Download or read book Theater and Nation in Eighteenth Century Germany written by Michael J. Sosulski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1767, more than a century before Germany was incorporated as a modern nation-state, the city of Hamburg chartered the first Deutsches Nationaltheater. What can it have meant for a German playhouse to have been a national theater, and what did that imply about the way these theaters operated? Michael Sosulski contends that the idea of German nationhood not only existed prior to the Napoleonic Wars but was decisive in shaping cultural production in the last third of the eighteenth century, operating not on the level of popular consciousness but instead within representational practices and institutions. Grounding his study in a Foucauldian understanding of emergent technologies of the self, Sosulski connects the increasing performance of body discipline by professional actors, soldiers, and schoolchildren to the growing interest in German national identity. The idea of a German cultural nation gradually emerged as a conceptual force through the work of an influential series of literary intellectuals and advocates of a national theater, including G. E. Lessing and Friedrich Schiller. Sosulski combines fresh readings of canonical and lesser-known dramas, with analysis of eighteenth-century theories of nationhood and evolving acting theories, to show that the very lack of a strong national consciousness in the late eighteenth century actually spurred the emergence of the German Nationaltheater, which were conceived in the spirit of the Enlightenment as educational institutions. Since for Germans, nationality was a performed identity, theater emerged as an ideal space in which to imagine that nation.

Download or read book Staging Theater to Realize a Nation written by Elizabeth Coen and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: University of Washington Abstract Staging Theater to Realize a Nation: The Development of German National Theater in the 18th Century Elizabeth Coen Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Dr. Odai Johnson School of Drama This dissertation examines the invention and promotion of German national theater in Prussia, Austria, and the German states of the Holy Roman Empire between 1767 and 1797 to demonstrate how theatrical performance and rituals of theater-going were integral to the formation of German national identity and the burgeoning desire to constitute a German nation-state. I present four case studies that examine the guiding principles and repertoires of three German national theaters: The Hamburg National Theater, the Court and National Theater of Vienna, and the Mannheim National Theater. I also analyze discursive material such as journals, play texts, and correspondence to interrogate how these national institutions served the political aspirations of a diverse population of bourgeois critics, theater practitioners, and German princes. My findings suggest that each theater promoted a different geopolitical configuration of an imagined German nation-state, challenging scholars’ assertions that these theaters represented an apolitical cultural project. This dissertation demonstrates that German national theaters not only reflected, but also promoted a “future Germany” that espoused the principles of both republicanism and autocracy, a tension that influenced the politics of unification in the nineteenth century. The German national theater movement of the eighteenth century also offers a critical starting point for studies of imperial nationalism in German performance.

Download or read book Body Text and Nation written by Michael Joseph Sosulski and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Staging Blackness and Performing Whiteness in Eighteenth Century German Drama written by Wendy Sutherland and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on eighteenth-century cultural productions, Wendy Sutherland examines how representations of race in philosophy, anthropology, aesthetics, drama, and court painting influenced the construction of a white bourgeois German self. Sutherland positions her work within the framework of the transatlantic slave trade, showing that slavery, colonialism, and the triangular trade between Europe, West Africa, and the Caribbean function as the global stage on which German bourgeois dramas by Friedrich Wilhelm Ziegler, Ernst Lorenz Rathlef, and Theodor Körner (and a novella by Heinrich von Kleist on which Körner's play was based) were performed against a backdrop of philosophical and anthropological influences. Plays had an important role in educating the rising bourgeois class in morality, Sutherland argues, with fathers and daughters offered as exemplary moral figures in contrast to the depraved aristocracy. At the same time, black female protagonists in nontraditional dramas represent the boundaries of physical beauty and marriage eligibility while also complicating ideas of moral beauty embodied in the concept of the beautiful soul. Her book offers convincing evidence that the eighteenth-century German stage grappled with the representation of blackness during the Age of Goethe, even though the German states were neither colonial powers nor direct participants in the slave trade.

