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Jean-Lion Ger6me (1824-1904), Moorish Bath, 1870. (Gift ofRobertJordan from the
collection ofEben D.Jordan; courtesy of Museum ofFine Arts, Boston.)
 Reflections on Orientalism in Opera and
Musical Theater

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R A L P H P. L O C K E

This article was first presented, in a slightly different form, at the meeting of the
International Musicological Society (Madrid, April 1992) and will appear in the
published proceedings.

M Y T O P I C is a large arid many-faceted one that lends itself to a vari-

ety of approaches. In this discussion, I prefer to focus with a wide-
angle lens and consider some general aspects of the problem of representing
the Orient on the musical stage.11 will take my examples from a number of
works, mainly nineteenth- and carly-twcnticth-century operas of patently
serious intent, but also making occasional references to lighter works of
other periods (Mozart, Rodgcrs and Hammerstein) that set some facet of
the problem in relief.

Orientalism in Western Culture

Any exploration of Orientalist representations in the arts may profitably start
with the writings of the cultural critic Edward Said. In Orientalism, his
widely discussed book surveying Western writings on the Arab world, Said
defines Orientalism as a "corporate institution for dealing with the Orient-
dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it,
describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism
[seen] as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority
over the Orient." Said asserts that the Orientalist project is reflected in and
advanced by the various forms of what Michel Foucault calls a society's "dis-
cursive practice," including works of art and music, and is achieved through
cultural stereotypes—images of "Oriental despotism, Oriental splendor, cru-
elty, sensuality . . . promise, terror, sublimity, idyllic pleasure, intense
energy?2
In order to evaluate the possible relevance of Said's line of thinking to the
operatic repertory and in order to decide to what degree it is meaningful to
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Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), Odalisque and Slave, 1842. (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.)
 ORIENTALISM IN OPERA 51

speak of an opera as an "Orientalist" one, it helps, of course, to have accu-

rate information about any more-or-lcss-accurate musical borrowings—
"authentic" tunes, rhythms, timbres, and harmonies—employed in the
work.3 For my purposes here, I would like to takeforgranted such relatively
positivistic research (I use the adjective admiringly) and move on to shakier

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ground, asking how the composer portrays the Oriental scene and its inhab-
itants (regardless of whether or not the music in question makes stylistic
allusion to musical elements characteristic of a particular nation or a people).
Further, I will ask what ideological messages such a portrayal might convey.
To clarify this problem of message-through-style, it may help to consider
briefly some other manifestations of Orientalism in Western culture, speci-
fically, those in the visual arts.4 French Orientalist painters in the nineteenth
century (for example, Ingres, Delacroix, and Ge"r6me—sec illustrations)
used decorative motifs—Turkish wall tiles, Algerian costumes—and of
course the outward aspect of different human physiognomies, styles of hair,
and so on, as a means of locating a painting,forthe viewer, in a given for-
eign region. But they rarely tried to make the paintings themselves look Ori-
ental in the sense of adopting depictive techniques from a North African or
Asian tradition. (Delacroix was one of the few to do much copying of non-
European art, even as an exercise; still, he found such art "flat and inexpres-
sive.*') Nevertheless, or rather precisely through this primary reliance on
familiar Western procedures and techniques, including perspective, tonal
shading, dramatic placement of forms and figures in the pictorial space in
relation to each other, and through glance and gesture, these painters and
their Orientalist disciples in England, Germany, Italy, Spain, and even in the
Middle East itself, found manifold ways to produceforthe Western viewer
images of the non-European world that were distinctive and widely influen-
tial. And they were influential in part because of the very misogynous and
racist messages—drenched in the ideology of Orientalism—that they carry
and that tend to repel some viewers and critics today.
In music, too, we should be able to find ways of dealing with the visions
that Western society has generated of the Orient, or the East. (Although
Said's book, the poems of Hugo and Gautier, and the painters just discussed
all focus on North Africa and the Middle East, I shall be treating the term
Orient more loosely, to include the Far East as well, the region that we Eng-
lish speakers now think of as the Orient.) I would like to examine briefly
some basic archetypes of plot and character around which the librettos of
operas set in the Orient tend to be constructed; then move on to some
specific instances of how these archetypes are carried out (or perhaps also to
some extent undercut) through music. Along the way I will touch on a num-
ber of issues that the particular musicodramatic excerpts raise, such as the
question of how a given composer treats—alters, harmonizes, and so on—
non-Western (or supposedly non-Western) styles and integrates them into
his or her larger composition. My last example, a chorus from Aida, leads to
52 RALPH P. LOCKE

some dosing reflections centering around a more basic question: When is a

representation of the Orient no representation of the Orient at all?

