Genology and Politics. The Specific Qualities of ‘Cud, Czyli Krakowiacy i Górale’ in the Context of Late Eighteenth-Century Operatic Genres
Jakub Chachulski
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8972-1490
Abstract
Previous genological studies of the opera ‘Cud, czyli Krakowiacy i Górale’ (The Miracle, or Cracovians and Highlanders) have limited themselves essentially to pointing out affinities with the singspiel or the opéra-comique, on account of the presence of spoken dialogues. Adam Tomasz Kukla recently presented a new approach, indicating specific qualities which link this work both to those two genres and to opera buffa. This article represents an attempt to surmount the limitations of earlier studies by taking more thorough account of the historical-genological context behind the opera. Of key importance to this approach are two aspects of the work that transcend the operatic genres cultivated in Warsaw during the reign of King Stanislaus Augustus.
By adopting the methodology elaborated by Thomas Betzwieser for research into the ‘dialogue opera’ (Dialogoper), we can bring out the innovation of this work in terms of linking musical numbers with spoken text, which goes beyond existing original Polish operatic output and the influence of the Viennese singspiel and opera buffa which held sway in Warsaw at that time, and brings ‘The Miracle’ closer to French operatic concepts. Also genuinely innovative, with some parallels only in Revolution-era French operatic output, is the dramatic construction of the opera’s choral scenes, which perfectly fits the formula described by James Parakilas: ‘the chorus as political representation’.
These two observations, taken within the context of the historical circumstances surrounding the work’s premiere and the expectations of the audience at that time, can be brought together on the plane of an integral interpretation which links the work’s generic innovation to its intended social-political impact, namely, an appeal for insurrection, combined with radical ideas for an egalitarian redefinition of national community. A key role was played by a change in the understanding of the folk element, originally viewed as a determinant of the spectacle’s dramatic-aesthetic unity in the spirit of a ballet-choral divertissement, but later reinterpreted in terms of the political emancipation of the choral collective subject.
Keywords:
The Miracle, or Cracovians and Highlanders, Wojciech Bogusławski, Jan Stefani, Polish music, operatic genres, singspiel, opéra-comique, DialogoperReferences
Bartlet, M. Elizabeth C. „The New Repertory at the Opéra During the Reign of Terror: Revolutionary Rhetoric and Operatic Consequences”. W: Music and the French Revolution, red. Malcolm Boyd, 107–156. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Google Scholar
Bartlet M. Elisabeth C., Richard Langham Smith. „Opéra comique”. Grove Music Online, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.43715.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.43715
Google Scholar
Bellman, Jonathan D., Halina Goldberg. Chopin and His World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691177755.001.0001
Google Scholar
Bernacki, Ludwik. Teatr, dramat i muzyka za Stanisława Augusta. Lwów: Ossolineum, 1925.
Google Scholar
Betzwieser, Thomas. „«La vera costanza in Paris». Joseph Haydns Laurette (1791) zwischen dramatischer und musikalischer Bearbeitung”. W: Bearbeitungspraxis in der Oper des spaten 18. Jahrhunderts: Bericht uber die internationale wissenschaftliche Tagung vom 18. bis 20. Februar 2005 in Wurzburg, red. Ulrich Konrad, 183–212. Tutzing: Schneider, 2007.
Google Scholar
Betzwieser, Thomas. „Exoticism and Politics: Beaumarchais’ and Salieri’s Le Couronnement de Tarare (1790)”. Cambridge Opera Journal 6, nr 2 (1994): 91–112.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954586700004195
Google Scholar
Betzwieser, Thomas. „Spielarten der deutschen Opernästhetik um 1800. Denkfiguren im Spannungsfeld von Gattungsreflexion und Bühnenkonvention”. W: Oper im Aufbruch: Gattungskonzepte des deutschsprachigen Musiktheatres um 1800: [das international und interdisziplinar Symposion in Berlin vom 29. September bis zum 2. Oktober 2004], red. Marcus Christian Lippe, 27–44. Kassel: Bosse, 2007.
