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MCLEMORE-MASTERS-REPORT.Pdf (6.729Mb) Copyright by 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
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