Paradigmatic Plots, Archetypal Women, and the Pentatonic

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In a recent article I summarize the paradigmatic plot for Orientalist operas
as follows: "young, tolerant, brave, possibly naive, white-European tenor-
hero intrudes, at risk of disloyalty to his own people and colonialist ethic,
into mysterious, dark-skinned, colonized territory represented by alluring
dancing girls and deeply affectionate, sensitive lyric soprano, incurring wrath
of brutal, intransigent tribal chieftain (bass or bass-baritone) and blindly
obedient chorus of male savages."5 Certain Orientalist operas do notfitthis
archetype at all, such as Massenet's Le Rot de Lahore and Thais, and eigh-
teenth-century comic operas involve quite different stock figures (for exam-
ple, the benevolent pasha).6 But it is surely no accident that quite a few of
the most enduring Orientalist operas—including Meyerbeer's UAfricaine,
Verdi's Aida, Saint-Saens's Samson et Dalila, Delibcs's Lakme', and Puccini's
Madama Butterfly—we some variant of this plot and its attendant character
archetypes, as do many, many forgotten operas about the European conquest
oftheNewWorld.7
A particularly dear example of the archetypally beautiful, loving, gentle,
and submissive Oriental female in opera is, of course, Liu in Turandot
(1926) —or at least the Liu of act i.8 Liu's music is apparently not based on
extensive quotations of specific Chinese melodies, yet it is often rich in pen-
tatonic gestures; indeed, the vocal line of Liu's pleading aria "Signore,
ascolta!" is almost completely pentatonic. Peter Schatt, in his study of the
exotic artifices of twentieth-century opera, argues that Liu is, in a sense,
trapped in her pentatonicism and that her growing independence and
courage in act 3 can be seen in her now fully diatonic lines and their har-
monically sophisticated accompaniment.9 The point is a solid one and it fits
well with Ashbrook anc Powcrs's recent argument that the opera is written
in four largdy distinct musical styles or tinte. However, Puccini's artistry—
the subtlety of his representation of the Orient—lies, I think, partly in the
way he blends dements of one tinta into another. Thus, in Iiu's T u die di
gel sei cinta" in act 3, brief pentatonic figures still occur, such as at the
melodic drop from (local) scale degree 5 to 4 to 1 early on, at the words
"fiamma vinta" (see mus. ex. 1). In some other dramatic context, or in an
instrumental piece, we might not hear this cadential figure as pentatonic, but
Puccini has so established the pentatonic as a significant ingredient to his
score, setting it in such firm opposition to more fully diatonic and chromatic
music, that we continue to hear Liu's cadence at "fiamma vinta" as a
reminder of her own special nature.
Liu's voice is established in "Signore, ascolta!" which has been called
 ORIENTALISM IN OPERA 53

Example i. Puccini, Turandot, act3, Tu chc digel set cinta*

con dolovos* esprtssumt

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Tu cbcdi gd_ tci_ dn-ta,. di _ an-n fiam-mt vin - n.
Reprinted by kind permission of G. Ricordi and Co. C1929, renewed 195+, G. Ricordi and Co.

Example 2. Puccini, Turandot, act 1, ihcMo-U-hua tune

Children (of&tagc, approaching)

(humming)
§ n u n m
Pao!

P10!
(humming)
w
Pao! PP
(contralto saxophones off-stage)
r
' ^

Andjmtino J - 72

mjL

— 7

Reprinted by kind permission of G. Ricordi and Co. © 1929, renewed 1954, G. Ricordi and Co.

