Some varieties of modernism are thought of as an attempt to re-enchant a technologized world that has lost touch with spiritual modes of being. Instead here I start from the assumption that the various reli- gious categories never went away, but just reappeared in different guises. In Wozzeck and Arabella, their authors succeeded not in re-enchantment, but in creating innovative aesthetic structures to house the new distributions of the sacred occasioned by science. The connection of Berg’s music with science has been approached via his interest mysticism and pseudo-science. However, it is now thought that occultism was one way in which artists could absorb difficult ideas from mathematics and science. The aim here is consider Wozzeck in terms of these source ideas, rather than the second-hand version in which they were imbibed. Strauss has always been criticised for the superficiality or kitschiness of his music; recently this assessment has been up- graded to one of ‘postmodern irony’. Neither of these is satisfactory in the case of Arabella, and here I explain why. The main theoretical concerns are: (1) to escape from the relativism and constructivism of the linguistic turn, by finding ways of incorporating ‘truth’ into critical methodology; (2) to treat art not just as a semiotic system that can be interpreted, but also as an intricate bundle of affects and percepts that offers an aesthetic experience. The thesis comprises two stand-alone, although related, parts. Part I. The first two chapters show how Büchner’s ambivalent attitude to Enlightenment rationality in the 1830s made a new kind of sense to German audiences in the 1910s, which is why Berg was moved to set the piece, and why his interpretation departs more from the Büchner original vision than is usually acknowledged. Chapter 3 uses Heidegger’s notion of ‘the mathematical’ to demonstrate how the opera defamiliarizes the scientific mode of perception that characterizes the modern mind. Chapter 4 reassesses the treatment of individual and supra-individual subjectivity in Wozzeck, showing that at moments Wozzeck is as free as contemporary science allows him to be. Part II. The fifth and sixth chapters contend that, despite Hofmannsthal and Strauss’s well-documented differences on artistic and religious matters, their approach to metaphysics in art was surprisingly com- patible. Chapter 7 considers the operatic precedents that Strauss drew on in Arabella, particularly Tannhäuser and Parsifal, to argue that his supposedly non-metaphysical music still sets up a division between sacred and profane. Chapter 8 shows that, although Arabella looks like 1920s rom-com, it actually modelled a symbolic, mythical and ritual practice that allowed its audience to transcend the commercial representation of romance.

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This thesis offers a model for analysing live musical theatre performance through a focus on the embodied relationship between the actors and the audience. It presents a framework for analysing the bodily experience of performance, and the role of corporeality in understanding musical theatre. Throughout the study, this framework is developed by exploring aspects of performance studies and reception theory, along with related cognitive and neuro-biological research in support of such a position. The model is then tested through an examination of three contrasting musical theatre works in performance, analysing specific elements of the framework within - and against - conventional readings of embodiment, the actor/character duality, dance and movement, music and the singing voice. In conclusion this thesis finds that through a focus on the bodily relationship between actors and audience in live musical theatre performance, the many and varied theoretical approaches commonly taken to investigating such an interdisciplinary form can be set in discourse with one another, enhancing, challenging or generating alternative approaches to the way live musical theatre may be analysed.

During the reign of Napoleon, the Paris Opéra was placed under the State’s supervisory system wherein its productions were closely monitored by Napoleon through the intermediary of the Préfets du Palais, and later, through the office of Surintendant général des spectacles. During the period, Napoleon intended to capitalise on the institution’s potential for state propaganda. Étienne de Jouy’s Fernand Cortez was a case in point, as Napoleon hoped to gain support for his war in the Spanish peninsula. Apart from writing for musical theatre, Jouy worked as a journalist and as a critic of social themes throughout his literary career. A lifelong admirer of Voltaire, he inherited the Enlightenment’s claims to social justice, as he demonstrated in a lecture series of 1822 on socio-political topics. By focusing on Jouy’s librettos from the Napoleonic period, whose subjects had been the site of Enlightenment’s debates, and in particular on imperialism, colonialism and the status of women, I explore his narratives and dramaturgies in relation to the politics pursued by the Napoleonic state, as it embarked on a series of colonial wars and reintroduced a distinctive patriarchal order. My thesis also seeks to shed light on Jouy’s activities during the Romantic revolution of the 1820s. On the one hand, he defended some central conventions of eighteenth-century French opera in his Essai of 1826, such as the concept of the marvellous and a happy ending. On the other hand, his choice and treatment of the Tell legend itself reveals Jouy’s empathy with the new wave of liberalism, as it was in the process of sweeping away the Restoration. He also showed himself under the influence of Anglo-German literature, particularly propagated in Germaine de Staël’s De l’Allemagne (1814), and of the popularity of Rossini.

