‘An atrocious indifference’: Rossini's operas and the politics of musical representation in early-nineteenth-century Italy

Abstract

This article explores the potential connection between the politics of operatic representation and politics in the more common and wider sense of the word. It does so by focusing on Gioachino Rossini's Italian operas, whose popularity was enormous between the 1810s and the 1830s. These were also crucial decades for the formation of an Italian nationalist discourse, to which opera is usually thought to have made a substantial contribution. The nature of this contribution is discussed here from the viewpoint of the anti-mimetic representational aesthetics promoted by Rossini's Italian operas. After addressing Rossini's personal political stance, as well as references to nationalist discourse in his Italian works, explored through the case study of the protagonist's final aria in L'Italiana in Algeri, the article interrogates the possible consequences of an anti-mimetic and ultimately anti-realistic aesthetics for an explicitly politicized reception of such references.

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