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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2008
Il crociato in Egitto was the last in a series of Italian operas written by Giacomo Meyerbeer between 1817 and 1824. Although his Emma di Resburgo and Margherita d'Anjou had been successful in Venice and Milan, it was Il crociato that put Meyerbeer in the first rank of internationally renowned composers of Italian opera. The work's contemporary popularity makes it an important element in the history of early nineteenth-century Italian opera, and the abundant source material that survives for the opera permits a reconstruction of its early history. Furthermore, the publication in facsimile of a copyist's score from the première at La Fenice and the recording of the work by Opera Rara have encouraged a modern revaluation.
1 Sources for Il crociato in Egitto include libretti for almost every performance with which Meyerbeer was associated, and many with which he was not. The location of the autograph is at present unknown. Copyists' scores of the opera are listed in Sieghart Döhring, ‘Il crociato’, Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters, ed. Dahlhaus, Carl and Döhring, Sieghart, 8 vols. [5 to date] (Munich and Zurich, 1986– ), IV, 122. I am grateful to Philip Gossett, who made his notes on Il crociato available to me for this study, and to Patric Schmid, for access to libretti in the Opera Rara collection; my thanks also to Gossett, Ralph Locke and Matthew Head for reading early drafts of this article.Google Scholar
2 Gossett, Philip, ed., Il crociato in Egitto, Early Romantic Opera [18] (New York and London, 1979);Google ScholarMeyerbeer, Giacomo, Il crociato in Egitto (Opera Rara ORC 10, 1991).Google Scholar
3 The most recent and comprehensive account is White, Don, ‘Meyerbeer in Italy’, liner notes to Giacomo Meyerbeer, Il crociato in Egitto, 13–70.Google Scholar The letters are published in Heinz and Becker, Gudrun, Giacomo Meyerbeer: Briefwechsel und Tagebücher, 4 vols. to date (Berlin, 1960– ).Google Scholar Rossi's biography is problematic. Pages of an autograph biographical sketch are in Verona (Biblioteca Civica, Autografoteca, 6.223), and were printed in Pighi, Antonio, ‘Pagina autobiografica di un librettista Veronese’, in Miscellanea per le nozze Biadego-Bernadelli (Verona, 1896), 192–7.Google Scholar The latter is almost unobtainable though a single copy is in Venice, Fondazione Querini Stampalia (Coll. 9B14). A useful modern account of the librettist's life and works is in Black, John, ‘Rossi, Gaetano’, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, IV, 52–3; the work list there is supplemented by a list of all known literary sources for Rossi's libretti (still in manuscript). I am grateful to Professor Black for making this document, and his transcription of Rossi's autobiographical notes, available for the preparation of this article.Google Scholar
For a critical reading of some aspects of Rossi's libretti, see Goldin, Daniela, La vera fenice: libnttisti e libretti tra sette e ottocento, Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi 454 (Turin, 1985), 56–63 and 71–2.Google Scholar
4 The postponement of the opera was announced to Meyerbeer by Rossi in a letter of 10 July 1823 (Briefwechsel und Tagebücher, I, 514–15).Google Scholar
5 See the reviews of the La Fenice premiére in Gazzetta privilgiata di Venezia, 11 March 1824, Il nuovo osservatore Veneziano, 13 March 1824, and the Cenni storici intorno alle lettere invenzizno arti commercio, 15 April 1824; for the Florence production, Cenni storici intomo alle lettere invenzioni arti commercio, 18 June 1824 and for the Trieste production, Il nuovo osservatore Veneziano, 18 July 1824 (White, ‘Meyerbeer in Italy’, 20–30). The Parisian response to Il crociato is described in Johnson, Janet, ‘The Théâtre Italien and Opera and Theatrical Life in Restoration Paris’, 3 vols. Ph.D. diss. (University of Chicago, 1988), 198, 586–7 and 632; and in Jean Mongrédien, ‘Les Débuts de Meyerbeer à Paris: Les premières représentations du Crociato in Egitto au Théâtre Royal Italien (22 Septembre 1825)’ (Paper read at Symposion Giacomo Meyerbeer, Schloß Thurnau, 25–29 September 1991). I am grateful to Professor Mongrédien for making a pre-publication copy of his paper available to me.Google Scholar
6 Despite the recent surge of interest in ‘librettology’, this point is occasionally missed in theoretical writing on the subject, although rarely in case studies. Even in paradigmatic statements by Ulrich Weisstein, the subject is only dealt with in passing, almost as an afterthought. See his ‘Librettology: The Fine Art of Coping with a Chinese Twin’, Komparatistische Hefte, 5–6 (1982), 36–7.Google Scholar For studies analogous to the present article, see Tartak, Marvin, ‘Matilde and Her Cousins: A Study of the Libretto Sources for Rossini's Matilde di Shabrari’, Bollettino del Centra Rossiniano di Studi, 3 (1973), 13–23,Google Scholar and Castelvecchi, Stefano, ‘Walter Scott, Rossini e la couleur ossianique: il contesto culturale della Donna del lago’, Bollettino del Centro Rossiniano di Studi, 33 (1993), 57–71.Google Scholar
7 See Everett, Andrew, ‘ “Bewitched in a Magic Garden”: Giacomo Meyerbeer in Italy’, Donizetti Society Journal, 6 (1988), 180.Google ScholarClaudon, François (‘Meyerbeer: Il crociato: le grand opéra avant le grand opéra’, in L'opera tra Venezia e Parigi, ed. Muraro, Maria Teresa, Studi di musica veneta, 14 [Florence, 1988], 119–31),Google ScholarDöhring, (‘Il crociato in Egitto’) and Steven Huebner (‘Crociato in Egitto, Il, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, I, 1015–17) are silent on the matter. Black's entry for Il crociato in the inventory of Rossi's libretti and their sources (otherwise admirably complete) is blank.Google Scholar
