Opera and the Politics of Tragedy: A Mozartean Museum (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781648250491)

A curated collection of Enlightenment operas, paintings, and literary works that were all marked by the "Telemacomania" scandal, a furious cultural frenzy with dangerous political stakes.

Imaginatively structured as a guided tour, Opera and the Politics of Tragedy captures the tumultuous impact of the so-called Telemacomania crisis through its key artifacts: literary pamphlets, spoken dramas, paintings, engravings, and opera librettos (drammi per musica). Prominently featured in the gallery are two operas with direct ties to this aesthetic and political war: Mozart and Cigna-Santi's Mitridate (1770) and Mozart and Varesco's Idomeneo (1781).

Reading and listening across the Enlightenment's cultural spaces (its new public museums, its first encyclopedias, and its ever-controversial operatic theater), this book showcases the Enlightenment's disorderly historical revisionism alongside its progressive politics to expose the fertile creativity that can emerge out of the ambiguous space between what is "ancient" and what is "modern."

Author: Katharina Clausius
ISBN-10: 1648250491
ISBN-13: 9781648250491
Publisher: University of Rochester Press
Language: English
Published: 03/14/2023
Pages: 264
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.16lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.63d