‘Qu’il est loin mon pays’: staging (be)longing in Massenet’s Sapho

Journal article

Abstract:: At first glance, Jules Massenet's opera Sapho (1897) might appear to water down its source material, substituting the searing social commentary of Alphonse Daudet's novel (1884) with idealised tropes of the Midi. This article, however, seeks to complicate this reading, arguing that Sapho moves beyond the regionalism of its operatic predecessors, while entirely reimagining Daudet's novel for a new medium. It highlights how the themes of nostalgia and belonging are established in Henri Cain and Arthur Bernède's libretto, reiterated by Léon Carvalho's staging, and intensified in Massenet's score, thereby nuancing and enriching our understanding of adaptation for the operatic stage.

Files:: Kavanagh_2023_Qu_il_est_loin.pdf

(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 3.4MB, Terms of use)

Language:: English
Keywords:: Jules Massenet

adaptation

FFR

nostalgia

opera

Alphonse Daudet

staging and stagecraft

provincial identity
Pubs id:: 1494739
Local pid:: pubs:1494739
Deposit date:: 2023-09-21
ARK identifier:: ark:/29072/ora_6f86c3fe380441898317840e342f01a9

Copyright holder:: Emma Kavanagh
Rights statement:: © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record