8 Mongrédien, ‘Les Débuts de Meyerbeer à Paris’.Google Scholar
9 The Lyon publication is LES CHEVALIERS / DE MALTE / ou / LES FRANÇAIS A ALGER / MÉLODRAME EN TROIS ACTES ET EN PROSE / Par J.-A.-M. Monperlier / Musique de J. J. DREUILH / Mis en scéne par M. VICHERAT / Représenté pour la première fois sur le Théâtre des / Célestins à Lyon, en Février 1813 / Sous la direction de M. LAINÉ / A LYON / Chez MAUCHERAT-LONGPRÉ, Libraire, Editeur des / Pièces de théâtre, Place des Célestins / 1813 / De l'Imprimerie de Brunet, rue Contort (F-Pn 8° Yth.3282). The work was published in Paris as LES / CHEVALIERS DE MALTE, / OU / L'AMBASSADE A ALGER, / MÉLODRAME / EN TROIS ACTES ET A GRAND SPECTACLE, /Par MM MONPERLIER et ***; / Musique de M. LEBLANC; Ballet de M. HULLIN; / Représenté, pour la première fois, à Paris, sur le / Théâtre de la Gaîte, le 4 novembre 1813 / PARIS, / Chez BARBA, Libraire, Palais-Royal, derrière le / Théâtre Françcais, no.51. / Et à Lyon, chez MAUCHERAT-LONGPRÉ, Libraire. / — / De l'Imprimerie de HOCQUET, rue de Faubourg Montmartre, no.41 / 1813 (F-Pn fr.Yth.3280).Google Scholar
10 Journal des Débats, 24 September 1825. ‘Revised and corrected’ in the translation does not really do justice to ‘revu et corrigé’, which is a term usually applied to scholarly texts. This irony and the opposition with ‘absurde’ was clearly Castil-Blaze's intention.Google Scholar
11 Monsieur! J'ai passé deux fois chez vous, pour avoir l'honneur de vous voir, et en même temps pour me procurer le plaisir de vous offrir un exemplaire du Crociato de l'édition de Paris, plus soignée et plus correcte que celle de Milan, que vous connaissez. J'espère que vous voudrez accorder une place dans votre bibliothèque musicale à cette partition qui doit à vos articles l'avantage d'être connue à Paris, et à l'auteur de laquelle vous avez donné mille preuves de bienveillance et d'intérêt dans votre feuille (la seule qui fasse foi chez les véritables amateurs et connaisseurs de musique). Je tâcherai d'essayer dans la matinée de dimanche s'il me réussira enfin de vous trouver chez vous. Agréez, Monsieur, les expressions des sentiments distinguées, avec lesquels j'ai l'honneur d'être votre dévoué serviteur, J. Meyerbeer.Google Scholar [Dear Sir, I have come by twice to have the honour of seeing you, and at the same time to give myself die pleasure of offering you a copy of the Paris edition of Il crociato, more careful and more correct than the Milan one that you know. I hope that you will grant a place in your music library to this score which owes to your articles the benefit of being known in Paris, to the author of which you have given a thousand proofs of friendship and interest in your column (the only one in which real lovers of music can trust). I shall try to find you at home on Sunday morning. Yours faithfully, J[acques] Meyerbeer]. The autograph of the letter is now in a private collection in Tokyo, and I am grateful to its owner for supplying a copy of the document and for permission to publish an edition and translation of the text. See the catalogue, Fine Printed and Manuscript Music including the Mannheim Collection [Sotheby‘s, Friday 6 12 December 1991] (London, 1991), 141.Google Scholar
12 The details of Meyerbeer's letter suggest the following chronology: his letter dates from 17 September 1825 (Saturday); the Paris première was on Thursday 22 September; Castil-Blaze's review appeared on Saturday 24 September, and Meyerbeer proposed a meeting widi Castil-Blaze the following Sunday 25 September.Google Scholar
13 An incidental feature of Table 1 is that it demonstrates the range of opera houses that Meyerbeer wrote for; there is only one, La Scala, where he worked twice, and Il crociato was Meyerbeer's first work for La Fenice.Google Scholar
14 The contract for L'Almanzore between Meyerbeer and Giovanni Paterni was drawn up in Florence and dated 15 December 1820 (Briefwechsel und Tagebücher, I, 426–7). Rossi is explicidy mentioned as the author of the libretto, and a date for the première set at 20 February 1821. When performed at La Scala on 12 March 1821, the libretto of L'esule di Granata carried the name of Felice Romani.Google Scholar
15 Various locutions were used to describe Rossi's relationship with Metastasio's Semiramide. Probably closest to the mark was the Österreichische allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 3 (1819), which described the work as Metastasio in three acts revised by Rossi in two acts (cited in Briefwechsel und Tagebücher, I, 665). See Questa, Cesare, Semiramide redenta: archetipi, fonti classiche, censure antropologice nel melodramma, Letteratura e antropologia 2 (Urbino, 1989).Google Scholar
16 Bacre, Leroy de and Rougemont, Balisson de, Makk-Adhel (Paris, 1816).Google ScholarThe novel is Cottin, Sophie, Mathilde, ou Mémoires tirés de l'histoire des croisades, 6 vols. (London, 1805).Google Scholar The claims are made in Everett, ‘Bewitched in a Magic Garden’, 184 and Döhring, ‘Il crociato’, IV, 118. Rossi had been working on a libretto derived from Mathilde from at least as early as May 1823, and he and Meyerbeer had discussed the project in correspondence (letters of 2 May and 2 June 1823 [Briefwechsel und Tagebücher, I, 489 and 497]). However, on 11 June 1823, Rossi asked Meyerbeer if he had received (1) Makk-Adhel and (2) the tragedy of Mathilde (ibid., I, 500); two days later Rossi claimed that neither text could serve as the basis for a libretto (ibid., I, 501) but had relented by the middle of the following month (ibid., I, 515), and had agreed to construct a libretto out of the two works. The character of Esmenardo d'Asp in Rossi's libretto (ultimately set by Niccolini in 1830) is not present in Cottin's novel but is found in the 1816 play; this correlation, along with the documentary evidence, strongly suggests that Rossi used both texts in the construction of his libretto.
