Wendy Heller | Princeton University (original) (raw)

Papers by Wendy Heller

Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2008

Who-or perhaps more properly-what was the castrato? This is perhaps one of the most fascinating q... more Who-or perhaps more properly-what was the castrato? This is perhaps one of the most fascinating questions in all of music history-and certainly the most perplexing in the history of opera. It is also an issue that has attracted considerable scholarly attention and a host of different ideological responses and methodological approaches that often reveal more about our discipline and contemporary notions about gender than they do about the castrato. This, of course, is not surprising. The fact that young boys were routinely adjusted by (seemingly) primitive surgical means ostensibly to preserve and create singing voices-and that this was regarded as a viable option in the early modern period-arouses fantasies and anxieties that are arguably more troubling today than they were in the seventeenth or even eighteenth centuries. Carolyn Abbate's consideration of the castrato in relation to the female authorial voice in opera, for example, includes this elegant description of the discomfort created by the mere mention of a castrato: When a castrato enters the conversation [...] we sense immediately a certain queasiness. Grim verbal formulations begin to proliferate-as if linguistic knees were being subconsciously pressed together. Indeed, so strong is our culturally conditioned revulsion for the castrato that we cannot imagine her/him as a positive symbol for the hidden female voice. But, is castration after all so bad? 1 Abbate's question, of course, is designed to shock-to cause a shudder and precipitate quite literally the rapid closing of men's knees, bringing to mind the Freudian and post-Freudian fears about castration and the misogyny associated with it. Shock, horror and-above all-a sense of loss permeate discussions of the castrato. On the most basic level, the loss appears to be physiological: while we may now understand that the actual surgery involved the ducts to the testes, the castrato engages fantasies about missing organs and the accompanying loss of virility and potency-as well as the mistaken notion that the castrati possessed genitalia that were more like those of women than men. Were the castrati, we might wonder, prone to penis envy? The answer, of course, is a qualified no-although, when I posed the question to two of my male colleagues, they answered in the affirmative. Nonetheless, the operation, as we now know, left the penis intact, and there is no evidence

Art History, 2010

Among the many artworks immortalized by the poems in Giambattista Marino's La galeria (1620) is o... more Among the many artworks immortalized by the poems in Giambattista Marino's La galeria (1620) is one describing a statue of the famed Theban musician Amphyon who built the walls of Thebes merely by animating stones with his lyre. Amphyon in Marble That Theban Musician whose sweet song gave life to stones, Now I am an image carved in stone. But even though stone, I live, I breathe, and from time to time thus, I sing silently. Now hand must surrender praise to your hand, illustrious maker and ruler, because, your scalpel [chisel] knows better than my lyre how to animate stone. 1 Although Amphyon was able to build an entire city with his lyre, his gifts as a statue are equally if not more impressive. Endowed by the poet Marino with a remarkable self-awareness, the statue of Amphyon acknowledges the fact that the sculptor who created him had a greater power to animate with his chisel than he once had had with his lyre. In this elegant evocation of the paragone of the arts, we fi nd the most masterful musician championing the superiority of sculpture over his own medium. Nevertheless, the poet does not deem Amphyon entirely bereft of musical talent. By imagining that his statue has the power to sing-albeit silently-Marino acknowledges the latent performative potential of the mythic musician locked inside marble. 2 In fact, Marino seems to suggest that were the sculpted Amphyon to come to life, he would express himself not in ordinary speech, but rather in a manner appropriate to a heightened theatrical universe, one in which even the effi gies of musicians retain all their abilities. 3 A similar notion about the inner life of statues may well have inspired a slightly different intersection between singing and the plastic arts. The fi nal scene in Bissari's libretto for Francesco Cavalli's opera La Torilda (Venice, 1648) features another legendary musician, Arion, whose singing summoned forth a mythical dolphin to

Journal of the American Musicological Society, 1999

This essay considers opera's use of a particular history in seventeenth-century Venice: Corne... more This essay considers opera's use of a particular history in seventeenth-century Venice: Cornelius Tacitus's Annals of the Roman Empire as transformed in Monteverdi's and Busenello's L'incoronazione di Poppea. In contrast with a recent hypothesis linking Tacitus, Poppea, and the Venetian Accademia degli Incogniti with Neostoicism, this essay argues that the members of the Accademia degli Incogniti used Tacitus's history of the Julio-Claudians as part of a highly specialized republican discourse on Venetian political superiority and sensual pleasures. After considering Incogniti philosophies and interest in the erotic in the context of Venetian political ideals and the influence of Tacitus on political and moral thought in early modern Europe, this essay places L'incoronazione di Poppea in the context of several other treatments of Tacitus produced during the mid-seventeenth century by Busenello's colleagues in the Accademia degli Incogniti, in which em...

The Opera Quarterly, 2008

... Bourdieusian practice by contextualizing these more general observations within an analysis o... more ... Bourdieusian practice by contextualizing these more general observations within an analysis of the French state's careful staging of Gabriel Fauré's funeral in ... of the essays is only highlighted by the presence, at the center of the book, of Philip Gossett's substantial contribution ...