Example 3. Puccini, Turandot, acti, "Signorc, ascolta!* (mm. s-7)

Adagio J - 50 ,

if g JJU
cuor! Ahi - mi, ahi - mi, quan-to cim-mi - DO col tuo no-mind I'l - ni-ma,
a tempo

r ' r
Reprinted by kind permission of G. Ricordi and Co. © 1929, renewed 1954, G. Ricordi and Co.
54 RALPH P. LOCKB

"Iiu's sweetly pathetic pentatonic aria."10 It should be stressed, though, that

in Turandot Puccini often harmonizes pentatonic melodies in non-pentatonic
fashion. The Mo-li-hua tune, for example, is supported by notes foreign to
the melody (see mus. ex. 2).11 In "Signore, ascolta!" the orchestral accompa-
niment is built around dear diatonic progressions that similarly introduce

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the very notes so scrupulously avoided (except for two grace notes) by the
voice. To the ear, then, this is arguably no pentatonic aria at all (see mus. ex.
i).u Perhaps Puccini avoided pentatonic harmonization in "Signore,
ascolta!" in order to maintain a feeling of tension and release throughout the
aria, for which purpose at least some sort of modulation was helpful; Liu is
of course in a state of crisis and near despair here, confessing her long-unspo-
ken love, yet justifiably fearing all the while that the Prince will ignore her
plea and continue to pursue the seemingly fatal fantasy of winning Turan-
dot's hand. In this sense, the harmonization succeeds at humanizing or de-
Orientalizing Iiu, much in the way that—as Carl Dahlhaus points out about
national operas of Glinka, Moniuszko, and others—composers evinced sin-
cere respect for certain of their peasant heroes and heroines by letting them
sing, not in some watered down folksong style, but in the elevated and emo-
tionally varied, even noble and heroic, musical language of grand opera.13
What Puccini did not do in "Signore, ascolta!" Richard Rodgers did in the
Broadway musical play The King and I (1951), and to good melodramatic
purpose. The young concubine Tuptim sings a largely pentatonic song about
the demeaning attention she gets from the king, who treats her as his pos-
session though she in fact loves another man. The song "My Lord and Mas-
ter" is artfully contrived, in that it abandons the pentatonic, indeed boldly
claims for Tuptim the right to sing the leading tone (a high A-sharp) at the
song's climax, as she declares her true love. The opening, in contrast, is
intentionally meek—or mock meek—as Tuptim sings of how she presents
herself when standing in the dominating masculine gaze of the autocratic
lord and master (see mus. ex. 4). At the point where her melodic line modu-
lates to the subdominant (at "What docs he meant"), she carries her passive
pentatonic persona with her to the new pitch center.14 And all of this
melodic pentatonicism is reinforced by harmonies built from the pentatonic
set, harmonies that, rather than moving dynamically, statically hover.
Any opera lover will quickly think of other Orientalist portrayals of
women: Lakme* singing her Bell Song to the crowd of English tourists, at
once commanding their attention and exposing her own vulnerability by her
modal, unaccompanied coloratura vocalises; Dalila actively seducing Samson
with luscious, looping melodic figures (here especially is a very different
stereotype of Oriental women, analogous to the various femmes fatales so
favored in Orientalist paintings such as Judith, Cleopatra, and Salome); and
Aida singing out her lonely sorrow on the banks of the Nile against a musical
backdrop of nature sounds. This Aida scene displays, in an especially memo-
rable fashion, the "weak" or subordinate terms of a whole raft of Romantic
 ORIENTALISM IK OPERA 55

Example 4. Rodgcrs and Hammerstein, The King and I, "My Lord and Master1
Donmoto J-60 TUPTIM

®f* tt * He

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y

=*==*= ii i
*
r—r r— p 1p p E=l
\J
pleucdwith m e , . My Lord and Mai - ter. Dc - dares bc't

•r: 7 7
r P P r P P P P

Copyright © 1951 by Richard Rodgcrs and Oscar Hammerstein n . Copyright Renewed. International
copyright Secured. All rights reserved. Williamson Music owner of publication and allied rights throughout
the world. Used by permission.