17 Everett, , ‘Bewitched in a Magic Garden’, 177.Google Scholar
18 See the inventory described in Table 1.Google Scholar
19 Goldin, , La vera fetice (see n.3), 62. I am grateful to Nicholas John (English National Opera) for this observation.Google Scholar
20 Places where there are changes in the Italian libretto are marked in square brackets in Table 2.Google Scholar
21 Bradford, Ernie, The Shield and the Sword: The Knights of St John (London, 1972; rpt 1981), 202–8;Google ScholarPorter, Whitworth, A History of the Knights of Malta or The Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, 2 vols. (London, 1858), II, 424–66.Google ScholarRobert, and Cornevin, Marianne, La France et les français outre-mer: de la première croisade à la fin du Second Empire, Collection Pluriel (Paris, 1990), 365–75.Google Scholar
22 Said, Edward W., Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London and Henley, 1978), 12Google Scholar
23 Ibid., 8.
24 A decade of reflection has not changed the nature of this complaint. See Porter, Dennis, ‘Orientalism and its Problems’, in The Politics of Theory: Proceedings of the Essex Conference on the Sociology of Literature, July 1982, ed. Barker, Francis, Hulme, Peter, Iversen, Margaret and Loxley, Diana (Colchester, 1983), 179–93; pp. 179–82 and 186–93 rptGoogle Scholar in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, ed. Chrisman, Laura and Williams, Patrick (London, 1993), 150–61, esp. 181 [page numbers refer to 1983 edition];Google ScholarAhmad, Aijaz, ‘Orientalism and After: Ambivalence and Metropolitan Location in the Work of Edward Said’, in In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London, 1992), 180–81.Google Scholar Perhaps the clearest statement of this criticism is given by Clifford, James: ‘Said's work frequently relapses into the essentializing modes it attacks and is ambivalently enmeshed in the totalizing habits of Western humanism’ (‘On Orientalism’, in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art [Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1988], 271)Google ScholarSaid's recent essay previewing a new edition of Orientalism attempts to refute this criticism (‘East isn't East: The Impending End of the Age of Orientalism’, Times Literary Supplement, 3 02 1995, 3–6), but has not silenced some doubting voices (Malik Kenan, ‘[Letter to the Editor] Orientalism, the West and the Academy’, Times Literary Supplement, 17 02 1995, 15, for example).Google Scholar
25 The range and quantity of the bibliography on orientalism is difficult to summarise. See among others, Mutman, Mahmut, ‘Under the Sign of Orientalism: The West versus Islam’, Cultural Critique, 23 (1992), 165–97;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMeyer, Eric, ‘I Know Thee Not — I Loathe Thy Race: Romantic Orientalism in the Eye of the Other’, English Literary History, 58 (1991), 657–99;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMartin, Catherine Gimelli, ‘Orientalism and the Ethnographer: Said, Herodotus and the Discourse of Alterity’, Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts, 32 (1990), 511–29.Google Scholar Said‘s own responses are important; see his ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’, Cultural Critique, 1 (1985), 89–107,Google ScholarBeezer, Anne and Osborne, Peter, ‘Orientalism and After: An Interview with Edward Said’, Radical Philosophy, 63 (1993), 22–32, and ‘East isn't East: The Impending End of the Age of Orientalism’.Google Scholar
26 Said's best-known musical text is Musical Elaborations (New York, 1991).Google Scholar Much of the literature on Orientalism in opera has clustered around Verdi's Aida, and has been in response to Said's article, ‘The Imperial Spectacle’, Grand Street, 6 (1987), 82–104;CrossRefGoogle Scholar rpt as ‘The Empire at Work: Verdi's Aida’, in Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1993;Google Scholar rpt Random House [Vintage Books], 1994), 111–32 [page numbers refer to 1993–4 reprint]. For a direct and hostile response, see Robinson, Paul, ‘Is Aida an Orientalist Opera?’, this journal, 5 (1993), 133–40.Google Scholar See also Seta, Fabrizio Delia, ‘“O cieli azzurri”: Exoticism and Dramatic Discourse in Aida’, this journal, 3 (1991), 49–62.Google Scholar Much of the difficulty with Said's interpretation of Aida has been the result of a too-ready conflation of his work represented in Orientalism with his opera criticism. Specifically, there seems a certain reluctance on Said's part to associate the creation of Aida with the impulses of orientalism (as defined in his 1978 monograph, and in the current article). He speaks of the work as being ‘not so much about but of imperial domination’ (‘The Empire at Work’, 114; Said's emphases), and when he writes about Auguste Mariette, he speaks of Egyptology as if it were different from, but functions similarly to, orientalism: ‘Egyptology is Egyptology and not Egypt’ (ibid., 117).
