Rachel Cowgill & David Cooper 
Art and Ideology in European Opera 
Essays in Honour of Julian Rushton

Essays highlight the interplay between opera, art and ideology across three centuries. Three broad themes are opened up from a variety of approaches: nationalism, cosmopolitanism and national opera; opera, class and the politics of enlightenment; and opera and otherness.


Opera, that most extravagant of the performing arts, is infused with the contexts of power-brokering and cultural display in which it was conceived and experienced. For individual operas such contexts have shifted over time and new meanings emerged, often quite remote from those intended by the original collaborators; but tracing this ideological dimension in a work’s creation and reception enables us to understand its cultural and political role more clearly – sometimes conflicting with its status as art and sometimes enhancing it.

This collection is a Festschrift in honour of Julian Rushton, one of the most distinguished opera scholars of his generation and highly regarded for his innovative studies of Gluck, Mozart and Berlioz, among many others. Colleagues, associates and former students pay tribute to his work with essays highlighting the interplay between opera, art and ideology across three centuries. Three broad themes are opened up from a variety of approaches: nationalism, cosmopolitanism and national opera; opera, class and the politics of enlightenment; and opera and otherness. British opera is represented bystudies of Grabu, Purcell, Dibdin, Holst, Stanford and Britten, but the collection sustains a truly European perspective rounded out with essays on French opera funding, Bizet, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Puccini, Janácek, Nielsen, Rimsky-Korsakov and Schreker. Several works receive some of their first extended discussion in English.


RACHEL COWGILL is Professor of Musicology at Liverpool Hope University.

DAVID COOPER is Professor of Music and Technology at the University of Leeds.

CLIVE BROWN is Professor of Applied Musicology at the University of Leeds.


Contributors: MARY K. HUNTER, CLIVE BROWN, PETER FRANKLIN, RALPH LOCKE, DOMINGOS DE MASCARENHAS, DAVID CHARLTON, KATHARINE ELLIS, BRYAN WHITE, PETER HOLMAN, RACHEL COWGILL, ROBERTA MONTEMORRA MARVIN, DAVID COOPER, RICHARD GREENE, J.P.E. HARPER-SCOTT, DANIEL GRIMLEY, STEPHEN MUIR, JOHN TYRRELL.

Table of Content

‘Studying a little of the French Air’: Louis Grabu’s
Albion and Albanius and the Dramatic Operas of Henry Purcell – Andrew Woolley

Mendelssohn’s
Die Hochzeit des Camacho: An Unfulfilled Vision for German Opera – Clive Brown

Funding Grand Opera in Regional France: Ideologies of the Mid-Nineteenth Century – Katharine Ellis

Stanford and Le Fanu’s
Shamus O’Brien: Protestant Constructions of Irish Nationalism in Late Victorian England – David Cooper

Janácek, Nejedlý and the Future of Czech National Opera –

‘As for opera, I am bewildered’: Gustav Holst on the Fringe of European Opera – Richard Greene

The Sadler’s Wells Dialogues of Charles Dibdin –

Nobility in Mozart’s Opera – Flora Willson / Reviews

New Light and the Man of Might: Revisiting Early Interpretations of Mozart’s
Die Zauberflöte – Rachel Cowgill

The Victorian Violetta: The Social Messages of Verdi’s
La traviata – Roberta Montemorra Marvin

Carl Nielsen’s Carnival: Time, Space and the Politics of Identity in
Maskarade – Daniel Grimley

Beyond the Exotic: How ‘Easter’ is
Aida? – Ralph Locke

Beyond Orientalism: The International Rise of Japan and the Revisions to
Madama Butterfly – Domingos de Mascarenhas

Opera as Poetry: Bizet’s
Djamileh and the Ironies of Orientalism –

Rimsky-Korsadov,
Pan Voyevoda and the Polish Question: Exposing the ‘Occidentalist Irony’ – Stephen Muir

Modernism’s Distanced Sound: A British Approach to Schreker and Others – Peter Franklin

Being-with Grimes: The Problem of Others in Britten’s First Opera –

Epilogue: Julian Rushton: A Family Memoir – Adrian Rushton and Edward Rushton and Thomas Rushton

About the author

DANIEL M. GRIMLEY is Professor of Music, University of Oxford. Tutorial Fellow, Merton College. Associate Head (Research) of Humanities. Daniel Grimley’s latest book was recently published by CUP at the end of 2018: Delius and the Sound of Place. Grimley has published various books with Boydell.