Example s. Melodic linesfromBizet's Temple duet and Puccini's "O Kami!3'

chorus, over the (arpeggiated) harmonic progression that accompanies both
. Bizet (original key: E-flat major)
i r p r pi
Puccini (rhythm shown as in orchestra parts)

r p1 r
Accompanying harmony (arpeggiated figuration removed)

m
n
(VofV)
56 RALPH P. LOCKE

binary oppositions: woman (rather than man), nature (rather than societal
conventions and structures), feelings of the heart (rather than denial of feel-
ings in the interest of some higher ideal), passivity and helplessness (rather
than active solution seeking), and the exotic (versus the civilized).15 Despite
the vast differences in such portrayals, we can sec in all of them some parallel

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to French Orientalist paintings of the day, which systematically construct
Eastern woman as object of desire, as a sensual creature who, however inno-
cently or craftily, beckons.

Men, Religious Ritual, War Fever, and Crowds

When we turn to the portrayal of Oriental men in these operas, we find, not
surprisingly, much reinforcing of the "strong" or dominant terms in the con-
ceptual couplings just cited. War (the ultimate male-identified culture prod-
uct) and religious ritual and oppressive laws (dose runners-up for that dubi-
ous distinction) are normative obsessions for characters such as Nilakantha
in LaknU, Nourabad in Les PScbeurs deperlcs, and Rarofis inAida (if one con-
siders him Oriental). Of course, operas set in Western locales also contain, to
a greater or lesser degree, similar characters —for example, the various reli-
gious extremists in Meyerbeer and the manipulative politicians and schemers
in Don Carlos, Simon Boccanegm, and indeed Otello. However, religion and
ritual in the East often carry an additional charge of eroticism or violence.
Eroticism mingles with mysterious ceremoniality in the Temple duet from
act i of Les Picheurs de perlcs (1863), in which the tenor and the baritone recall
the beautiful veiled priestess with whom they both fell in love years earlier
as she carried out the ritual invocations of Brahma. Bizet's recurrent refrain
(see mus. ex. 5) delicately evokes an ancient, slightly modal and "floating*
sound-world, through a shifting of the downbeat16 and through a quietly
striding accompaniment built of root-position chords (given out strikingly
as rising harp arpeggios).17
Harsher and thus more typical arc the forbidding Oriental high priests in
operas such as Meyerbeer's EAjricaine. Many Orientalist depictions of non-
Western religions in literature and visual art focus on the leaders' almost
fanatical rigidity and intolerance. These features are plainly manifest in
Madama Butterfly (1904), at the point in act 1 where the Bonze interrupts the
wedding festivities to curse the bride for abandoning her true religion. He
repeatedly booms Cio-Cio-San's name in denunciatory fashion, as if it were
some sort of curse word, and he does not respond (musically or tcxtually) to
the interjections of any of the other characters onstage. His entrance, we
might also note, interrupts the lovely, thrice-stated prayer honoring the
happy couple (°O Kami! O Kami!"), making him seem all the more insensi-
tive in contrast. This choral prayer, interestingly, echoes the Bizet passage
just discussed: its melody (rhythm and pitch), its rising harp arpeggios, and
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57

GMme, Slave Market (Cincinnati Art Museum.)

OPERA
IN
ORIENTALISM
58 RALPH P. LOCKE

its unusual striding, or oscillating, root-position harmonic progression (see

mus. ex. 5).
Such resemblances between the music written by two different composers
to invoke Eastern religious rituals occur throughout the repertory, revealing
how Orientalist composers relied on previous Orientalist compositions, more