27 Orientalism, 42–3 and 63.Google Scholar
28 Ibid., 76
29 Denon, Dominique-Vivant, Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte, pendant les campagnes du Général Bonaparte (Paris, 1802);Google ScholarDescription de I'Égypte, ou Recueil des observations et des recherches qui out été faites en Égypte pendant l'expédition de l'armée française, publié par les ordres de sa majesté l'empereur Napoléon le Grand, 23 vols. (Paris, 1809–1828).Google Scholar
30 Said, Orientalism, 169.Google Scholar
31 Égyptomania: L'Égypte dans l'art occidental, 1730–1930, ed. Humbert, Jean-Marcel, Pantazzi, Michael and Ziegler, Christiane [Exhibition at the Louvre, Paris, 20 01–18 04 1994; Musée des Beaux Arts du Canada, Ottawa, 17 June–18 September 1994; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 15 October 1994–15 January 1995] (Paris, 1994), 200–5, 209–10, 216–19.Google Scholar
32 Ibid., 320.
33 Ibid., 275–6.
34 Regard, Maurice, ed., Chateaubriand Ouvres romanesques et voyages, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 209–10 (Paris, 1969), II, 679–1214.Google Scholar
35 Lamartine, Alphonse de, Voyage en Orient (Paris, 1887) [1835];Google ScholarNerval, Gérard de, Les Filles du Feu; Les Chimères (Paris, 1965) [1843]; Gustave Flaubert's position on the Orient has to be deduced from a variety of sources, the writing of which stemmed from a visit to the Middle East in 1849–50Google Scholar (see Flaubert in Egypt. A Sensibility on Tour, trans, and ed. Steegmuller, Francis [Boston, 1973]; Said, Orientalism, 342n102).Google Scholar
36 Said, Orientalism, 177.Google Scholar
37 Nicole Wild's chapter ‘L'Égypte’ à l'Opéra' (Égyptomania, 392–6) and the descriptions of sets and costume designs from Pelagio Palagi to Leon Bakst (ibid., 397–447) allow exactly this correlation between specific phases of (mostly French) orientalism and works of music and drama during the nineteenth century.
38 Said, Orientalism, 171–2.Google Scholar
39 Chateaubriand: Oeuvres romanesques et voyages, II, 1798–9.Google Scholar
40 Said, Orientalism, 171. Denon had gone one stage further by associating Napoleon with St Louis (Voyage, 33 and 263).Google Scholar
41 Levaillant, Maurice, ed., Chateaubriand Mémoires d'outre-tombe, 4 vols. (Paris, 1947), I, 161,Google Scholar and I, 203, trans. Baldick, Robert as The Memoirs of Chateaubriand (London, 1961), 87 and 100.Google Scholar
42 Chateaubriand's published work received a very wide circulation, and generated a range of parodies. One of these is entitled Itinéraire de Pantin au Mont Calvaire, en passant par la rue Mouffetard … et en revenant par Saint-Cloud, Boulogne, Auteil, etc. and gives Chateaubriand's Mediterranean travels a comical Parisian resonance. The importance of such parodies is that they point to a real link between the literary world inhabited by Chateaubriand and the more popular world of the literary parody and mélodrame.Google Scholar
43 General comments in the following paragraphs are drawn from Norwich, John Julius, Venice: The Rise to Empire (London, 1977)Google Scholar and idem, Venice: The Greatness and Fall (London, 1981).Google Scholar For more detailed accounts of Venice under the Habsburgs, see Zorzi, Alvise, Venezia austriaca, Storia e società (Rome and Bari, 1985);Google ScholarPavanello, Giuseppe and Romanelli, Giandomenico, Venezia nell' ottocento: immagini e mito (Milan, 1983);Google ScholarRomanelli, Giandomenico, Venezia ottocento: materiali per una storia architettonica e urbanistica delta città nel secolo xix, Collana di Architettura, 18 (Rome, 1977).Google Scholar The establishment of Napoleonic rule is discussed in Cozzi, Gaetano, Knapton, Michael and Scarabello, Giovanni, La repubblica di Venezia nell'età moderna: dall 1517 alla fine della Repubblica, Storia d'ltalia, 12/2 (Turin, 1992), 650–76.Google Scholar
