Abstracts are in alphabetical order by speaker’s (or chair’s) name (with section). For day, time and order of papers, please see the Programme.
(S.2) MARIE-CLAUDE CANOVA-GREEN AND NAOMI MATSUMOTO, GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON – Exoticism or Eclecticism? Carnival at Court and the ‘Mascarade du Roy de la Chine’ (1700)
The long-awaited return of the merchant ship l’Amphitrite, which had sailed to China in 1698, led to a spate of entertainments à la chinoise at the court of Louis XIV in the winter of 1700. Banquets served by pagodes, masked balls, for which the king’s grand-daughter-in-law wore costumes designed by a Jesuit who had recently come back from China, masquerades and the like testified to the ‘craze’ for all things Chinese that swept France in the last two decades of Louis’ reign.
One such entertainment was the Mascarade du Roy de la Chine given at Marly on 7 January. The plot was a simple one. In line with traditional ballets des nations the Chinese emperor had come to France to pay homage to the French king, whose fame had spread far and wide. As well as a pretext for a conventional praise of Louis XIV, the masquerade led to a display of extravagant exoticism, although Berain’s costume designs, notably his invention of the parasol hat, were to serve as a blueprint for future ‘Chinese’ stage costumes.
The incidental music has come down to us in two manuscripts: complete in a MS source in the University of California Berkeley Library and one march in an MS collection of marches and batteries de tambour in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Both confirm that the composer is André Danican Philidor, also known as Philidor l’aîné.
Despite the ‘craze’ for Chinese styles and artefacts at that time, the music bears no influence from the musical practices of China or the surrounding areas but conforms simply to the standard musical writing in France of that time. The lack of proper understanding relegated the chinoiserie in music to a few Chinese instruments used as props along with aspects of scenery and costumes.
Only from the 19th century, did a real interaction in music between the West and the East occur but the unfortunate unbalanced power structures between the coloniser and the colonised have led to accusations of superficial Orientalism.
Marie-Claude Canova Green is Professor Emerita of French at Goldsmiths. She has research interests in early modern European court entertainments and other forms of large-scale public spectacles, and has published widely on the topic. In particular she has edited a four-volume collection of French seventeenth-century ballet libretti, as well as two volumes of collected essays on early modern festivals, Writing Royal Entries in Early Modern Europe (with Jean Andrews) and The Wedding of Charles and Henrietta Maria. Celebrations and Controversy (1625) (with Sara Wolfson). She has also published monographs on La Politique spectacle au grand siècle. Les rapports franco-anglais; on Faire le roi: L’autre corps de Louis XIII; on Molière’s comédies-ballets and more generally on French drama across the centuries.
Naomi Matsumoto is a Senior Lecturer in Music at Goldsmiths College, University of London and has published widely on Italian opera of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. She is a recipient of several awards including the British Federation of Women Graduates National Award, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation British Award and the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation Award. She holds fellowships of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Historical Society. Her recent publications include: a critical edition of anonymous opera Lo spedale (c. 1660) (from A-R editions, 2022); and a musical edition for Marie Claude Canova-Green and Suzanne Jones (eds), Raymond Poisson: Théâtre complet (from Classique Garnier, 2022).
(S.1) KHALID CHAOUCH, SULTAN MOULAY SLIMANE UNIVERSITY, BENI MELLAL, MOROCCO – ILLUSTRATORS AS CO-AUTHORS: EXOTICIZING THE SINO-INDIAN WORLD IN 18TH C. EDITIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS
The 18th century witnessed the flourishing of illustrations on the early translations of The Arabian Nights for many reasons. In that period, illustrations were not only meant to ‘show’ what the written text intended to ‘tell’ but also to attract the artistic taste and attention of the reader. In addition to their semantic function as highlighting devices for particular contexts, characters, scenes and spectacles reported in the written text, those illustrations exude with aesthetic messages that might exceed, deepen, or even interfere with the meaning of the illustrated text. Thanks to their semiotic and appealing features, illustrations may also impact the narrative components of the translated text to the extent that the illustrator may claim co-authorship with The Arabian Nights translator.