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than on what was known of the music of the region, as a source of stylistic
guidance.18 (In Foucault's terminology, we might speak here of the "arche-
ology" of the operatic Orient.)
The rigid and repressive power of Oriental religion embodied in the Bonze
and his music pervades the formally ritualistic exchanges between the
Emperor Altoum (Princess Turandot's physically and vocally decrepit yet still
dignified father) and the unknown Prince. Here the pentatonic mode,
applied in a tightly constrained fashion, seems symbolic of a soulless
despotic system to whose cruel, legalistic dictates even the monarch himself
must bend. Altoum, singing almost entirely without accompaniment, thrice
declares himself unwilling to see the Prince risk his life, and the orchestra
proposes a crushing penalty after each of the emperor's pronouncements.
The Prince insists resolutely each time (and without accompaniment) on
undergoing the test of the three riddles, and the orchestra echoes him with
stiff, unharmonized statements of his request tune (the last echo being in a
rather mechanical triplet diminution). Stiffness —the lack offlexibilityand
spiritual growth—is a frequent feature of male leaders (or their underlings,
likewise agents of power) and the values they represent in Orientalist operas.
Mozart's Osmin is explicitly put in his place after his violent outburst;
"Nichts ist so hafilich wie die Rache" [Nothing is so hateful as vengefulness],
the Europeans reprovingly intone before resuming their cheerful vaudeville
finale. Abimelech, in Samson etDaUla, damns himself in our eyes not only by
his taunts against the god of Israel—and his impulsive use of the dagger
against Samson—but by the ungainliness of his melodic lines, nastily dou-
bled—again, no harmonization—by the low brass.19
From the leader of an Oriental people to the people itself is but a short
step. There are many instances of lovely ensembles in these Oriental operas,
one being the "O Kami!" chorus from Butterfly discussed earlier. For present
purposes Fd like to concentrate on more violent expression. A dear case of
Oriental mass hysteria is "Ungi, arrotta," the choral scene from act 1 of
TUrandot in which local men and women alike urge the executioner's men to
"turn the grindstone" until the "blade spurts fire and blood." One may sus-
pect that, if the plot had been set in Europe (which, after all, has its own his-
tory of state- and church-led public executions, heretic-burnings, and the
like), Puccini and his librettists would not have indulged so heavily in grue-
some imagery, barbarically pounding rhythms, and ghastly bitonal disso-
nances. And, if they had actually done so, one wonders if audiences and crit-
ics would have welcomed the work quite so willingly.20
Yet when we look at certain other operas we may not be so sure that we
 ORIENTALISM IN OPERA 59

Example 6. Verdi, Aida, aa i, climax ofthe "Su! del Nilo 'scene

[Fid motto]

Aidi
It Sf
m

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(Deg-gioj - mar to. t u n ne - nri - co^ji - no stra - nicr!)
(Yes, I tow. him but my love he _ can - not share!)

AIIIIH ' il
t T " 'TSter - mi - nio al - ITn - va - " J ster - mi-nio al - I'm - va - sor!
Death to than on die field of bat - dc! They shall die in the flames of war.

tUcUma f
Ster - mi - rrio al - l"in - va - tor! tter - mi-nio al - l"in - va - tor!
Death to them on the field of bat del They shall die in the fiames of war.

Ster - mi - ruo al - ITn - va - tor! ster - mi-nio al - Tin - va - sor!

Death to them on the field of bat del They shall die in die flames of war.

igps
The King J*U
iT F
Ster - mi - ruo al - Tin - va - sor! ster - mi-nio al - Pin - va - sor!
Death to them on die field of bat dc! They shall die in the flames of war.

J J I I i.> I , i J }\
Rtxnfii

Ster - mi - nto al - I'm - va - sor!. ster -

*r
mi-nio al - Tin - va - sor!
Dearh to them on die field of bat dc! They shall die in the flames of war.

h . L- I

Chorus of
f Yt
Ster - mi - nio al - I'm • va sort ster mi-nio al - I'm - va sor!
MinBten
Death to them on the field of bat dc! They thill die in dieflamesof
tnd

Ster - mi - nio al - I'm - va - sor!

Death to them on die field of bat - dc!
ster
T
-
They shall
m
mi-nio al - I'm - va - sor!
die in die flames of war.
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Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863), The Death of Sardanapalus, 1844. (Philadelphia Museum of Art,
the Henry P. Mcllhenny Collection in memory ofFrances P. Mcllhenny.)

