The Operatic Voice of Leoni the Jew
Between the Synagogue and the Theater in Late Georgian Britain
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10065958 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Uri Erman (0000-0001-6294-3707, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 295-321 |
| Publication date | 2017-03-31 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of British Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9371 • E-ISSN: 1545-6986 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/jbr.2017.3 |
| OpenAlex | W2600390975 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 35 |
Michael Leoni, a leading singer in late eighteenth-century London, became famous for his role in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's anti-Jewish opera The Duenna . He was discovered, however, at the Jewish synagogue, where his singing enthralled non-Jews in the early 1770s. Tracing Leoni's public reception, this article argues that the performative effect of his singing had a multifaceted relation to his audience's psychology of prejudice, serving to both reiterate and reconfigure a variety of preconceptions regarding the Jews. Leoni's intervention through operatic singing was particularly significant––a powerful, bodily manifestation that was capable of transforming listeners while exhibiting the deep acculturation of the singer himself. The ambivalence triggered by his performances would go on to define the public reception of other Jewish singers, particularly that of Leoni's protégé, John Braham, Britain's leading tenor in the early nineteenth century. Ultimately, the experience of these Jews' performances could not be easily deconstructed, as the Jewish performers' voices were emanating from within written, sometimes canonical, musical works. This representational impasse gave rise to a public discourse intent on deciphering their Jewishness, raising questions of interpretation, intention, and confession
Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Art · Confession (law · Georgian · Judaism · Linguistics · Literature · Musical · Opera · Performative utterance · Psychoanalysis · Singing · History · Music History and Culture · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Theater, Performance, and Music History
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Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key
The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe
The Castrati as a Professional Group and a Social Phenomenon, 1550-1850
The Origins of Totalitarianism
Jewish Musical Modernism, Old and New
Jewish Music and Modernity
The Jews of Georgian England, 1714-1830
Paths of Emancipation
Anti-Semitic Stereotypes
Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key
Character's Theater
Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The Characterizing Power of Song in Sheridan's The Duenna
A Score for ‘The Duenna’
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The operatic scandal of the singing body
The Rabbinate of the Great Synagogue, London, from 1756-1842
| Highly cited | No |
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