Just after their first French translation in 1704, The Arabian Nights captivated a large and varied readership. This and the 18th-century subsequent editions in French, English and German, bristle with illustrations both in the forms of color paintings and in sketches. These early translations also contributed in rendering an ambiguous artistic form of Orientalism. The proposed paper intends to focus on the seminal role of these illustrations in fashioning an exoticized and fabulized Sino-Indian world. The aim is more particularly to bring into prominence the interplay between the translated text and its illustrations and to negotiate the effects of the illustrator’s artistic intervention on the readers’ reception and perception of this Asian world, especially in the context of 18th-century Europe.
Khalid Chaouch, PhD from Toulouse-Jean Jaurès University in France (1995), is full professor at the College of Arts and Humanities in Sultan Moulay Slimane University, Beni Mellal, Morocco. He currently teaches ‘Modern & Classical Drama,’ ‘Film Analysis,’ and ‘Morocco and the Anglo-American World.’ He is the author of L’Evolution dramatique du dramaturge américain Clifford Odets (1906-1963) (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Septentrion, France, 1998), Humble Odysseys(Najah, Mohammedia, 2002), a play that won the British Council Prize for Moroccan Writers in English (Drama category, July 2000), and Muffled Rhythms, a collection of poems (Nadir Print, Beni Mellal, 2010). He is also Head of the English Department and Expert-Evaluator with the CNRST (2022-2025). He contributed to national and international journals with papers on travel writing, drama criticism, cross-cultural issues, film analysis, and IP.
(S3. Chair) David Chataignier is universitetslektor (university lecturer) at Åbo Akademi (Åbo, Finland) where he teaches French literature and language. His research focuses on representations of the Ottoman Empire in 16th- and 17th-century French literature, the early modern press (particularly the rhymed newssheets of Loret, Robinet, and Mayolas), and galanterie. In 2012–13, Chataignier was assistant research editor at the Voltaire Foundation (University of Oxford) where he contributed to the critical edition of Voltaire’s works with the team led by Nicholas Cronk. In 2006–10, he took part in the Molière21 project (Université Paris–Sorbonne), which led to the development of the database www.moliere.huma-num.fr and the publication of Molière’s Œuvres complètes in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade series (Gallimard, 2010) by Georges Forestier and Claude Bourqui. His most recent publications include: “Süleyman ağa’s diplomatic visit to France as portrayed in the Gazette and in rhymed newssheets (1669–1670): Depiction and fiction”, forthcoming in Culture and Diplomacy: Ambassadors as cultural actors in Ottoman-European relations Symposia 2013–15), ed. Reinhard Eisendle, Suna Suner, and Hans Ernst Weidinger, Vol. 6 of Ottoman Empire and European theatre. Vienna: Hollitzer Verlag; “Questions regarding the ‘Parade of the nations’ in the Carrousel de Monseigneur le Dauphin (1662)”, in Gluck and the Turkish subject in ballet and dance, ed. Michael Hüttler and Hans Ernst Weidinger, 159–78, Vol. 5 of Ottoman Empire and European theatre, Vienna: Hollitzer Verlag, 2019; (with Georges Forestier, & Claude Bourqui), “Les Spectacles et la vie de cour selon les gazetiers (1659–1674)”, Base de données Moliere 21, 2016, http://moliere.huma-num.fr/base.php?LES_SPECTACLES_ET_LA_VIE_DE_COUR_SELON_LES_GAZETIERS_%281659-1674%29; “Querelle Guillet-Spon.” Banque de données AGON. https://obvil.huma-num.fr/agon/querelles/querelle-guillet-spon (2016).
(S.2 Chair) Iain Fenlon is Emeritus Professor of Historical Musicology in the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of King’s College. Most of his writing has been concerned with the social and cultural history of music in early modern Italy and Spain. His books include a two-volume study, Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Mantua (Cambridge, 1980), a monograph on the early Italian madrigal (with James Haar) (Cambridge, 1988), and Music, Print and Culture in Early Sixteenth-Century Italy (The Panizzi Lectures for 1994, British Library, 1995), and Music and Culture in Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford, 2002). He is the founding editor of the journal Early Music History. In the course of his career, he has been affiliated to a number of other academic institutions including Harvard University, All Souls College Oxford, New College Oxford, the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, the University of Bologna, and the universities of Zürich, Heidelberg, and Regensburg. His most recent books are The Ceremonial City: History, Memory and Myth in Renaissance Venice (Yale, 2007), Piazza San Marco (Harvard, 2009), Heinrich Glarean’s Books: The Intellectual World of a Sixteenth-Century Musical Humanist (Cambridge, 2013- co-edited with Inga Mai Groote), and The Cambridge History of Sixteenth-Century Music (Cambridge, 2019, co-edited with Richard Wistreich). Iain Fenlon is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society, and the Society of Antiquaries of London.
