Matthew Franke, Ph.D. 2014

Advisor: John Nádas

Dissertation Title: The Impact of Jules Massenet’s Operas in Milan, 1893-1903

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Dissertation Abstract:

The reception of French opera in Italy in the late nineteenth century has received little scholarly attention. This dissertation attempts to fill at least part of that gap through a study of the reception of four operas by Jules Massenet, the most internationally successful French composer of the 1890s, in Milan, the capital of the Italian music publishing industry. Massenet’s Italian reception demonstrates that opera’s relationship to Italian identity politics in the late nineteenth century was far more complex than has been previously imagined. 

Massenet’s operas, performed in Italian translation, occupied an ambiguous middle ground in Italian identity politics. Italian critics described Massenet’s operas as purely French, as contributing to Italian musical culture, as inherently cosmopolitan works, and even at times as Germanic. In all these cases, Italian music and theater critics sought to translate Massenet’s operas into Italian culture, whether as role models for or foils to Italian musical development. Massenet also participated directly in Italian musical culture, visiting Milan frequently to supervise productions of his operas, writing an opera influenced by Italian models, and serving as a judge in an Italian competition for new operas.  

Music historians have long agreed that Italian opera suffered an identity crisis in the late nineteenth century; Alexandra Wilson has shown that young Italian composers of this period were often evaluated in terms of the italianità (Italian-ness) of their works. Recent studies have suggested that young Italian composers had to find a balance between the rival legacies of Giuseppe Verdi (Italian heritage) and Richard Wagner (imported German culture). Without denying the importance ofsuch aesthetic oppositions between Italian and German music, this dissertation seeks to broaden and complicate this discourse. Massenet’s example shows the ways in which lines between French and Italian opera could be redrawn as needed to make room for alternative, cosmopolitan constructions of Italian musical and cultural identity.

Dr. Franke is currently a Master Instructor and Coordinator of Music History at Howard University in Washington, D.C. His research focuses on French and Italian opera in the 1890s. He is the curator of the List of Open-Access Music Journals, which you can find on his personal site: https://matthewfrankemusicology.wordpress.com/list-of-open-access-journals/.