This book explores the important cultural phenomenon of operas about the Ottoman Turks in eighteenth-century Europe—from the 1680s to the 1820s—and considers what the figure of the singing Turk signified to European publics in the context of European-Ottoman relations, the European Enlightenment, and Europe’s cultural perspective on the Orient. The research addresses the enormous extent of this largely forgotten repertory, beginning with the many tragic operas about the captivity of Bajazet (as in Handel’s Tamerlano), and then addressing the many comic operas that followed the precedent of Ram ... More

This book explores the important cultural phenomenon of operas about the Ottoman Turks in eighteenth-century Europe—from the 1680s to the 1820s—and considers what the figure of the singing Turk signified to European publics in the context of European-Ottoman relations, the European Enlightenment, and Europe’s cultural perspective on the Orient. The research addresses the enormous extent of this largely forgotten repertory, beginning with the many tragic operas about the captivity of Bajazet (as in Handel’s Tamerlano), and then addressing the many comic operas that followed the precedent of Rameau’s “generous Turk”—operas about the ultimately magnanimous Ottoman masters of European captives. The book further considers the use of “Janissary” or alla turca style in operas by Gluck, Haydn, and Mozart, the paradigmatic aspects of Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio, and the Napoleonic context for the several operas composed by Rossini on Turkish themes. The creation, performance, and reception of operas about Turks were conditioned by the international circumstances of European-Ottoman relations, dating from the failure of the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683—which made Turks seem less fearsome to the European imagination. The singing Turk was never altogether exotic, Other, or alien to Europe, but, rather, addressed crucial issues of European political and cultural concern, especially issues of absolute power and extreme emotion. The Napoleonic age, with its agendas of conquest and empire, brought about a final flowering of operas about Turks, before Turkish themes disappeared altogether from the modern operatic repertory.