(S.4 Chair) Clare Finburgh Delijani is a teacher and researcher in the Department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths. She is the recipient of a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2023-26) during which she will be writing Ghosts of Empire: Performing Postcoloniality in France (Liverpool University Press), a project tracing a history of postcolonial theatre in France from the 1950s to today, asking how theatre looks back at histories of colonialism, better to understand identity, community and the postcolonial nations today. As well as examining seminal postwar decolonial playwrights like Aimé Césaire from Martinique or Kateb Yacine from Algeria, the book sheds light on less known but highly influential contemporary theatre-makers including Marine Bachelot Nguyen, Alexandra Badea, Nasser Djemaï, Latifa Laâbissi, Caroline Guiela Nguyen, Léonora Miano and Dieudonné Niangouna, illustrating how postcolonial arts can promote racial and social justice by viewing contemporary societies through the prism of colonial pasts. Clare’s other publications include special issues of Théâtre/Public on postcolonial theatre (2023) and on the Situationist International (2019), The Great Stage Directors: Littlewood, Planchon, Strehler (2018, with Peter Boenisch), Watching War on the Twenty-First-Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict (2017), Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd: Ecology, the Environment and the Greening of the Modern Stage (2015, with Carl Lavery) and Jean Genet (2012, with David Bradby). She is the co-founder of the European Association for the Study of Theatre and Performance. Across all Clare’s publications, she addresses some of the most pressing political and social issues of the modern world: the ecological crisis, global conflict, and migrant and post-migrant identities and communities.
(S.1) ANDRÉ GODINHO, INSTITUTO DE CIÊNCIAS SOCIAIS, UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA – THE CRADLE OF THE SUN: PORTRAYING ASIA IN PUBLIC RITUALS IN PORTUGAL (16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES)
This presentation seeks to shed light on the role of Asia in the discourses presented by different groups and institutions in the public rituals that were celebrated in the kingdom of Portugal during the 16th and 17th centuries. Drawing on dozens of festival accounts, we will provide an overview of how the continent and its inhabitants were portrayed in several types of occasions, identifying trends and divergences and interrogating their role in the exteriorization of their promoters’ agendas.
The first section will examine the personifications of Asia that were displayed in different ritualized practices. Comparing a wide range of these manifestations between paintings, sculptures, theatrical performances and dances, we will problematize the signs and dispositions that were used in their characterization (namely phenotypes, clothing, accessories, animals, gestures and enunciations), questioning their role in the materialization of different discourses on the continent.
The second section will focus on the representation of religion in Asia, paying special attention to two spectacles produced by Lisbon’s Jesuits – a theatrical performance staged for Philip III during his reception in the city, in 1619, and a pyrotechnic display that celebrated the beatification of Saint Francis Xavier, in 1620. Both occasions advanced missionary narratives that mobilized Asian ‘priests’ and deities as antagonists, tying their defeat to the exemplary contributions provided by (or expected from) the ritual’s protagonists.
The final section will address the portrayal of Asia in the solemn entries of Portuguese monarchs. We will summarize its evolution, framing its different iterations on the agendas of the groups that contributed to the staging of these occasions – from the protection of commerce in the crown’s Asian possessions to the regulation of access to the offices and remunerations that were tied to those locations.
Throughout the presentation we will seek to answer three main sets of questions: a) How was the identification of Asia and its inhabitants achieved? How were they differentiated from other spaces and peoples? b) Which narratives framed the representation of Asia? Did different narratives call for different representational schemes? c) Who were the promoters of these representations? How did the portrayal of Asia fit into their political preoccupations.