Google Scholar
Betzwieser, Thomas. „Verisimilitude”. W: The Oxford Handbook of Opera, red. Helen M. Greenwald, 297–317. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195335538.013.013
Google Scholar
Betzwieser, Thomas. Sprechen und Singen: Asthetik und Erscheinungsformen der Dialogoper. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2002.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-02778-8
Google Scholar
Buch, David. Magic Flutes and Enchanted Forests: The Supernatural in Eighteenth-Century Musical Theater. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226078113.001.0001
Google Scholar
Campana, Allessandra. „Genre and Poetics”. W: Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies, red. Nicolas Till, 202–222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCO9781139024976.013
Google Scholar
Castelvecchi, Stefano. Sentimental Opera: Questions of Genre in the Age of Bourgeois Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511980244
Google Scholar
Chachulski, Jakub. „«Tiolemo su’el fagoto» i piosneczki Wojciecha Bogusławskiego, czyli o weneckim pierwowzorze warszawskiej «Wenecjanki»”. Muzyka 66, nr 1 (2021): 107–127.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36744/m.798
Google Scholar
Charlton, David. French Opera 1730–1830: Meaning and Media. London–New York: Routledge, 2016.
Google Scholar
Charlton, David. Opera in the Age of Rousseau. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Google Scholar
Chechlińska, Zofia. „Jan Stefani”. Grove Music Online, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.26600.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.26600
Google Scholar
Cone, Edward T. „The World of Opera and its Inhabitants”. W: Music: A View from Delft: Selected Essays, red. Robert P. Morgan, 125–138. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Google Scholar
Dahlhaus, Carl. Nineteenth-Century Music, przekł. ang. J. Bradford Robinson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
Google Scholar
Dean, Winton. „French Opera”. W: New Oxford History of Music, t. 8, red. Gerald Abraham, 26–119. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Google Scholar
Doe, Julia I. „Opéra-comique on the Eve of Revolution: Dalayrac’s Sargines and the Development of «Heroic» Comedy”. Journal of the American Musicological Society 68, nr 2 (2015): 317–374.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2015.68.2.317
Google Scholar
Fried, Michael. Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/431846
Google Scholar
Gerhard, Anselm. The Urbanization of Opera: Music Theater in Paris in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Google Scholar
Gossett, Philip. „Becoming a Citizen: The Chorus in «Risorgimento»”. Cambridge Opera Journal 2, nr 1 (1990): 41–64.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954586700003104
Google Scholar
Got, Jerzy. Na wyspie Guaxary: Wojciech Bogusławski i teatr lwowski 1789–1799. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1971.
Google Scholar
Henze-Döhring, Sabine. „Gattungskonvergenz – Gattungsumbrüche. Zur Situation der deutschsprachigen Oper um 1800”. W: Oper im Aufbruch: Gattungskonzepte des deutschsprachigen Musiktheaters um 1800: [das international und interdisziplinar Symposion in Berlin vom 29. September bis zum 2. Oktober 2004], red. Marcus Christian Lippe, 45–68. Kassel: Bosse, 2007.
Google Scholar
Hepokoski, James A. „Genre and Content in Mid-Century Verdi: «Addio, del passato» (La traviata, Act III)”. Cambridge Opera Journal 1, nr 3 (1989): 249–276.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954586700003025
Google Scholar
Hernas, Czesław. „Szkoła folkloru: ze studiów nad Krakowiakami i Goralami”. Pamiętnik Teatralny 15, nr 1/4 (1966): 248–267.
Google Scholar
Jacobshagen, Arnold. Chor in der franzosischen Oper des spaten Ancien Regime. Frankfurt am Main–Berlin: Peter Lang, 1997.
Google Scholar
Jacobshagen, Arnold. Opera semiseria: Gattungskonvergenz und Kulturtransfer im Musiktheater. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2006.
