Nineteenth-Century Opera and the Scientific Imagination

Explores the rich and varied interactions between nineteenth-century science and the world of opera for the first time.

This innovative book will appeal to anyone interested in the cultural, musical and scientific history of the nineteenth century - from undergraduates to professional researchers. Chapters explore topics such as hypnosis, vocal physiology, stage machinery, histories of listening and the interaction of opera with nineteenth-century scientific theories.Scientific thinking has long been linked to music theory and instrument making, yet the profound and often surprising intersections between the sciences and opera during the long nineteenth century are here explored for the first time. These touch on a wide variety of topics, including vocal physiology, theories of listening and sensory communication, technologies of theatrical machinery and discourses of biological degeneration. Taken together, the chapters reveal an intertwined cultural history that extends from backstage hydraulics to drawing-room hypnotism, and from laryngoscopy to theatrical aeronautics. Situated at the intersection of opera studies and the history of science, the book therefore offers a novel and illuminating set of case studies, of a kind that will appeal to historians of both science and opera, and of European culture more generally from the French Revolution to the end of the Victorian period.