André Godinho is preparing his PhD thesis at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais of the Universidade de Lisboa, under the supervision of Ângela Barreto Xavier and Lisa Voigt. Titled ‘A fábula do monte Ida: sentidos do corpo nos rituais públicos portugueses (1580-1687)’, his project focuses on the role of the body in the production and reception of public rituals in Portugal during the 16th and 17th centuries. He has a master’s degree in Early Modern History from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (2020), having written a dissertation on the role of memory, knowledge and different sensibilities in Portuguese royal entries during the 16th and 17th centuries. He has presented conferences on several themes relating to public rituals in Portugal during the Early Modern period, and is currently preparing a set of chapters to be published on books concerning the subject. He is a member of the ‘Rebellion and Resistance in the Iberian Empires (15th-19th centuries)’ international research project.
(S.1 Chair) Marc W. S. Jaffré is a lecturer in early modern history at the University of Durham. His research centres on understanding the relationship between human experience and the state, and how culture is represented and performed in early modern France. His monograph, The Courtiers and the Court of Louis XIII, 1610-1643, is forthcoming. He is also co-editing a volume for Brepols, Marginalized Voices and Figures in French Festival Culture, 1500-1800. Aside from early modern court history, he is interested in diplomatic history, festival culture, and increasingly early modern hospitality.
(S.4) SHEIBA KIAN KAUFMAN, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE – STAGING SHAKESPEARE’S PERSIAN TOM IN KING LEAR
Ancient Persian kings such as Cyrus the Great are unexpected paradigms of early modern sovereignty and ideal kingship because of their strong historical association with the virtues of hospitality and tolerance. From the mid-sixteenth century, English humanists, poets and playwrights summon ancient Persian monarchs in their didactic and literary works as models of virtuous conduct. This type of appeal to liberality channeled through Persia reoccurs in early modern writing, providing a specific set of associations for the nation that differentiate Anglo-Persian exchanges from other international relationships by often privileging a hospitable discourse between disparate groups. This paper elucidates an enabling virtue discourse found in Shakespeare’s reference to Persian clothing in the tragedy of King Lear. This conceptual configuration accommodates hospitable bonds between Lear and Edgar on the heath in Act 3, scene 6. The transformation of Edgar into a Persian garbed figure attests to Shakespeare’s interest in and knowledge of both ancient and early modern Persia yet editorial glosses on the Persian clothing reference are often minimalist, equating the sartorial allusion with Eastern luxury. This paper considers Shakespeare’s ongoing interest with Persia as both a place and a concept invoking notions of hospitality, sovereignty, and dignity for the distraught monarch in King Lear.<
Sheiba Kian Kaufman is an Assistant Professor of English at Saddleback College and teaches Shakespeare at the University of California, Irvine. She was an Ahmanson-Getty Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for 17th-and 18th-Century Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (2016-2017). Her recent work on Persia, early modern English drama, and the Global Renaissance is published in Shakespeare and Virtue: A Handbook (Cambridge UP 2022). Her forthcoming book, The Hospitable Globe: Persia and Early Modern English Drama, examines how representations of Persia present models of intercultural hospitality for early modern English and Shakespearean drama.
(S.1) TIZIANA LEUCCI, CEIAS, EHESS/CNRS – THE FRENCH EAST INDIAN COMPANY IN INDIA: THE COURT-BALLETS ‘LE TRIOMPHE DE BACCHUS DANS LES INDES’ AND ‘LE TRIOMPHE DE L’AMOUR’ AS METAPHORS OF THE KING LOUIS XIV’S POLITICAL TRIUMPH IN ASIA.
