the British Romantic Woman Writer.” European Romantic Review 17, no. 3 (2006): 289-300.

Plümicke, Carl Martin. Lanaßa: Trauerspiel in fünf Akten. Berlin: Friedrich Maurer, 1789.

Richards, Jeffrey H. “Sati in Philadelphia: The Widow(s) of Malabar.” American Literature 80, no. 4 (December 2008): 647-675.

Starke, Mariana. The Widow of Malabar. London: Dramatic Repository, Covent Garden, 1799.

Musical Analysis References

Agawu, V. Kofi. Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music. New York: Oxford UP, 2009.

Allanbrook, Wye Jamison. Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1983.

Dahlhaus, Carl. Realism in Nineteenth-Century Music. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge UP, 1982.

Ratner, Leonard. Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style. New York: Schirmer, 1980.

German History

Sheehan, James J. German History, 1770-1866. Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, 1989.

German Opera

Warrack, John. German Opera: From the Beginnings to Wagner. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge UP, 2001.

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