Magical thinking: reason and emotion in some recent literature on Verdi and politics

Abstract

Beginning from a survey of recent scholarly writing on Italian opera in the nineteenth century, the paper asks what constitutes political significance within the world of operatic composition and performance. Scholars implicitly use very different definitions of political engagement – from private interest in the events of the Risorgimento, as expressed in personal letters, to internalist arguments about homologies between opera plots and contemporary events, to anecdotes of operatic music sparking revolts or uniting crowds, to broad arguments about opera houses as places of assembly in an otherwise atomized culture. Once myths and sentimental attachments are dispelled, what kinds of evidence remain? One answer may be economic: as an almost unique way for writers and intellectuals to earn income, even in exile, operatic production drew together a wide array of progressive thinkers in shared expressive activity.