Google Scholar
Jauss, Hans Robert. „Historia literatury jako wyzwanie rzucone nauce o literaturze (fragmenty)”. Pamiętnik Literacki 63, nr 4 (1972): 271–307.
Google Scholar
Kivy, Peter. „Speech, Song, and the Transparency of Medium: On Operatic Metaphysics”. W: Music, Language, and Cognition: and Other Essays in the Aesthetics of Music, 51–61. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Google Scholar
Klimowicz, Mieczysław. „Wstęp”. W: Wojciech Bogusławski. Cud albo Krakowiaki i Gorale, wyd. Mieczysław Klimowicz, I–CXV. Wrocław–Warszawa–Kraków: Ossolineum, 2005.
Google Scholar
Klimowicz, Mieczysław, Zbigniew Raszewski. „Do genealogii Bardosa: parantele zachodnioeuropejskie”. Pamiętnik Literacki 78, nr 1 (1987): 233–246.
Google Scholar
Komorowska, Małgorzata. „Teatralne i polityczne konsekwencje wodewilu Krakowiacy i Gorale”. W: Topos narodowy w muzyce polskiej pierwszej połowy XIX wieku, red. Wojciech Nowik, 169–206. Warszawa: Akademia Muzyczna im. F. Chopina, 2006.
Google Scholar
Kukla, Adam Tomasz. „Wstęp”. W: Jan Stefani, Wojciech Bogusławski, Cud mniemany czyli Krakowiacy i Gorale / The Supposed Miracle or Cracovians and Highlanders, wyd. Adam Tomasz Kukla, XII–XXXV. Kraków: PWM, 2019.
Google Scholar
Lajosi, Krisztina. Staging the Nation: Opera and Nationalism in 19th-Century Hungary. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004347229
Google Scholar
MacClellan, Michael E. „The Italian Menace: Opera buffa in Revolutionary France”. Eighteenth-Century Music 1/2 (2004): 249–263.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1478570604000144
Google Scholar
Morawski, Piotr. Oświecenie: Przedstawienia. Warszawa: Instytut Teatralny im. Z. Raszewskiego, 2017.
Google Scholar
Nedbal, Martin. Morality and Viennese Opera in the Age of Mozart and Beethoven. London–New York: Routledge, 2017.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315596082
Google Scholar
Nowak-Romanowicz, Alina. Klasycyzm 1750–1830. Warszawa: Sutkowski Edition, 1994 (= Historia Muzyki Polskiej 4). Nowak-Romanowicz, Alina. „Niektóre problemy opery polskiej między Oświeceniem a Romantyzmem”. W: Studia Hieronymo Feicht septuagenario dedicata, red. Zofia Lissa, 328–336. Kraków: PWM, 1967.
Google Scholar
Parkitna, Anna. Opera in Warsaw, 1765–1830: Operatic Migration, Adaptation, and Reception in the Enlightenment. Stony Brook University 2020 (dysertacja doktorska). Pekacz, Jolanta T. Music in Culture of Polish Galicia, 1772–1914. New York: University Rochester Press, 2002.
Google Scholar
Platoff, John. „A New History for Martín’s Una cosa rara”. The Journal of Musicology 12, nr 1 (1994): 85–115.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/763939
Google Scholar
Platoff, John. „Musical and Dramatic Structure in the Opera Buffa Finale”. The Journal of Musicology 7, nr 2 (1989): 191–230.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/jm.1989.7.2.03a00030
Google Scholar
Prosnak, Jan. Kultura muzyczna Warszawy XVIII wieku. Kraków: PWM, 1955.
Google Scholar
Raszewski, Zbigniew. „Teatr Narodowy w latach 1779–1789”. W: Teatr Narodowy w dobie oświecenia, red. Ewa Heise, Karyna Wierzbicka-Michalska, 53–79. Wrocław–Warszawa– –Kraków: Ossolineum, 1967.
