In Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet” the young prince tries to get evidence for the crime committed by his uncle, Claudius, and his mother, Queen Gertrude, by staging the murder of his father, the previous king, who was betrayed and killed in his sleep. In Shakespeare’s drama of power, a new ruler might attempt to establish legitimacy after regicide by developing rhetoric and performative actions of the new power, such as state dinner with the new king (“Macbeth”); or public discourse on the wrong doings of the dethroned king (“Richard II”); or changing elites (“King Lear”). In various versions, the older, legitimate ruler reveals himself with the help of ghosts or other supernatural powers such as witches, who challenge the new ruler. “Hamlet” differs from other plays by Shakespeare about a change in power by revealing the coup in a play-within-a-play. The prince is involved in choosing the plot and directing the court performance, explaining at length how the actors should perform:
During the evening at the improvised theatre, the murderer, King Claudius, cannot stand the performance any longer and interrupts the play. For Hamlet the reaction of his uncle was the proof of regicide that he sought.
A traveling theatre staged the politics of a sudden change of power in literary Denmark of the early Middle Ages in front of the court audience by narrating an alternative version of change. The new king understood the narrative revealed by the ghost, a narrative that had been hidden from society by the new power. The ghost’s revelation, which Hamlet still doubted, was confirmed during the performance before the royal audience and forced him to accept the tremendous moral conflict put on him by his late father: to revenge his father’s death by murdering his uncle.2 The challenge also included restoring the legitimate power by succession from father to son and not punishing his mother, who was one of the murderers. The theatre-within-theatre, a device used in the theatricality of the 17th- and 18th-century European courts, was for Shakespearian dramatis personae the tool used for contesting legitimacies of power.
If in the Shakespearean drama of power in Denmark the contest is resolved in the destruction of power, in the Italian opera seria of the first half of the 18th century the lieto fine (happy ending) was preferred in stories about power struggles. The struggle was often developed through a coup d’etat and restitution of the legitimate ruler. As Hanjo Kesting noted, the South European and later global operatic culture of the 18th century disliked grief in festive court events. Instead, they enjoyed the happy resolution of tragic conflicts onstage.3 Despite its dominance in operatic drama of the period, the lieto fine, as Carl Dahlhaus stated, never eliminated the tragedy of heroes. It took place in an inner, intimate, emotional space.4 Tragedy, based on conflicting loyalties, memories and affections, usually led to the suffering of the dramatis personae, although with a happy resolution in most cases.
The genre of opera seria won over the musically sophisticated courts of Europe starting in the 1720s through the operatic colonialism of italianità: the dominance of Italian libretti and style of composition coming from Venice, Rome and Naples. These were the largest centres where opera seria were created and performed. Italianità was more than composition patterns. It was disseminated among all European nobility as a regular and intense cultural practice which included spending large amounts of time at the opera house, creating communication structures around the consumption of (predominantly) Italian opera of various genres. Operagoers, including royalty, were an innate part of the cultural phenomenon of italianità. Consumers’ participation in italianità, as recent studies indicate, was a regular subject of 18th and 19th century European and global travelogues.5 In the letter to his mother from Rome in January 1741, British intellectual Joseph Spence recalled that opera dominated the cultural landscape of Italy: “They [operas] are the chief diversion of all cities in Italy. We now have two operas almost every night.”6
In 1738 Jacob von Stäehlin, a Professor in the Russian Academy of Sciences, art theoretician, librettist and in many ways maître du plaisir in the Russian court, reflected on the essence and history of the art of opera in a series of educative articles in the “Supplement” (“Primechaniye”) to the St. Petersburg newspaper Vedomosti. He indirectly praised the idea of italianità through descriptions of the role of Florence, Rome, Venice, Verona and Milan in the development of the genre by stressing that the Italians were the true inventors of the opera.