44 Lane, Frederic C., Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1973).Google Scholar
45 For orientalist thought in Venice before 1800, see Logan, Oliver, Culture and Society in Venice, 1470–1790: The Renaissance and its Heritage (London, 1972),Google Scholar and Raby, Julian, Venice, Dürer and the Oriental Mode, The Hans Huth Memorial Studies, 1 (London, 1982).Google Scholar As a general study of Venice in the eighteenth century, Monnier, Philippe M., Venedig im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Munich, 1928), esp. 183–4, is still useful.Google Scholar
46 Fontani, Francesco, Viaggio nel basso ed alto Egitto illustrato dietro alle tracce e ai disegni del signor Denon (Florence, 1808). The opportunities for publishing works that had originated in France in Florence was enhanced by the fact that Tuscany was a French département during 1808–9.Google Scholar
47 Avramiotti, Giovanni Dionisio, Alcuni cenni critici sul viaggio in Grecia che compone, la prima parte dell'Itinerario da Parigi a Gerusalemme del signor F. A. de Chateaubriand (Padua, 1816).Google Scholar For Chateaubriand's relationship with Avramiotti, see Poirier, Alice, Les Notes critiques d'Avramiotti sur le voyage en Grèce de Chateaubriand (Paris, 1929), ix–xvii.Google Scholar
48 Morris, Jan, The Venetian Empire: A Sea Voyage (London, 1980; rpt Penguin, 1990), 46.Google Scholar For a detailed account of Venetian relations with the Knights Hospitallers, see Mallia-Milanes, Victor, Venice and Hospitaller Malta, 1530–1798: Aspects of a Relationship (Hamrum, Malta, 1992);Google Scholar and Mallia-Milanes, , ed., Hospitaller Malta, 1530–1798: Studies on Early Modem Malta (Hamrum, Malta, 1993).Google Scholar
49 Morris, , Venetian Empire, 89.Google Scholar
50 Ibid., 126.
51 247–8.Google Scholar
52 Osmino's participation in recitativo semplice is in Act I scenes 3, 9 and 14; Act II scenes 1, 2, 6, 16, 19 and 20. Osmino's contribution to fully composed numbers is made up of tiny (three-to five word) interpolations in the Introduzione (Act I scene 3), the Finale Primo (Act I scene 16), a role in an accompanied recitative with Palmide and Alma (Act II scene 8), an intervention during the third stanza of ‘Suona funerea’ (Act II scene 18) and in Armando's Act II aria (scene 21).Google Scholar
53 ‘ I Cavalieri sono anche opera, si può dir, sacra è un trionfo della religione! Opera per Quaresima’ (Briefwechsel und Tagebücher, I, 515).Google Scholar
54 See Cheney, C. R., Handbook of Dates for Students of English History, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 4 (London, 1945; rpt 1978), 138–9, Table 28.Google Scholar
55 Rossi wrote to Meyerbeer on 28 October 1822 during the preparations for Rossini's Semiramide. Rossi said that Rossini had written an impressive introduzione alla Meyerbeer, in which Isabella Colbran figured. For Rossi, the introduzione was clearly a number in which Meyerbeer excelled, and where Rossini could only imitate. It should be borne in mind, however, that Rossi was alluding direcdy only to L'esule di Granata (see Briefwechsel and Tagebücher, I, 446).Google Scholar
56 Rossi wrote to Meyerbeer on 23 November 1823, explaining that the libretto had been banned, but that Meyerbeer's close friend, Giovanni Failoni, thought that the problems with the censor were not insuperable. The entire correspondence is ibid., I, 568–72.
57 Rossi himself was aware of the novelty of this number, and alludes to it on various occasions in late 1823 and early 1824 (2 September 1823, for example; ibid., I, 539). Indeed, his promise not to include such a number in Morlacchi's llda d'Avenel (on which he was currendy working) was an important ploy in convincing Meyerbeer to accept the Libretto (23 July 1823; ibid., 1, 525).
