Opera and the political imaginary in old regime France (pdf)

Description

From its origins in the 1670s through the French Revolution, serious opera in France was associated with the power of the absolute monarchy, and its ties to the crown remain at the heart of our understanding of this opera tradition (especially its foremost genre, the tragédie en musique). In ‘Opera and the Political Imaginary in Old Regime France,’ however, Olivia Bloechl reveals another layer of French opera’s political theatre. The make-believe worlds on stage, she shows, involved not just fantasies of sovereign rule but also aspects of government.