Exoticism and Self-exoticizing: The Image of Spain in Classical Viennese Opera
While writing a biography of Vicente Martín y Soler (1756–1806), Leonardo Waisman was struck by the composer’s recurring habit of »playing the Spaniard«. This involved personal attitudes as well as compositional gestures, and included his years in Naples, in Vienna and in St. Petersburg. But the phenomenon exceeds the dimension of the individual: Spain had a far-reaching and multifaceted presence in Viennese cultural life. In particular, it is in the world of opera that Spain is most frequently invoked. Paisiello, Haydn, Mozart, Martín y Soler, Beethoven, von Winter, Schweitzer, Schubert, and Marschner are some of the composers who dealt with the Spanish world. The project, which is conducted in collaboration with Marisa Restiffo, will attempt to find the details of this (Spanish) imaginary. It will analyse the scores and the libretti, look for sketches of the costumes and scenery, peruse the contemporary press for reviews or comments on the performances. They will then try to fit these findings into two contexts: the political (how the depiction of the Spanish fits in with Habsburg politics) and the music-historical, centring on the early spread of exoticism as a proto-Romantic aesthetic and its changes in the early nineteenth century.
Leonardo Waisman, retired Research Fellow at CONICET (National Council for Research and Technology), studied composition and musicology at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina) and the University of Chicago. He has published on the Italian madrigal, the Spanish villancico, American colonial music, performance practice, popular music of Argentina, the social significance of musical styles and the operas of Vicente Martín y Soler. He is also a harpsichordist and conductor specializing in Baroque music, having performed concerts in America, Europe and the Far East. During 2015–16, he was Simon Bolívar Professor of Latin American Studies at Cambridge University. His most recent publications are a History of Colonial Music in Hispanic America, and two three-volume studies of villancicos: negrillas, purporting to represent displaced Africans, and jácaras, imitating the slang of the criminal underworld.
Un ciclo musical para la vida en la misión jesuítica: Los cuadernos de ofertorios de San Rafael, Chiquitos, 2 vols. in 3, Córdoba, Brujas 2015.
Santos y malhechores: el villancico en jácara, 1650–1800, 3 vols., Online edition, 2024.
›Neglo celeblamo, pañolo burlamo‹: la negrilla en España y en América, 3 vols., Online edition, 2021.
Una historia de la música colonial hispanoamericana, Buenos Aires: Gourmet musical, 2019.
Songs about outlaws have been sung since Antiquity; the cult of the brigand seems to be a quirky feature of the human psyche. Without attempting explanations for the phenomenon, the talk will focus on a selection of such ballads, with the intent of highlighting the very different approaches from which they are built.