58 For a valuable overview of the subject, the most comprehensive to date, see Gradenwitz, Peter, Musik Zwischen Orient und Okzident: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Wechselbeziehungen (Wilhelmshaven and Hamburg, 1977).Google Scholar
59 Many of these categories, along with musical strategies for dealing with them were outlined by Antoine Reicha in 1833 (see Becker, , ‘Die Couleur locale als Stilkategorie in der Oper‘, in Die ‘Couleur locale’ in der Oper des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Becker, Heinz, Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, 42 [Regensburg, 1976], 23).Google Scholar In this collection, many of the contributions are based on Reicha's Art du compositeur dramatique ou Cours complet de composition vocale, divisé en quatre parties et accompagné d'un volume de planches (Paris, 1833), 96–7. For an earlier treatment (which however also focuses on the same example, Grétry's Richard Cœur de Lion),Google Scholar see Martine, Jacques Daniel, De la Musique dramatique en France, ou Principes d'après lesquels les compositions lyri-dramatiques doivent être jugés, des révolutions successives de I'art en France … des compositeurs qui out travaillé pour nos spectacles lyriques (Paris, 1813), 51–4.Google Scholar
60 The essay by Wolff, Hellmuth Christian, (‘Der Orient in der französischen Oper des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Die ‘Couleur locale’ in der Oper des 19. Jahrhunderts, 371–85) is a slight treatment of the subject that focuses on works after David's Le Désert in which the inscription of the Orient in music can be readily identified. It was unfortunately published just before Said's Orientalism, and the absence of a theoretical position lessens its value today.Google Scholar For David, see also Locke, Ralph P., ‘Félicien David: Compositeur Saint-Simonien et orientalisant’, in Saint-Simoniens et l'orient: Vers la modernité, ed. Motsi, Magali (Aix-en-Provence, 1990), 135–53.Google Scholar
61 Ralph Locke describes Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila as an ‘intriguingly atypical example of Orientalism’ in his path-breaking article on the opera, ‘Constructing the Oriental “Other”: Saint-Saëns Samson et Dalila’, this journal, 3 (1991), 262. Such a comment prompts the question of whether, in terms of a typology, Samson et Dalila might not benefit from being associated with other operas on biblical subjects rather than those on orientalist ones. The fact that the musical results are in fact comparable to those that might arise out of a contemporary orientalist opera argues strongly against the idea of a rigid typology of exoticism in the first place; such a position will be argued below.Google Scholar
62 The recent literature on Madama Butterfly makes this point excellently by presenting the thickest of descriptions of the libretto's literary background while avoiding the essentialisation of the exotic (see Groos, Arthur, ‘Return of the Native: Japan in Madama Butterfly/Madama Butterfly in Japan’, this journal, 1 [1989], 167–94;Google Scholaridem, ‘Madame Butterfly: The Story’, this journal, 3 [1991], 125–58).Google Scholar By contrast, Elaine Brody comes close to eliding Japonisme with orientalism by associating her discussion of Debussy's and Stravinsky's settings of Japanese lyrics, Saint-Saëns‘ La Princesse Jaune and Messager's Madame Chrysanthème (otherwise beautifully contextualised) with Said's Orientalism (‘Le Japonisme et l'Orientalisme’, in Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 1870–1925 [New York, 1987], 60–76).Google Scholar Her background to Japonisme in Paris (ibid., 60–3) would have benefited from a Saidian analysis.
63 The obvious example here is Carmen. Susan McClary's alliance of the exotic content of the opera with orientalism is, however, breathtaking in the conceptual space over which it leaps: to claim that the Orient is ‘first the Middle East, later East Asia and Africa’ (McClary, Susan, Georges Bizet: Carmen, Cambridge Opera Handbooks [Cambridge, 1992], 29) is only one step away from including Spain within the orientalist domain.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A similar jump is made by Philip Brett when he writes that ‘[songs by Amy Woodford-Finden need] not [be] linked to India itself, for anywhere south of the Pyrenees and east of East Grinstead would do’. Brett, Philip, ‘Eros and Orientalism in Britten's Operas’, in Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, ed. Brett, Philip, Thomas, Gary C. and Wood, Elizabeth (London, 1994), 236.Google Scholar Brett justifies this essentialising of the exotic and equates it with orientalism by referring to ‘a phenomenon in which Far, Middle and Near East coalesce into what Edward Said calls … Orientalism’ (ibid.; emphasis added). This misreading of Said seems to gloss over the distinction between the essentialising nature of Orientalism itself and a non-essential diagnosis of Orientalism which the current article takes as axiomatic.
64 Parakilas, James, ‘The Soldier and the Exotic: Operatic Variations o n a Theme of Racial Encounter’, Opera Quarterly, 10 (1993), 33–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
65 The treatment of this subject is too short and the canonical focus (Verdi, Bellini, Donizetti) too narrow in Köhler, Hartmut, ‘Der Krieg in der italienischen Oper des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Zwischen Opera buffa und Melodramma: Italienische Oper im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Maehder, Jürgen and Stenzl, Jürg, Perspektiven der Opemforschung, 1 (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 145–57. It does however stake out the ground of another putative sub-type.Google Scholar
66 Locke, Ralph, ‘Constructing the Oriental “Other”’, 263,Google Scholar and idem, ‘Reflections on Orientalism in Opera and Music Theater’, Opera Quarterly, 10 (1993), 52;Google Scholar cited in the anonymous article ‘Exoticism’, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, II, 96.Google Scholar
67 ‘The Soldier and die Exotic’, 35–8. Parakilas's example of an opera that does not involve encounter is Bizet’s Les Pêcbeurs de Perks. It is radier ‘a dream of a different life into which the audience escapes when the curtain rises and from which it awakens when the curtain falls’ (ibid., 33). Parakilas's three types are laid out ibid., 35–8.
68 Ibid., 53.
69 This is not the place to review the innovative and the conservative in Il crociato, since such an undertaking would entail a thorough review of early Ottocento formal types. It may be said that Meyerbeer's contribution is concerned with creating larger, unbroken, structures that reflect the dramatic patterns in the libretto, notwithstanding the ‘conservative’ use of recitative.
70 The argument here is not dissimilar to that advanced by Paul Robinson in his claim that Aida is not an ‘orientalist’ opera (‘Is Aida an Orientalist Opera’, 135–6 and passim, see above 223–4). Robinson suggests that Verdi's focus on an opposition between the Egyptian and Ethiopian is better read in the context of Italian political opera going back to the 1840s (ibid., 140). Aida is a more complex case than Il crociato, whose correlations between West and East, empire and slavery, are in general much clearer.