This was, he believed, due to their traditional culture of masquerade and love of theatre, as well as many religious and secular festivities that included singing and acting. Ancient Rome was cited as the basis for the Italians’ long-lasting performative traditions.7 The professor added one more, rather rare dimension of italianità. In addition to the extensive export of the art to the other countries of Europe, opera in the 1630s, according to Stäehlin, went beyond the space of theatre, a court or urban building and expanded into nature. Here it was constrained by court horticultural facilities, such as “green theatres” that created a total operatic space as an element of nature: “The space of a usual theatre was not enough for the opera. When it wanted to show its tremendous performances directly, it chose the place in gardens, forests and on water.” The author described the realm of goddess Diana as a space of operatic mythology that had come to life for the society at court with a temple and spectators sitting in the forest.8 On 27 February 1738 Stäehlin described opera as the result of the exalted development of the human love of science, describing opera as a performance (deistviye) that combined the possibility of surprising the audience with pure and virtuous pleasure. Opera, he wrote, became the dominant art among other theatrical arts due to its “superior” content and elaborate ornamentation. The publication, which was serialized the entire spring and early summer of 1738, reflected on opera in terms of European debates over the crisis of the genre. The German librettist considered the development of opera to be highly valuable and mentioned that it would be useful to discuss how to diminish the opulence of operatic performances rather than augmenting it.9 Stäehlin declared the development of the performative culture of Italian opera one of the important symbols of geopolitical influence of a European court in the 18th century.
When Stäehlin analysed the genre of opera, he ascribed its development to a peaceful era in Europe. The art of opera could flourish at important European courts because there was abundance of educated people. Monarchies and republics of any significance considered opera the most important form of entertainment. This academic courtier, who was actively involved into operatic politics before and after the coup, defined opera in terms that combined classical arts and philosophical disciplines—the aesthetics of opera were allied with ethical issues, and the cultivation of science and mores. The emotions of the spectators were cultivated by the positive impact of operatic performances. To entertain was to cultivate noble emotions—the Aristotelian concept of ethical development through catharsis at the theatre (indeed, he valued music especially highly as a tool for cathartic effect) was present in the series of articles on opera by Stäehlin, who defined tragedy as a “high” genre in which themes, plots and persons are noble and great. At the same time, the cultivation of mores through the synthetic art of opera was linked to political discourse: Russia joined other “great courts” with operatic performances thanks to Anna Ivanovna.10 Opera thus became artistic evidence that Europe had included the Russian court into the cultivated cultural space. The Italian operas performed at court were described as stupendous, but the court also gained influence and recognition. This concept was applied later by the court poet Mikhail Lomonosov to the development of Russian language, which was seen as a tool for the geopolitical dominance of the Russian Empire.11
These reflections of the German intellectual bring us to the Russian court of the first half of the 18th century and its concept of opera as a channel of state communication in artistic terms. Our study deals with the narrative legitimising the coup on 25 November 174112 in St. Petersburg by the daughter of Peter I, Elizabeth Petrovna, in Russian court literary and musical culture. We will examine various political tools from Italian opera libretti and European court theatricality used by the Russian court to support the legitimacy of the reign of Empress Elizabeth, 1741–1761. In this study we will analyse the (musical) drama of the aforementioned period and later 18th century to clarify how principles of court theatricality were applied to develop the story of legitimacy after the coup.
Beginning in the reign of Anna Ivanovna (rule 1730–1740), the Russian court was one of the European absolutist states that made intense use of Italian opera seria to narrate the legitimacy of imperial power.
The narrative of legitimacy was developed by the Russian court using various tools of European baroque culture, such as court opera, as a multimedia political event. We will examine the semiotics of libretti written by the Habsburg court poet Pietro Metastasio (real name Trapassi, 1698–1782), who dominated the Italian opera seria literary process in the first half of the 18th century. These libretti, adopted for the Russian court, were part of the process of the legitimisation of the Empress since the very beginning of her rule. The first court opera of the new Empress performed during the coronation festivities in Moscow in April 1742 was the Russian-language opera “Miloserdiye Titovo” largely based on a libretto by Metastasio entitled “La Clemenza di Tito,” which was adapted by Jacob Stäehlin to suit the needs of the new court. A special 5000-seat opera theatre was built for this performance.13
“Miloserdiye Titovo” introduced with the Stäehlin’s highly allegorical prologue can be considered the political programme of the new court: a glorifying musical drama, stating and staging the idea of the recovery of the Petrine heritage after a perilous period for Russia. We will interpret this example of court entertainment as political musical work that transmitted and transformed issues of power, such as legitimacy, into a message onstage.
However, there are different views among contemporary researchers on the significance of Metastasian libretti for European court politics of the 18th century. In his 2005 article on adaptation of Metastasian libretti, Albert Gier left open the question of whether Metastasian texts reflected and influenced political theory and history of ideas.14 Ten years later, Thorsten Philipp interpreted Metastasian libretti as political programmes and stated that Metastasio reflected on one of the topical issues of the European discourse of Enlightenment—constitutional monarchy and the rights of the people. Metastasio added the traditional so-called Spiegel (mirror) genre to contemporary political discourse. The Spiegel genre was a literary text about an ideal ruler, which was also developed in the Russian court culture of the period.15
In this study we understand Metastasian libretti as dramatic works on the concept, crisis and restoration of the absolute power of a monarch narrated within a royal family and court and occasionally transmitted to the people. Our study is an analysis of one variation of the general frame of Metastasian libretti: a case study of operatic reflection on the legitimacy discourse in the Russian imperial family of the mid-18th century. There is no doubt, of course, that the court discourse on royal legitimacy existed in a framework broader than operatic art, although the multimedia genre of a musical drama was clearly the favourite of 18th-century court culture.
