Opera and Sovereignty

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Editorial Principles

1 EVENINGS AT THE OPERA
   Opera Seria, Sovereignty, Performance
   Ritual and Event
   Magic and Myth
   Public Opinion
   Evolutions
   Crisis and Involution

2 ARIAS: FORM, FEELING, EXCHANGE
   Ritornello Form as Rhetorical Exchange
   The Singer as Magus
   Rubbing into Magic
   Frame

3 PROGRAMMING NATURE, PARMA, 1759: FIRST CASE STUDY
   Enter Nature
   Remaking Viewers
   "Cruel Phaedra!": Ippolito ed Aricia
   Pastoral Redemption, or The Old Order
   Restored
   Appendix: Decree on Audience Behavior, Parma, October 4, 1749

4 FESTIVITY AND TIME
   Time and the Calendar
   Festive Realms / Festive Spaces
   Unbridling the Holy City
   Laughter, Ridicule, Critique
   Nature Revisited
   Appendix: Edict of Abuses in the Theater, Rome, January 4, 1749

5 ABANDONMENTS IN A THEATER STATE, NAPLES 1764: SECOND CASE STUDY
   Compounds of Royalty
   The Sack of the Beggars and the Gift of the King
   Didone abbandonata: Agonism and Exchange
   Apocalyptic Endings

6 MYTHS OF SOVEREIGNTY 
   Of Myth and the Mythographer
   Themistocles, Hero
   History as Myth
   Four Sovereigns and Two Heros
   The Exemplary Prince and the Loyal Son: Artaxerxes and Arbaces
   The Conquering Lover-King: Alexander the Great
   A Hapeless Emperor: Hadrian
   Proud Hero and Imperial Autocrat: Aetius and Valentian III
   The King Cometh
   Bataille's Sovereigns: A Postscript on Identification

7 BOURGEOIS THEATRICS, PERUGIA, 1781: THIRD CASE STUDY
   A Theater for the Middle Class
   What Class is our Genre? Reworking Artaserse
   Whether Purses or Persons
   Toward the Ideology of a Bourgeoisie
   Appendix: Annibale Mariotti's Speech to the Accademia del Teatro Civico del Verzaro, December 31, 1781

8 MORALS AND MALCONTENTS
   Dedications to Ladies
   Conversations and "Femiuomini"
   Regarding the Senses: Continuity, Accordance, Truth
   The Family of Opera

9 DEATH OF THE SOVEREIGN, VENICE, 1797: FOURTH CASE STUDY
   The Death of Time
   Opera in a Democratic Ascension
   16 pratile / June 4
   La morte di Mitridate
   Summer Season: Caesar, Brutus, and Joan of Ark
   Moralizing the Spectator

Epilogue
References
Index