While European powers were at war with the Ottoman Empire for much of the eighteenth century; European opera houses were staging operas featuring singing sultans and pashas surrounded by their musical courts and harems. Mozart wrote The Abduction from the Seraglio. Rossini created a series of works; including The Italian Girl in Algiers. And these are only the best known of a vast repertory. This book explores how these representations of the Muslim Ottoman Empire; the great nemesis of Christian Europe; became so popular in the opera house and what they illustrate about European-Ottoman international relations.After Christian armies defeated the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683; the Turks no longer seemed as threatening. Europeans increasingly understood that Turkish issues were also European issues; and the political absolutism of the sultan in Istanbul was relevant for thinking about politics in Europe; from the reign of Louis XIV to the age of Napoleon. While Christian European composers and publics recognized that Muslim Turks were; to some degree; different from themselves; this difference was sometimes seen as a matter of exotic costume and setting. The singing Turks of the stage expressed strong political perspectives and human emotions that European audiences could recognize as their own.
2016-08-02 2016-08-02File Name: B01JIQ3DVE
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