In my paper I’ll deal with the creation of the French East Indian Company, in 1664, and the arrival of its French officers in India, in 1666. Actually, France was the last European country to found and send its trading company in India in the 17th century, after the Portuguese did it in the beginning of the 16th century, followed a century later by the British in the year 1600, and by the Dutch in the year 1602. India in those days was perceived and described by the various Chinese, Persian, Arabian and European travellers and merchants, mainly as a civilization of vast mathematical, astronomical and philosophical knowledge, a land of great luxury having majestic palaces and impressive monuments, producing a large amount of spices, gorgeous fabrics, jewels and precious stones. Such an important economical and political event was soon celebrated in France at the King Louis XIV’s court with two ballets: ‘Le Triomphe de Bacchus dans les Indes’, staged in 1666, and ‘Le Triomphe de l’Amour,’ performed fifteen years later, in 1681. In my presentation I’ll analyse those two productions by contextualizing them historically and artistically. They truly emphasized not only the presence of the French East Indian Company in India, but also the political triumph of the ‘Roi Soleil’, who was portrayed on the stage, indirectly but metaphorically, by the mythical and military achievements of both the Greek god Dionysus /Bacchus and the emperor Alexander the Great in the East, where the sun, symbol of glory and royal power, itself rises and shines in Asia as in Europe as well…
Tiziana Leucci, dance historian and anthropologist, is a senior research fellow at the Centre d’Etudes de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (CEIAS, EHESS/CNRS) of the French National Center for the Scientific Research (CNRS, Paris-Aubervilliers). Her Ph.D. thesis in Social Anthropology (EHESS, Paris) dealt with the ethno-history of the South Indian dancers and courtesans’ culture. She studied ballet and modern dance at the National Academy of Dance in Rome, and South Indian dances (Bharatanāṭyam and Odissi styles) in India, from 1987 till 1999, with masters from the hereditary families of temple and court performing artists (devadāsīs, rājadāsīs and naṯṯuvaṉārs). She edited a volume, authored a book and several articles on Dance History and Anthropology, particularly on the construction of the Indian dancer character (bayadère) on the European, Russian and American stage. At present, she is codirecting two seminars, a research workshop at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and a scientific project titled ‘Connected Histories of Dance’ at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme de Paris Nord. She teaches Bharatanāṭyam dance at the Conservatoire de Musique et Danse ‘Gabriel Fauré’, Les Lilas-Est Ensemble (France).
(S.3) MARIA MACIEJEWSKA, UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK – APPLAUSE FOR FAILURE. JAPANESE TOPICS IN JESUIT DRAMA ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE PLAY ‘SANCTUS FRANCISCUS XAVERIUS…’ (LUCERNE, 1677)
When Japanese members of the Tenshō embassy (1582-1590) visited the city of Coimbra in Portugal, students of the local Jesuit college presented them with a marvelous spectacle. The envoys came back to Japan and later the Christian mission in Japan failed. But as it turned out, Japanese topics were to stay on the Jesuit stage for many years to come.
All around Europe, playwrights from the Society of Jesus chose Japan as the setting for their dramas. The number of Asian elements in plots varied significantly from pretext background to detailed rendition but it was always an occasion for the broader audience to look for information about the faraway land. Especially, that the staging was often a public-school event, thus gathered parents, local nobility, clergy, and other benefactors. The less-known scenery made the Jesuit message of piety more attractive for spectators while at the same time proving the order’s worldwide presence. Students involved in the preparations as actors were mostly supposed to use this occasion to practice their Latin and rhetorical skills. But not only. The theatrical element holds a strong position in Ignatian spirituality for a reason. Temporary and controlled reenactment of different characters was an aid in a better understanding of Christian morality. Nevertheless, it meant that students played Catholic martyrs as well as Buddhist priests.
The paper will present the phenomenon on the example of ‘Sanctus Franciscus Xaverius Indiae et Iaponiae Apostolus’ by J.B. Dornsberger. This play was staged in 1677 on the occasion of the opening of the Jesuit church in Lucerne, Switzerland. It is currently preserved in two manuscripts kept in Zentral-und Hochschulbibliothek in Lucerne (ZHB, Sondersammlung Tresor Kb., Pp 74 4°) and in the monastery of Engelberg (Cod. 343).
Maria Maciejewska is a PhD student at the University of Innsbruck. She holds an MA degree in classical philology and a BA degree in inter-domain studies in the humanities and social sciences from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. From 2017 to 2019, Maria was a researcher at Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies in Innsbruck where she worked on the joint Austrian-Japanese project “Japan on the Jesuit Stage”. Thanks to Marietta Blau-Grant, she spent a year in Rome, where she conducted a query in ARSI and Peter-Hans Kolvenbach Library. Maria’s research to date has been focused on the Jesuit missions in Japan and China as well as on the Jesuit theatre. Maria is now based in Brussels.