71 IL CROCIATO IN EGITTO / MELO-DRAMMA EROICA — IN DUE ATTI / Poesia di ROSSI / Musica del Signor Maestro / GIACOMO MEYERBEER / DA RAPPRESENTARSI / NEL GRAN TEATRO LA FENICE / NEL CARNOVALE MDCCCXXTV / VENEZIA / DALL TIP. CASALI ED. / M. DCCC. XXIV, 11.Google Scholar
72 Bauman, Thomas, W. A. Mozart: Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Cambridge, 1987), 27–35 and 62–5;Google Scholar for an earlier and more general treatment of the same subject, see Whaples, Miriam, ‘Exoticism in Dramatic Music, 1600–1800’, Ph.D. diss. (Indiana University, 1958).Google Scholar I am grateful to Matthew Head for a discussion of the relationship between Whaples and Bauman; see Head's, ‘Decorum and Disillusionment: The Consequences of Mozart's Orientalism in the Sphere of the Beautiful’, paper read at British Musicology Conference 1996 (London, 18–21 04 1996).Google Scholar For orientalism in eighteenth-century opera comique, see Betzwieser, Thomas, Exotismus und ‘Türkenoper’ in der französischen Musik des Ancien Régime: Studien zu einem ästhetischen Phänomen, Neue Heidelberger Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, 21 (n.p., 1993).Google Scholar See also idem, ‘A propos de l'exotisme musical de Rossini’, in Gioachino Rossini, 1792–1992: it testo e la scena. Convegno internazionale di studi, Pesaro 25–28 giugno 1992, ed. Fabbri, Paolo (Pesaro, 1994), 105–26.Google Scholar See also Bellman, Jonathan, The ‘Style Hongrois’ in the Music of Western Europe (Boston, 1993), 23–45.Google ScholarAll examples in this article are modelled on the Paris vocal score of the opera: IL CROCIATO IN EGITTO / Opera Seria in due Atti / Ridotta PER IL Cembalo / composta da / G. MEYERBEER / Prezzo: 36f / Edizione riveduta e corretta dall'autore e aumentata dei no. 4, 7 e 13 che sono la Proprietà dell'Editore / PARIGI / Presso Maurice SCHLESINGER, Mercante e Editore di Musica del Rè, Rue de Richelieu No 97 / N[ot]a le mème Éditeur a publie la Collection des Opéras de Mozart et de Rossini M.S.404 [except for 4, 7 and [13] which are given as 404. MS].Google Scholar
73 Aladino certainly participates musically in accompanied recitative, but never as the prelude to an aria (beginning of Act I finale; beginning of the continuation of the first finale; Act II scene 7; beginning of Act II quartet; Act II scene 17). Although the aria that follows ‘Di baci amorosi’ is changed in the Florence, Trieste and Paris versions of the opera, the opposition between the ‘oriental’ chorus and ‘western’ accompanied recitative leading to aria remains in place.Google Scholar
74 Bellman stresses the ‘gauche[ness] and ugl[iness]’ and the ‘noisy, percussive quality’ of the stile alla turca (‘Style Hongrois’, 43 and 42).Google Scholar
75 The letter in which this comment occurs is discussed at length in Bauman, W. A. Mozart: Die Entführung aus dem Serai, 66–8. For a general view, see Bellman, , ‘Style Hongrois’, 67–8.Google Scholar
76 Ibid., 98.
77 Much in ‘Dal tuo stellato soglio’ is directly comparable with ‘Suona funerea’, although it should be noted that solo sections of the number are divided between the four characters in the quartet.
78 Parakilas, James, ‘Political Representation and the Chorus in Nineteenth-Century Opera’, 19th-Centuiy Music, 16 (1992), 181–202;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGossett, Philip, ‘Becoming a Citizen: The Chorus in Risorgimento Opera’, this journal, 2 (1990), 41–64.Google Scholar
79 It is too easy to read the history of Meyerbeer's early involvement with Paris in terms of a simple move from Il crociato to the five-act Robert le Diable. See Everist, Mark, ‘Giacomo Meyerbeer and Music Drama at the Paris Odeon during the Bourbon Restoration’, 19th-century Music, 16 (1993), 124–48;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, ‘The Name of the Rose: Meyerbeer’s opera comique, Robert le Diable’, Revue de Musicologie, 80 (1992), 211–50.Google Scholar
80 Nottebohm, Gustav, Zweite Beethovenia: Nachgelassene Aufsätze (Leipzig, 1887), 186.Google Scholar
81 The differences between the theme of the Op. 76 Variations and the Turkish March from Op. 113 are instructive. Apart from extending the theme into a larger movement by the inclusion of a middle section, Beethoven also enhanced the Turkish qualities of the work. This was most obvious in its scoring, but also by the addition of the characteristic grace-notes at the beginning of the first beat of the first two bars of the theme. In fact, Beethoven had already experimented with this idea in 1809 when, during the reprise of the theme that follows the final variation, he added grace-notes to just this part of the theme; however, the grace-notes in Op. 76 are diatonic, whereas in Op. 113 they are chromatic.Google Scholar
82 Kinsky, Georg, Das Werk Beethovens: Thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis seiner sämtlicber vollendeten Kompositionen, completed and ed. Halm, Hans (Munich and Duisberg, 1955), 328.Google Scholar
83 Niebuhr, Carsten, Beschreibung von Arabien aus eigenen Beobachtungen und in Lande selbst gesammelten Nachrichten abgefasset (Copenhagen, 1772).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