Understanding Bach 10 (2015)

Readying Cavalli’s Operas for the Stage: Manuscript, Edition, Production, ed. Ellen Rosand (Farnham, Surrey, UK; Burlington, VT, 2013), 167- 186.

Word, Image, and Song, edited by Rebecca Cypess, Beth Glixon, and Nathan Link (University of Rochester Press, 2013), 145-166.

In 1662 the Elector of Bavaria and his wife celebrated the birth of their son with one of the mos... more In 1662 the Elector of Bavaria and his wife celebrated the birth of their son with one of the most spectacular musical theatrical events of the century. Designed by Francesco Santurini, with music (non-extant) by the court composer Johann Kaspar Kerll and libretto by Pietro Paolo Bissari, the celebration included three different types of entertainments: Fedra incoronata, a drama per musica on the Venetian model,
Antiopa giustificata, a drama guerriero featuring processions, floats, mock battles, and tableaux with musical interludes,and concluding with Medea vendicativa, a firework opera presented on presented on
a fl oating stage in the river Isar. While each of the installments of the trilogy are named for a female protagonist, it is the hero Theseus who serves as the link between these various episodes, in which song, dance, and elaborate stage effects show the consequences of loving an often dubious hero. The article explores the representation of female desire and male heroism in the context of this lavish theatrical event, focusing not only on the surviving poetry (and the musical implications therein), but also the descriptions and engravings of Santurini’s designs, preserved in the printed libretto.

Structures of Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Cultural Expression, edited by Susan McClary (Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 2013)

Contributi di Storia della danza in onore di Barbara Sparti, ed. Alessandro Pontremoli (Rome: Aracne, 2011), 155-131.

Handel Jahrbuch (2008), 35-63.

Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Nov., 2003), pp. 216-280

Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Nov., 2003), pp. 281-295

La circolazione dell'opera veneziana del Seicento, ed. Dinko Fabris (Naples: Editoriale Scientifiche, 2005), 147-162.

British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 28 no. 3 (2006), 307-321.

Who -or perhaps more properly -what was the castrato? This is perhaps one of the most fascinating... more Who -or perhaps more properly -what was the castrato? This is perhaps one of the most fascinating questions in all of music history -and certainly the most perplexing in the history of opera. It is also an issue that has attracted considerable scholarly attention and a host of different ideological responses and methodological approaches that often reveal more about our discipline and contemporary notions about gender than they do about the castrato. This, of course, is not surprising. The fact that young boys were routinely adjusted by (seemingly) primitive surgical means ostensibly to preserve and create singing voices -and that this was regarded as a viable option in the early modern period -arouses fantasies and anxieties that are arguably more troubling today than they were in the seventeenth or even eighteenth centuries. Carolyn Abbate's consideration of the castrato in relation to the female authorial voice in opera, for example, includes this elegant description of the discomfort created by the mere mention of a castrato: When a castrato enters the conversation [...] we sense immediately a certain queasiness. Grim verbal formulations begin to proliferate -as if linguistic knees were being subconsciously pressed together. Indeed, so strong is our culturally conditioned revulsion for the castrato that we cannot imagine her/him as a positive symbol for the hidden female voice. But, is castration after all so bad? 1 Abbate's question, of course, is designed to shock -to cause a shudder and precipitate quite literally the rapid closing of men's knees, bringing to mind the Freudian and post-Freudian fears about castration and the misogyny associated with it. Shock, horror and -above all -a sense of loss permeate discussions of the castrato. On the most basic level, the loss appears to be physiological: while we may now understand that the actual surgery involved the ducts to the testes, the castrato engages fantasies about missing organs and the accompanying loss of virility and potency -as well as the mistaken notion that the castrati possessed genitalia that were more like those of women than men. Were the castrati, we might wonder, prone to penis envy? The answer, of course, is a qualified no -although, when I posed the question to two of my male colleagues, they answered in the affirmative. Nonetheless, the operation, as we now know, left the penis intact, and there is no evidence British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 28 (2005), p.307-321  BSECS 0141-867X

Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Spring, 1999), pp. 39-96

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Teaching Documents by Wendy Heller

Edited volumes by Wendy Heller

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, historical subjects became some of the mos... more In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, historical subjects became some of the most popular topics for stage dramas of all kinds on both sides of the Atlantic. This collection of essays examines a number of extraordinary theatrical works in order to cast light on their role in shaping a popular interpretation of historical events.

The medium of drama ensured that the telling of these histories – the French Revolution and the American War of Independence, for example, or the travels of Captain Cook and Christopher Columbus – were brought to life through words, music and spectacle. The scale of the productions was often ambitious: a water tank with model floating ships was deployed at Sadler’s Wells for the staging of the Siege of Gibraltar, and another production on the same theme used live cannons which set fire to the vessels in each performance.

This illustrated volume, researched and written by experts in the field, explores contemporary theatrical documents (playbills, set designs, musical scores) and images (paintings, prints and illustrations) in seeking to explain what counted as history and historical truth for the writers, performers and audiences of these plays. In doing so it debates the peculiar contradictions of staging history and re-examines some spectacular box office hits.