Das Europa der Nationalkulturen. Die Nationalisierung und Europäisierung der Oper im «langen» 19. Jahrhundert

Abstract

The Europe of National Cultures. National and European Dimensions of Opera during the «long» 19th Century

During the 1830s and 1840s music was used by national movements in Central and Eastern Europe as a medium of nation-building. With the help of cultural associations and institutions this process shaped especially the musical practices, the repertoire and the reception of opera. «National» musical styles were canonised because of the international reception of particular pieces. This process is analysed here in a comparative perspective and within the conceptualisation of cultural transfers between Western, Central and Eastern Europe. In the course of the last third of the 19th Century an intensified exchange between national musical cultures converged in the repertoire and the reception of operas and thereby in the establishment of a common European cultural practice.