Opera, Liberalism, and Antisemitism in Nineteenth-Century France: The Politics of Halévy's La Juive(Cambridge Studies in Opera)

This is the first critical study of the nineteenth-century French grand opera La Juive (Paris Opera, 1835), a powerful and successful work by the leading dramatist and librettist Eugene Scribe, and Conservatoire-trained composer, Fromental Halevy. Hallman explores the politically charged messages of the opera within the context of French social and cultural history. The book addresses the opera's portrayal of religious intolerance and Jewish-Christian conflict in subject, setting, and characterization, viewing the anticlerical thrust of its critique as a reminder of the historical abuses of an autocratic Church and State and as reflection of the era's liberal ideology. It also considers the portrayal of the central Jewish characters in light of literary stereotypes and contradictory, antisemitic attitudes toward Jews in French society.

Table of Contents:
List of illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 1. The collaboration and rapprochement of the authors of La Juive; 2. The Halévys: citoyens and israélites of France; 3. The Council of Constance and the Voltairean critique; 4. Jewish-Christian opposition in music and drama; 5. Eléazar and Rachel as literary stereotypes; 6. The milieu of La Juive: Jewish imagery and identity in the July Monarchy; Epilogue; Appendices; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author :
Diana Hallman is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Kentucky. She is a contributing author to the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera edited by David Charlton, and has written articles and reviews concerning Halevy and the politics of French grand opera, as well as an article on the librettist Ludovic Halevy, in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, 1998. She was a featured speaker for the BBC's live broadcast of La Juive from the Vienna Staatsoper, 1999. Dr Hallman's research interests also include the history of American concert life and performance, and she is completing a book on turn-of-the-century Austrian-American pianist Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler.

Review :
'... a useful piece of scholarship with excellent appendices ...' History Today 'Hallman is successful in creating a vivid account of the complicated political and cultural diversity of mid-nineteenth-century Paris. ... a thoroughly researched and well-written text'. Nineteenth-Century Music Review