Download or read book German Visitors to English Theaters in the Eighteenth Century written by John Alexander Kelly and published by Octagon Press, Limited. This book was released on 1978 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Music Theatre and the Holy Roman Empire written by Austin Glatthorn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-07 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Packed full of new archival evidence that reveals the interconnected world of music theatre during the 'Classical era', this interdisciplinary study investigates key locations, genres, music, and musicians. Austin Glatthorn explores the extent to which the Holy Roman Empire delineated and networked a cultural entity that found expression through music for the German stage. He maps an extensive network of Central European theatres; reconstructs the repertoire they shared; and explores how print media, personal correspondence, and their dissemination shaped and regulated this music. He then investigates the development of German melodrama and examines how articulations of the Holy Roman Empire on the musical stage expressed imperial belonging. Glatthorn engages with the most recent historical interpretations of the Holy Roman Empire and offers quantitative, empirical analysis of repertoire supported by conventional close readings to illustrate a shared culture of music theatre that transcended traditional boundaries in music scholarship.

Download or read book Morality and Viennese Opera in the Age of Mozart and Beethoven written by Martin Nedbal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how the Enlightenment aesthetics of theater as a moral institution influenced cultural politics and operatic developments in Vienna between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Moralistic viewpoints were particularly important in eighteenth-century debates about German national theater. In Vienna, the idea that vernacular theater should cultivate the moral sensibilities of its German-speaking audiences became prominent during the reign of Empress Maria Theresa, when advocates of German plays and operas attempted to deflect the imperial government from supporting exclusively French and Italian theatrical performances. Morality continued to be a dominant aspect of Viennese operatic culture in the following decades, as critics, state officials, librettists, and composers (including Gluck, Mozart, and Beethoven) attempted to establish and define German national opera. Viennese concepts of operatic didacticism and national identity in theater further transformed in response to the crisis of Emperor Joseph II’s reform movement, the revolutionary ideas spreading from France, and the war efforts in facing Napoleonic aggression. The imperial government promoted good morals in theatrical performances through the institution of theater censorship, and German-opera authors cultivated intensely didactic works (such as Die Zauberflöte and Fidelio) that eventually became the cornerstones for later developments of German culture.

Download or read book Witnessing the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in German Central Europe written by L. James and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, this volume argues that although the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars are often understood as laying the foundations for total war, many eyewitnesses continued to draw upon older interpretative frameworks to make sense of the armed struggle and attendant political and social upheaval.

Download or read book A Serious Matter and True Joy written by Margaret Eleanor Menninger and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-03-21 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We tend to accept that German cities and states run their own cultural institutions (concert halls, theatres, museums). This book shows how this now “self-evident” fact became a reality in the course of the long nineteenth century.

Download or read book Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation written by Anselm Heinrich and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-07 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second World War went beyond previous military conflicts. It was not only about specific geographical gains or economic goals, but also about the brutal and lasting reshaping of Europe as a whole. Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation explores the part that theatre played in the Nazi war effort. Using a case-study approach, it illustrates the crucial and heavily subsidised role of theatre as a cultural extension of the military machine, key to Nazi Germany’s total war doctrine. Covering theatres in Oslo, Riga, Lille, Lodz, Krakau, Warsaw, Prague, The Hague and Kiev, Anselm Heinrich looks at the history and context of their operation; the wider political, cultural and propagandistic implications in view of their function in wartime; and their legacies. Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation focuses for the first time on Nazi Germany’s attempts to control and shape the cultural sector in occupied territories, shedding new light on the importance of theatre for the regime’s military and political goals.

Download or read book Barrie Kosky s Transnational Theatres written by James Phillips and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-07-28 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the first of its kind, surveys the career of the renowned Australian-German theatre and opera director Barrie Kosky. Its nine chapters provide multidisciplinary analyses of Barrie Kosky’s working practices and stage productions, from the beginning of his career in Melbourne to his current roles as Head of the Komische Oper Berlin and as a guest director in international demand. Specialists in theatre studies, opera studies, musical theatre studies, aesthetics, and arts administration offer in-depth accounts of Kosky’s unusually wide-ranging engagements with the performing arts – as a director of spoken theatre, operas, musicals, operettas, as an adaptor, a performer, a writer, and an arts manager. Further, this book includes contributions from theatre practitioners with first-hand experience of collaborating with Kosky in the 1990s, who draw on interviews with members of Gilgul, Australia’s first Jewish theatre company, to document this formative period in Kosky’s career. The book investigates the ways in which Kosky has created transnational theatres, through introducing European themes and theatre techniques to his Australian work or through bringing fresh voices to the national dialogue in Germany’s theatre landscape. An appendix contains a timeline and guide to Kosky’s productions to date.