Google Scholar
Raszewski, Zbigniew. Bogusławski. Warszawa: PIW, 1982.
Google Scholar
Schang, Marie-Cécile. „«Chez elle un beau désordre est un effet de l’art». Éléments pour une analyse dramaturgique de la comédie melée d’ariettes”. Revue de Musicologie 99, nr 1 (2013): 61–78.
Google Scholar
Thomas, Downing A. „«Je vous répondrez au troisieme couplet»: Eighteenth-Century opéra comique and the Demands of Speech”. W: Operatic Migrations: Transforming Works and Crossing Boundaries, red. Roberta Montemorra Marvin, Downing A. Thomas, 21–39. Farnham: Ashgate. 2006.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315090306-3
Google Scholar
Wierzbowski, Ryszard. O „Cudzie, czyli Krakowiakach i Goralach” Wojciecha Bogusławskiego. Studia historycznoliterackie i historycznoteatralne. Łódź: Wydawnictwo UŁ, 1984.
Google Scholar
Zieziula, Grzegorz. „Wstęp”. W: Jozef Elsner. Krol Łokietek, czyli Wiśliczanki, libretto Ludwik Adam Dmuszewski, opera w dwoch aktach, wyd. Grzegorz Zieziula, 12–16. Warszawa: Instytut Sztuki PAN, 2019.
Google Scholar
Żórawska-Witkowska, Alina. „People, Nation and Fatherland in Three Polish Operas: Cud mniemany, czyli Krakowiacy i Gorale (1794), Jadwiga krolowa polska (1814), Kroł Łokietek, albo Wiśliczanki (1818)”. W: Nation and/or Homeland: Identity in 19th Century Music and Literature between Central and Mediterranean Europe, red. Ivano Cavallini, 41–58. Milano: Mimesis 2012.
Google Scholar
Authors
Jakub ChachulskiInstitute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8972-1490
Statistics
Abstract views: 446PDF downloads: 10
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Jakub Chachulski
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author grants the publisher a royalty-free nonexclusive licence (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Muzyka, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in "Muzyka" should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). By submitting an article the author agrees to make it available under CC BY 4.0 license.
Articles from 2018/1 to 2022/3 were published under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. During this period the authors granted the publisher a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in "Muzyka", retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Jakub Chachulski, Józef Elsner and Wojciech Pękalski’s 'The Echo in the Wood': A Late Reverberation to Italian Intermezzi in the Repertoire of Warsaw’s National Theatre? , Muzyka: Vol. 65 No. 2 (2020)
- Jakub Chachulski, ‘Bad Taste And Common Exaggeration’. Several remarks on the musical and dramatic structure of Józef Elsner’s Opera Sultan Wampum, as compared with the original libretto by August von Kotzebue , Muzyka: Vol. 64 No. 4 (2019)
- Jakub Chachulski, An Unknown Polonaise from 1821 by Józef Elsner , Muzyka: Vol. 68 No. 2 (2023)
- Jakub Chachulski, Jan Stefani, Wojciech Bogusławski, Cud mniemany, czyli Krakowiacy i górale / The Supposed Miracle or Cracovians and Highlanders, wyd. Adam Tomasz Kukla, Kraków 2019 , Muzyka: Vol. 66 No. 2 (2021)
- Jakub Chachulski, ‘Tiolemo su’el fagoto’ and Wojciech Bogusławski’s Ditties, or About the Venetian Prototype of the Warsaw ‘Venetienne’ , Muzyka: Vol. 66 No. 1 (2021)
- Jakub Chachulski, A fragment of a lost singspiel by Józef Elsner , Muzyka: Vol. 64 No. 3 (2019)
- Jakub Chachulski, Valentino Fioravanti and the Duet from the Opera ‘Echo W Lesie’ [An Echo in the Woods] by Wojciech Pękalski and Józef Elsner , Muzyka: Vol. 67 No. 1 (2022)