(S.4) SUSAN MOKHBERI, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY – ILLUSTRATING THE PERSIAN EMBASSY TO FRANCE IN 1715
The visit of Mohammad Reza Beg to Paris in 1715 fascinated French readers, the general public that witnessed his processions and outings in Paris and other French cities, as well as consumers of engravings. Engravers showcased the connections between France and Persia and spoke to French audiences by representing him with certain objects, as well as habits, that were key to relating the Persian to Frenchmen. Some of the objects depicted in the engravings indicated Beg’s foreign luxury while at the same time representing a connection between France and Persia. For example, some of the illustrated objects symbolized royal power in Safavid Persia and Bourbon France, such as the throne, sword, dagger, and scepter, thereby linking the French and Persian crowns. However, Frenchmen expected the ambassador to present a wealth of expensive and rare goods to Louis XIV. But, the Beg’s gifts did not match up to the court’s anticipation. The prints embellished the list of gifts to dispel any disappointment. The depictions of the Beg are more than just mere evidence that the French consumed the exotic; rather they reflect how French printers projected it to suit French tastes, expectations, and the interests of the monarchy.
Susan Mokhberi is a historian of early modern France with a focus on French contacts with the world. Her book, The Persian Mirror: Reflections of the Safavid Empire in Early Modern France (Oxford University Press, 2019), looks at the unique relationship between France and Persia in the seventeenth century, which culminated in Montesquieu’s famed Persian Letters. Using diplomatic sources, fiction, travelogues, and printed and painted images, The Persian Mirrorshows how the French came to see themselves in Persia and revises our notions of orientalism and the exotic. Currently, she is working on a new project that examines how seventeenth-century diplomatic encounters shaped notions of difference between groups of people across the globe. Mokhberi has been the recipient of generous grants including a Fulbright to France and, most recently, a Rutgers Global International Collaborative Research Grant. Her classes at Rutgers University at Camden cover the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, French Revolution, and Europe’s encounters with the World.
(S.4) MAGNUS TESSING SCHNEIDER, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN DENMARK – VENETIAN-PERSIAN CONNECTIONS IN BUSENELLO’S LA STATIRA PRINCIPESSA DI PERSIA (1656)
The opera La Statira principessa di Persia, with a libretto by Giovan Francesco Busenello and music by Francesco Cavalli, was the third of three operas about the Achaemenid shahs to premiere at the Teatro SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice. Coming after Il Ciro from 1653 (about the founder of the ancient Persian empire) and Xerse from 1654 (about its greatest ruler), La Statira from 1656 features Darius III and his daughter Stateira who saw the collapse of the empire after the invasion by Alexander the Great.
The plot is entirely fictitious, though, as it replaces Darius’ war against Alexander with an imaginary war against an unnamed Armenian king. Set mainly in the gardens of Persia’s royal palace, the action centres on the inability of the ageing ruler to respond adequately to the threat of the advancing Armenian forces, as he limits himself to bestowing noble titles on the messengers who bring news from the front.
This is a clue to the opera’s allegorical dimension: in the years before the premiere, the late Doge Francesco Molin had drawn criticism for selling noble titles in an attempt to fill the republic’s coffers depleted by the Cretan War (1645-1669) against the Turks. With Armenia as a stand-in for the Ottoman Empire, Darius’ Persia is, therefore, a theatricalised reflection of a politically and economically declining Venice, which had tried, unsuccessfully, to enlist the support of the Safavid shah in the war effort.
Adopting Brenda Machosky’s definition of allegory as a ‘resemblance’ rather than a ‘representation’, the paper explores Busenello’s operatic Persia as a rich allegorical image that draws on stories from Venice’s diplomatic missions – e.g. about the ‘hanging Persian gardens’ – while it mirrors a political crisis closer to home.