84 Laborde, Jean-Benjamin de, Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne, 4 vols. (Paris, 1780).Google Scholar
85 Gossett, Philip, ed., Maometto II, 2 vols., Early Romantic Opera [11] (New York and London, 1981), I, third unpaginated page of introduction.Google Scholar
86 Hérold's music is unpublished. The autograph is Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Vm2.1341; and fonds du Conservatoire MS. 11837.Google Scholar
87 Such a historical model is necessarily crude, and takes no account of the theoretical accounts of music alla turca in Schubart, for example, or the (intensely academic) works of Georg Joseph Vogler. Nor does it take account of any exhaustive bibliographic survey of music between c. 1790 and c. 1820. Reassuringly, the one study that makes such claims (Schmitt, Anke, Der Exotismus in der deutschen Oper Zwischen Mozart und Spohr, Hamburger Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft 36 [Hamburg, 1988]) reinforces this model; nevertheless, given the study's narrow scope, die claims made in this article must, to some extent, be viewed as provisional.Google Scholar
88 A useful modern account of the Greek War of Independence that gives due importance to European philhellenism is Christopher Montague Woodhouse, The Creek War of Independence: Its Historical Setting (London, 1952).Google Scholar
89 Botzaris, Notis, Visions balkaniques dans la préparation de la révolution grecque, 1789–1821, Université de Geneve, These 138 (Geneva, 1962), 83–100.Google Scholar
90 Woodhouse, , The Greek War of Independence, 88–9.Google Scholar
91 Dakin, Douglas, British and American Philhellenes during the War of Creek Independence, 1821–1833, ETAIPEIA MAKEΔONIKΩN ΣΠŏΔΩ N IΔPYMA MEΛETΩ N XEPΣONHΣOY TOY AIMOY, 8 (Thessaloniki, 1955), 5–8.Google Scholar
92 Ibid., 45.
93 Fabre, Auguste, Histoire du siège de Missolungbi, suivie de pièces justicatives (Paris, 1827).Google Scholar
94 Rushton, Julian, ed., Choral Works with Orchestra (I), Hector Berlioz: New Edition of the Complete Works, 12a (Kassel etc., 1991), x.Google Scholar
95 Cairns, David, ed. and trans., The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz Member of the French Institute, Including His Travels to Italy, Germany, Russia and England (London, 1977), 78.Google Scholar
96 Gossett (Maometto II, I, introduction) points to the continuity of interest in the Greek War of Independence between 1820 and 1826. For a more general study of French philhellenism during this period, see Dimakis, Jean, La Guerre de l'indépendence grecque vue par la presse française (Période de 1821 á 1824): Contribution à I'étude de l'opinion publique et de mouvement philhellénique en France (Thessaloniki, 1968);Google Scholaridem, La Presse française face à la chute de Missolonghi et à la batailte de Navarin: Recherches sur les sources du philhellénisme français (Thessaloniki, 1976).Google Scholar
97 Lianovosani, Luigi [Giovanni Salvioli], La Fenice: Gran teatro di Venezia, serie degli spettacoli dalla primavera 1792 a tutto il carnovale 1876 (Milan, 1876), 20.Google Scholar
98 Ibid., 47.
99 Rosselli, John, The Opera Industry in Italy from Cimarvsa to Verdi: The Role of the Impresario (Cambridge, 1984), 46.Google Scholar
100 Lianovosani, La Fenice, 10. Crivelli's career is documented in Rosselli, John, Elenco provvisorio degli impresari e agenti teatrali italiani dal 1770 al 1890 (Brighton, n.d.), s.v. Crivelli (Giuseppe).Google Scholar
101 Rossi's libretto for Morlacchi's Ilda d'Avenel was Scott's Ivanhoe, according to the MS inventory of Rossi's sources cited in note 3.Google Scholar
102 The two Pacini works, for example, are both associated with the crusades; Il talismano, however, is based on Scott whereas I crociati a Tolemaide is based on the same complex of literary sources as Malek—Adel (see above, 6 and note 16).Google Scholar
103 As the coverage of repertory is widened (as it is, most engagingly, in both Parakilas, ‘The Soldier and the Exotic’ and in Locke, ‘Reflections’), the Saidian theoretical impetus seems to become more difficult to sustain. This is not to confuse ‘orientalism’ (the intellectual background to Il crociato in Egitto) with exoticism (the subject of Parakilas's study), but more to point to the wider-ranging implications of Said's more recent work, especially in Culture and Imperialism, which does indeed impinge on the more broadly ’exotic’.Google Scholar
104 Such a view accords with certain aspects of mid-twentieth-century genre theory, particularly that of Jurij Tynjanov (Tynjanov, Jurij, ‘O literaturnoj èvoljucii’, Na literatumomposta 4 [1927], 19–36; rpt Arxaisty i novatoiy [Leningrad, 1929], 30–47;Google Scholar trans. Luplow, C. A. as ‘On Literary Evolution’, in Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views, ed. Matejka, Ladislav and Pomorska, Krystyna [Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1971; rpt Ann Arbor, Mich., 1978], 66–78).Google Scholar See the approving remarks in Fowler, Alastair, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Oxford, 1982), 250–1.Google Scholar