Download or read book Mozart s Operas and National Politics written by Martin Nedbal and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-10 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wide-ranging study explores how Czech and German nationalism influenced the reception of Mozart's operas in Prague over the centuries. It demonstrates the role of politics in the construction of the Western musical canon, revealing how both Czech and German factions in Prague used Mozart's legacy to promote their political interests.

Download or read book E T A Hoffmann Cosmopolitanism and the Struggle for German Opera written by Francien Markx and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-11-02 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first monograph on E. T. A. Hoffmann and opera, Francien Markx examines Hoffmann’s writings on opera and the challenges they pose to established narratives of aesthetic autonomy, the search for a national opera, and Hoffmann’s biography. Markx discusses Hoffmann’s lifelong fascination with opera against the backdrop of eighteenth-century theater reform, the creation of national identity, contemporary performance practices and musical and aesthetic discourses as voiced by C. M. von Weber, A. W. Schlegel, Heine, and Wagner, among others. The book reconsiders the traditional view that German opera followed a deterministic trajectory toward Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk and reveals a cosmopolitan spirit in Hoffmann’s operatic vision, most notably exemplified by his controversial advocacy for Spontini in Berlin.

Download or read book German and Dutch Theatre 1600 1848 written by George W. Brandt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-05-27 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the third volume to be published in the series Theatre in Europe. This book makes available for the first time an overview of a significant segment of European theatre history and, with few exceptions, none of the documents presented have been published in English before. Gathered from a rich variety of sources, including imperial and municipal edicts, contracts, architectural descriptions, playbills, stage directions and actors' memoirs among others, the book sheds light on one of the most fascinating areas of cultural life in the German- and Dutch-speaking countries. Explanatory passages put these documents into their historical context, and numerous illustrations bring the material even more vividly to life. Also included is the source location for each document and a substantial bibliography.

Download or read book Contextualizing Melodrama in the Czech Lands written by Judith A. Mabary and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mention of the term "melodrama" is likely to evoke a response from laymen and musicians alike that betrays an acquaintance only with the popular form of the genre and its greatly heightened drama, exaggerated often to the point of the ridiculous. Few are aware that there exists a type of melodrama that contains in its smaller forms the beauty of the sung ballad and, in the larger-scale works, the appeal of the spoken play. This category of melodrama is one that surfaced in many cultures but was perhaps never so enthusiastically cultivated as in the Czech lands. The melodrama varied greatly at the hands of its Czech advocates. While the works of Zdeněk Fibich and his contemporary Josef Bohuslav Foerster, a composer best known for his songs, remained closely bound to the text, those of conductor/composer Otakar Ostrčil reveal a stance that privileged the music and, given their creator’s orchestral experience, are more reminiscent of the symphonic poem. Fibich in his staged works and Josef Suk (composer/violinist and Dvořák’s son-in-law), in his incidental music reflect variously late nineteenth-century Romanticism, the influence of Wagner, and early manifestations of Impressionism. In its more recent guise, the principles of the staged melodrama reside quite comfortably in the film score. Judith A. Mabary’s important volume will be of interest not only to musicologists, but those working in Central and East European studies, voice studies, European theatre, and those studying music and nationalism.

Download or read book Shakespeare on the German Stage Volume 1 1586 1914 written by Simon Williams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-11 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Williams focuses on the classical period of German literature and theatre, when Shakespeare's plays were first staged in Germany in a relatively complete form, and when they had a potent influence on the writings of German drama and dramatic criticism.

Download or read book National Theatres in a Changing Europe written by S. Wilmer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-02-21 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the ways in which national theatres have formed and evolved over time, this new collection highlights the difficulties these institutions encounter today, in an environment where nationalism and national identity are increasingly contested by global, transnational and local agendas, and where economic forces create conflicting demands.