The interaction of various courtly genres of royal glorification will be examined in order to answer the main question of the study: How and in what genres did the Russian court culture legitimise the coup of Elizabeth, and what semiotics of Metastasian libretti were applied in order to legitimise the seizure of power in November 1741? The study of the narrative of the legitimacy will be developed within the interdisciplinary border area of opera studies and the history of political propaganda in various media of Russian absolutism in the period 1741–1761.16 Some preliminary suggestions on the interplay of opera seria and court politics will serve as a methodological prologue to the study of the Russian court legitimacy politics of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna.
This study, along with legitimisation discourse in arts, analyses the political theology and imagery of a female Russian ruler in the first half of the 18th century in the context of European political discourses on women rulers during the baroque period. The coronation ritual of Empress Elizabeth (crowned 25 April 1742 in Moscow) reflected in the Coronation Book (1744) illustrates the transition of European images of a baroque woman ruler into the semiotics of westernised Russian absolutism. Elizabeth appears in the court media (sermons, engravings in the Coronation Book, satiric poems, plays, festive odes, etc.) as the natural, God-given mother of all Russians, who saved Orthodoxy from the political chaos of the previous rule and who combined both masculine and feminine images of a ruler. The image of Elizabeth in the sermons of Archbishop of Novgorod Ambrosii illustrates a Russian variation of the political liturgy of absolutist culture in the 18th century.
Along with sources already used by other researchers (festive odes, sermons, plays, letters, diaries, etc.) we also analysed materials that to our knowledge so far have not been studied by scholars—for example Italian libretti and pamphlets in German criticising the Empress as well as a collection of poems and speeches to commemorate the royal birthday written by tutors and students of the Riga Dome School.
William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), act 3, scene 2, 141.
On the issue of revenge and murder in Hamlet, see Margreta de Grazia, Hamlet without Hamlet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 118–119.
Hanjo Kesting, Bis der reitende Bote des Königs erscheint. Über Oper und Literatur (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2017), 31.
Carl Dahlhaus, “Allgemeine Theorie der Musik II. Kritik-Musiktheorie/Opern- und Librettotheorie. Musikwissenschaft,” in Gesammelte Schriften, Von Hermann Danuser, Hrsg. (Laaber, Laaber Verlag, 2001), 537.
For detailed research on global italianità see Axel Körner and Paulo M. Kühl (eds.) Italian Opera in Global and Transnational Perspective. Reimagining Italianità in the Long Nineteenth Century. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Joseph Spence, Letters from the Grand Tour (Montreal, London: McGill Queen’s University Press, 1975), 342.
“
“
“
“
Ibid., 27.02.1738., 66.
The Old-Style Russian calendar is used throughout the book.
For more on the technical details of the staging of “Miloserdiye” see Evgeny V. Anisimov, Empress Elizabeth. Her Reign and Her Russia 1741–1761. The Russian Series, Vol. 41 (Gulf Breeze: Academic International Press, 1995), 189.
Albert Gier, “Ridotta à vera opera”? Zur Praxis der Libretto-Bearbeitung im 18. Jahrhundert am Beispiel Metastasios,” in Bearbeitungspraxis in der Oper des späten 18. Jahrhunderts. Bericht über die Internationale wissenschaftliche Tagung vom 18. bis 20. Februar 2005 in Würzburg. Ulrich Konrad, Hrsg. (Tutzing: Verlag bei Hans Schneider, 2007), 53.
Thorsten Philipp, “Politik im Spiel. Mediale Inszenierung gesellschaftlicher Normen und Ziele in Pietro Metastasios Olimpiade,” in Von Teufeln, Tänzen und Kastraten. Die Oper als transmediales Spektakel, Maria Imhof, Anke Grutschus, Hg. (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2015), 97.
In order to avoid abrupt periodization, which is always a doubtful procedure, the authors suggest including additional sources from the period up to the first half of the 19th century. The reader is invited to look at the construction of imperial imagery after Elizabeth’s death.