Victor Capoul, Marguerite Olagnier's "Le Saïs", and the Arousing of Female Desire

We tend to think of exoticism in late nineteenth-century French opera as a very male-oriented phenomenon: as "cultural work" carried out mainly by men and for the male spectator's pleasure. This article takes as its starting point a rather different configuration of opera, exoticism,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the American Musicological Society 1999-10, Vol.52 (3), p.419-463
Main Author: Henson, Karen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
19th century
Capoul, Victor
Composers
Exoticism
French culture
French language
French Music
Language history
Librettos
Men
Music societies
Musical criticism
Musical register
Musicology
Olagnier, Marguerite
Opera
Opera Singers
Operettas
Orientalism
Sexual Attitudes
Tenor Voice
Vocal music
Women
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We tend to think of exoticism in late nineteenth-century French opera as a very male-oriented phenomenon: as "cultural work" carried out mainly by men and for the male spectator's pleasure. This article takes as its starting point a rather different configuration of opera, exoticism, and gender issues, exploring the possibility of a form of French operatic exoticism aimed at the fantasies and desires of women. In particular, the article focuses on a now wholly forgotten work, Marguerite Olagnier's Le Saïs (1881), and on the role in this and other operas of Victor Capoul, an Opéra-Comique tenor once celebrated not only for his vocal and dramatic skills, but also for his popularity with female listeners. In addition to providing a firm historical basis from which to begin theorizing about the relationship between exoticism and the late nineteenth-century female listener, the case of Capoul and Le Saïs reveals how operatic men, even the most high-voiced and seemingly effeminate, can be as complexly compelling-and even as liberating-for women as recent critics have argued for sopranos and "queer" listeners.
ISSN:0003-0139
1547-3848
DOI:10.1525/jams.1999.52.3.03a00020