University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 Translating, Adapting, And Performing Opera In Eighteenth- Century Cosmopolitan Europe: Lorenzo Da Ponte At The King's Theatre Lily Tamara Kass University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, Music Commons, and the Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons Recommended Citation Kass, Lily Tamara, "Translating, Adapting, And Performing Opera In Eighteenth-Century Cosmopolitan Europe: Lorenzo Da Ponte At The King's Theatre" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2379. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2379 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2379 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Translating, Adapting, And Performing Opera In Eighteenth-Century Cosmopolitan Europe: Lorenzo Da Ponte At The King's Theatre Abstract This dissertation examines music and text circulation in cosmopolitan Europe during the last decades of the eighteenth century through the lens of translation. London in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the largest center of Italian operatic performance outside of Italy. All performances sung at the King’s Theatre, London, were sung in Italian, the presumed language of opera, even when the works had been originated in other languages. This created the need for a culture of translation and adaptation of works from abroad, making them suitable for a London audience partially through the retention of foreignness and partially through domesticating practices. In the 1790s, a period of political tension between Britain and post-Revolution France, four French operas were presented at the King's Theatre in Italian translations attributed to the poet Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838): Gluck's Iphig�nie en Tauride, Gr�try's Z�mire et Azor, Monsigny's La belle Ars�ne, and Sacchini's Arvire et �v�lina. A quintessentially cosmopolitan man who was never stationary for long, Da Ponte served as the house poet for the King’s Theatre in London from 1792 to 1799 and then again from 1801 to 1805. A large portion of Da Ponte’s job at the King’s Theatre involved utilizing his knowledge of languages and of audience taste to adapt and translate preexisting works for the London stage. This historically grounded, theoretically informed, and performance-oriented examination of Da Ponte’s four translations as sung at the King’s Theatre investigates a world in which translation was a necessary part of daily life in cosmopolitan centers as well as an often overlooked but integral aspect of artistic processes in opera houses. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Music First Advisor Mauro Calcagno Keywords 18th-century, London, Lorenzo Da Ponte, opera, translation Subject Categories Comparative Literature | Music | Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2379 TRANSLATING, ADAPTING, AND PERFORMING OPERA IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY COSMOPOLITAN EUROPE: LORENZO DA PONTE AT THE KING’S THEATRE Lily Tamara Kass A DISSERTATION in Music Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Supervisor of Dissertation _________________________ Mauro Calcagno Associate Professor of Music Graduate Group Chairperson _________________________ Carol Muller, Professor of Music Dissertation Committee Emily I. Dolan, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of Music, Harvard University Jeffrey Kallberg, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Music TRANSLATING, ADAPTING, AND PERFORMING OPERA IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY COSMOPOLITAN EUROPE: LORENZO DA PONTE AT THE KING’S THEATRE COPYRIGHT 2017 Lily Tamara Kass This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ ACKNOWLEDGMENT The late, great, Daniel Albright, from whom I had the honor to learn at Harvard is the inspiration behind this dissertation. His generous genius changed the course of my life. I would also like to thank my other college professors, especially Marc Shell, John Hamilton, Sandra Naddaff, Matthias Röder, and Mauro Calcagno for nurturing my interests at the intersection between music and literature and welcoming my ideas in their classrooms. The coursework I took at the University of Pennsylvania with Carolyn Abbate, Jeffrey Kallberg, Emily Dolan, Naomi Waltham-Smith, Jairo Moreno, and Tsitsi Jaji helped me form important ideas about listening and community. Emma Dillon and Emily Dolan taught me the strength and power of kindness, and its great worth in teaching and mentorship. John Platoff was generous with his time, and his interest in my ideas spurred me on with my project. I am immensely grateful to my committee members: Mauro Calcagno, Emily Dolan, and Jeffrey Kallberg, for their constructive criticisms and candid opinions of my work. In the course of writing this dissertation, I performed research at the British Library, The Victoria and Albert Museum Theatre and Performance Archives, Harvard University’s Houghton Library, and the Bibliothèque publique et universitaire de Neuchâtel. I am grateful for the help of all of the librarians at these institutions, as well as the librarians at the University of Pennsylvania who assisted me in gathering materials in Philadelphia. I would like to thank all of the graduate students I had the honor to know at Penn for their daily encouragement, and especially Laura Donnelly, Brooke McCorkle, Erica Ball, and Michael McMillan, who supported me from the very beginning of my time at Penn. iii Carlo Lanfossi and Maria Murphy helped me achieve my goal to start an Opera Scenes program at Penn, which served as a much-needed creative outlet during my graduate studies. My colleagues and former roommates, Suzanne Bratt and Vanessa Williams, deserve my special thanks for their friendship and for guiding me, both intellectually and emotionally, towards the finish line. My dear friends Sergio Mauritz Ang, Rachel Kurihara, Alexandra Howitt, Sasha Mushegian, and Victoria Crutchfield proved that deep and meaningful friendships can withstand the tests of distance and time. I am also indebted to Victoria for her help with French prosody. I am lucky to have a loving family that has always been wonderfully supportive of everything I have ever chosen to pursue. My grandparents constantly conveyed to me their unwavering belief that I would succeed. My parents have been champion cheerleaders, listeners, and even proofreaders. I talked through early ideas with my sister Joanna over weekly lunches that I will treasure forever. Finally, I am continually inspired by my husband, Philip Dames, who is brilliant, patient, and kind. iv ABSTRACT TRANSLATING, ADAPTING, AND PERFORMING OPERA IN COSMOPOLITAN EUROPE: LORENZO DA PONTE’S LIBRETTO TRANSLATIONS FOR THE LONDON STAGE Lily Tamara Kass Professor Mauro Calcagno This dissertation examines music and text circulation in cosmopolitan Europe during the last decades of the eighteenth century through the lens of translation. London in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the largest center of Italian operatic performance outside of Italy. All performances sung at the King’s Theatre, London, were sung in Italian, the presumed language of opera, even when the works had been originated in other languages. This created the need for a culture of translation and adaptation of works from abroad, making them suitable for a London audience partially through the retention of foreignness and partially through domesticating practices. In the 1790s, a period of political tension between Britain and post-Revolution France, four French operas were presented at the King's Theatre in Italian translations attributed to the poet Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838): Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, Grétry's Zémire et Azor, Monsigny's La belle Arsène, and Sacchini's Arvire et Évélina. A quintessentially cosmopolitan man who was never stationary for long, Da Ponte served as the house poet for the King’s Theatre in London from 1792 to 1799 and then again from 1801 to 1805. A large portion of Da Ponte’s job at the King’s Theatre involved utilizing his knowledge of languages and of audience taste to adapt and translate preexisting works for the London stage. This historically grounded, theoretically informed, and performance-oriented examination of Da Ponte’s four translations as sung at the King’s Theatre investigates a world in which translation was a necessary part of daily life in cosmopolitan centers as well as an often overlooked but integral aspect of artistic processes in opera houses. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENT ...................................................................... III ABSTRACT ........................................................................................ V INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1 Joseph Addison’s Opera History ................................................................................1 Da Ponte as Translator .............................................................................................. 7 Cosmopolitanism and Multilingualism ....................................................................14