Magnus Tessing Schneider is a Docent (Reader) in Theatre Studies from Stockholm University and currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern Denmark within the research project ‘Histories: Assessing the Role of Aesthetics in the Historical Paradigm’. His research interests include seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European theatre, Shakespearean dramaturgy and performance practice, the intertwined histories of singing and acting, the opera composers Monteverdi, Cavalli, Gluck, Mozart, and Verdi, and the librettists Giovan Francesco Busenello, Ranieri Calzabigi, and Lorenzo Da Ponte. He was a cofounder of the Nordic Network for Early Opera, and his practice-oriented research has inspired opera productions across the world. His most recent monograph is The Original Portrayal of Mozart’s Don Giovanni (London: Routledge, 2021). He is co-editor with Ruth Tatlow of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito: A Reappraisal (Stockholm University Press, 2018), and the editor of Felicity Baker’s essay collection Don Giovanni’s Reasons: Thoughts on a Masterpiece (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2021).
(S.2) QI WANG, PHD STUDENT, THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE DEPARTMENT, GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON – THE FIRST FRANCE TOUR OF THE ORPHAN OF ZHAO
In 1731, the Jesuit missionary Joseph de Prémare translated the Chinese traditional opera, The Orphan of Zhao, into French and sent it to Paris as an effort to introduce Europe to the sophisticated art of theatre in China. His choice of this Chinese tragedy for translation was a deliberate and well-thought-out one, and his translation strategy (especially his non-translation of the lyrics) reflects his awareness, subordination, and helplessness. His understanding and perception of Chinese traditional opera was groundbreaking in the West and had a profound impact on the formation and development of Western opera studies, and his translation also caused a clash between Eastern and Western views of theatre in Europe.
However, as American scholar Harold Bloom said, ‘All reading is misreading.’ Misreading is a common phenomenon in both literature communication and theatre exchanges for a variety of subjective and objective reasons. Although it could lead receivers to misunderstand the objects, it also facilitates their communication to some extent. There is no doubt that misreading happened in the translation progress of The Orphan of Zhao, too.
This paper is aiming to clarify some misreading points in The Orphan of Zhao’s French travel and find out the reason for misinterpretation from the script’s translation strategy and the history of theatre aspects, respectively. Through representing a real The Orphan of Zhao, I hope my article can promote communication between Europe and Asia in the theatre area and offer theatre practitioners another useful perspective from the East.
Qi Wang is a PhD Student in the Department of Theatre and Performance, Goldsmiths, University of London.
(S.3) AKIHIKO WATANABE, OTSUMA WOMEN’S UNIVERSITY – (IN)GRATA IAPON! CONTRASTING IMAGES OF JAPAN IN THE ORIENTAL PLAYS OF ANDRZEJ TEMBERSKI (1662-1726)
The Jesuit plays on Japan, which were produced from the early 17th or possibly late 16th all the way to the 19th century in the hundreds throughout the world, have been researched extensively by Immoos, Dietrich, Hsia-Wimmer and most recently by Oba-Schaffenrath-Watanabe, but many dark spots remain. Investigations so far have made clear that the various historical representations of Japan on the Jesuit stage can and should be considered from multiple angles, including the original stories as far as they can be reconstructed, the channels of transmission to Europe including the various redactions on the way and in the destination, and the specific contexts of reception.
This presentation considers three relatively late-stage representations of Japan in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by a single Jesuit author, Andrzej Temberski. Although the plays, Renovatum deicidium in Iaponia (‘Renewed deicide in Japan’) (Lublin, 1698), Novus Mercurius ex ligno Iaponensi (‘New Mercury out of a Japanese tree’) (Sandomierz, 1701), and Constantia Coronate in iudicio regis Bungi gentilis (‘Constancy crowned in the judgment of the pagan king of Bungo’) (Lviv, 1701) were produced in close proximity with each other both in terms of date and location and are preserved consecutively in a single manuscript, suggesting that they formed a single unit in the author’s wide-ranging Oriental interests which also encompassed India, Sri Lanka and the Ottomans (as seen in his other plays), these pieces also present contrasting, sometimes diametrically opposed images of Japan, from that of a land specially blessed by divine miracles to that of an ungrateful traitor to Catholicism. The plays demonstrate how Japan, where Francis Xavier (1506-52) had planted the seed and later a large number of missionaries and converts had been famously martyred, continued to inspire Central-Eastern European Jesuit rhetorical and dramatic imagination in various, even contradictory ways more than 150 years after the country had closed its doors to the Catholic West.
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