This thesis explores operatic production in Venice’s nascent postwar culture (1951- 1961). Although long sidelined as a site of political authority, Venice took on new life in the twentieth century, both as a hub of avant-garde activity and as a site of cultural recuperation. I begin with the premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (1951), an opera that provoked anxieties over memory and cultural heritage in a society trying to efface the past and embrace future-orientated mass media. Echoes of the past in the postwar period reverberate in the second chapter, which is on the revival of Verdi’s Attila (1951). The performance became a focal part of contemporary concerns with posterity: an exhumed classic, a vehicle for rewriting Risorgimento history and a media event. The third chapter focuses on the premiere of three one-act music theatre pieces, commissioned by the 1959 music festival to alleviate widespread calls of opera crisis. Critics perceived the resultant works to be grounded in ideas of openness, diversity and eclecticism—a proto-neoavanguardia distinct from resurgent high modernism. The final chapter takes as its topic the premiere of Luigi Nono’s Intolleranza 1960 (1961). Heralded by some as opera’s salvation, Intolleranza was premised on a noisy realism that served not just as a locus of political memory, but also as a regeneration of older artistic forms in response to the increasing hegemony of new mass entertainments. In sketching these four case studies, I construct a specific picture of opera at midcentury, one forged in the aftermath of war and in response to cultural and technological changes unforeseen in the Fascist period. I want to suggest, furthermore, a fleeting revitalisation of operatic culture, one filtered through a lugubrious rhetoric born of crisis, museography and dangerously beguiling mass media.

This dissertation is a pendant to my main submission, an opera in three acts entitled The Second Death. It is a discussion of my ideas on the wedding of words and music, with particular emphasis on the problems of framing a suitable language for musical setting in a dramatic context. Chapter One looks at 'words-for- music' in general: the different perspective given to composition when words are set; the aesthetic and technical consideration of writing words for music; the use of prose texts in musical setting; and words-for-music in the special context of an opera libretto. Chapter Two describes the background to the writing of The Second Death, the works that influenced me and the music I wrote leading up to its composition. Chapter Three considers the writing of the libretto, gives a synopsis of the plot, discusses the revisions I made and the reasons for them and concludes with a note about its sources. Chapter Four looks at the music: after a general note on musical styles and techniques, it goes on to make a brief technical analysis of the work, a "short guided tour" of the opera's musical imagery. The complete libretto is given as an Appendix.

This thesis will demonstrate ways in which late Victorian social and cultural attitudes influenced the development and work of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, and the early professional production and performance of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The underlying enquiry concerns the extent to which the D’Oyly Carte Opera organisation and its work relate to an ideology, or collective mentalite, maintained ad advocated by the Victorian middle-classes. The thesis will argue that a need to reflect bourgeois notions of respectability, status and gender influenced the practices of a theatrical organisation whose success depended on making large-scale musical theatre palatable to ‘respectable’ Victorians. It will examine ways in which managerial regulation of employees was imposed to contribute to both a brand image and a commercial product which matched the ethical values and tastes of the target audience. The establishment of a company performance style will be shown to have evolved from behavioural practices derived from the absorption and representation of shared cultural outlooks. The working lives and professional preoccupations of authors, managers and performers will be investigated to demonstrate how the attitudes and working lives of Savoy personnel exemplified concerns typical to many West End theatre practitioners of the period, such as the drive towards social acceptability and the recognition of theatre work as a valid professional pursuit, particularly for women. The notion of a ‘circularity of influence’, in which cultural production is regarded as both a result and a reinforcement of ideology, will be proposed to explain the cultural ubiquity of the Savoy Operas in the middle-class consciousness, during and after their initial West End success.

Writing in 1951, Britten declared that Verdi had 'discovered the secret of perfection' in his later operas. His enthusiastic admiration for Verdi is demonstrated frequently in his writings and interviews, but most profoundly in his music. This investigation of the influence of Verdi on Britten's works complements other studies in the field, notably those considering his works in relation to the English tradition (Purcell and Tippett), the German tradition (Mahler) and the Far East. The Introduction discusses Britten's relationship with Neo-Romanticism and the theoretical implications of the study of musical influence. Chapter two focuses on historical and biographical evidence of Britten's relationship with Verdi through scores, recordings and attendance at performances. It goes on to investigate the role of Italy in the Romantic literary works that Britten prized, as well as in the work of his librettists, to reveal their construction of 'the South' as an invented space for homosexual fantasy. Chapters three to nine analyse a collection of Britten's vocal works chronologically: Peter Grimes, Albert Herring, Billy Budd, Gloriana, The Turn of the Screw, A Midsummer Night's Dream, War Requiem, and Death in Venice. Each work is considered in relation to the Verdian operas that Britten knew most intimately - La traviata, Rigoletto, Aida, Falstaff and Otello - to reveal the ways in which he both embraces and resists Verdi's operatic approach, considering dramaturgy, genre, number opera structures, set piece forms, tonal design, recurring themes and tinta. The Afterward explores the ways in which Britten's allusions to Verdi are assimilated, transformed, parodied and subverted through his oeuvre. It goes on to argue that Britten's relationship with tradition, in particular the Italian tradition epitomised by Verdi, contributes to his very individual musical 'modernism'.