. _': _J * , _
 ORIENTALISM IN OPERA 6l

are finding clear evidence of Orientalist prejudices. In Aida (1871), when the
men's chorus cries for war against Ethiopia ("Guerra! guerre!"), we may
justly wonder if the result is much different from what Verdi would have
composed for a story located closer to home (e.g., in the heated anti-patri-

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cian crowd in Simon Boccanegra). Indeed, when this same "Guerre! guerre!"
returns at the end of the scene, it takes on another aspect: Aida's voice is now
in distress over it (see mus. ex. 6 at "Deggio amarlo?"), yet in a sense also with
it, as if the music now reflected the wrenching, exalted, and tangled emo-
tions of all the participants in this tragedy-in-the-making. (I am invoking
here a shift from music ofcharacter—counting the chorus as a character in the
drama—to music ofsituation.)
One of the remarkable things about Aida, it seems to me, is precisely its
political evenhandedncss. However one chooses to read this avoidance of
simple moral dichotomies, it is even apparent, at times, in the portrayal of
the Egyptian priests: they enter the judgment chamber in act 4, scene 1, to
music of dignity, restraint, and perhaps even sorrow.21 But to understand the
priests, in Verdi's view, is not necessarily to pardon them: when they have
declared Radamcs a traitor and march back out of the chamber, their proces-
sional music turns furious, distorted in its intervals, monstrous.22 This sud-
den violence seems to be, in part, a reflection of Amneris's anger at the
priests' decision, which of course is also deflected anger at herself. We must
surely read this passage as indicting, in Verdi's voice, the ancient Egyptian
priests and their harsh legal penalties (such as burying people alive). But what
were the broader implications of this portrayal in Verdi's day, and what are
they now? Should the behavior of the Egyptian priests also be read as a late-
nincteenth-ccntury commentary on North Africans, rather than, say, as a
characteristically Verdian attack on the hypocrisy and repressiveness of the
Catholic clergy of his own country?

Representation or Allegory?
The case just examined raises the problem of distinguishing a representation
of a foreign people from a transparent allegory, and, if the latter, of deciding
transparent to whom. There is a long tradition in the West—and no doubt
elsewhere, too—of setting a story in other lands and other times as a device
for safely voicing various controversial concerns—psychological, social, or
political—such as the yearning for an unencumbered expression of sexuality,
or trenchant and even subversive critiques of ruling elites and dominant ide-
ologies. Montesquieu's Lettrcs persona was clearly understood in its day as
comprising not an ethnographic treatise or even a fantasy travelogue, but a
veiled allegory of corruption in the court of Louis XIV. Similarly, the exigent
emperor in Delacroix's Mart de Sardanapale (see illustration), who has
ordered the odalisques of his harem—and his horses—to be killed as he
62 RALPH P. LOCKE

watches, dearly embodies (and I suspect was recognized at the time as

embodying) Romantic conceptions of the isolated, dangerously omnivo-
rous, and self-destructive artist or poet. Perhaps we should not automatically
assume that opera audiences were any more literal-minded than readers of
books or visitors of art galleries. The very fact that the opera plots that I have

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discussed here are so steeped in archetypes invites us to look at them as alle-
gories of what might (somewhat incautiously) be called universal human
proclivities and circumstances—abuse of power, parental interference (as in
the role of Amonasro), injuries of class and gender (as in Butterfly), need for
tolerance, decisiveness, and endurance in adversity, for example.
And yet these works, precisely by their high cultural status and their wide
dissemination on the stage, in the illustrated press, in band arrangements,
salon potpourris, and excerpts may also have continued to serve as one of the
most potent sources of mental images that Westerners had of the countries
supposedly portrayed in them, whether Egypt, India, or Japan. In that sense,
the surface meaning of the allegory may have continued (and may continue
even today) to operate separately from the deeper meaning and to rein-
force—as Said and others rightly remind us—limited, distorted, and indeed
entirely fictive, self-serving Western stereotypes of foreign cultures. And
there is no reason to suppose that the same is not also true of lighter works
of musical theater, such as L'italiana inAlgeri, The Mikado, Offenbach's Ba-
Ta-Clan, Leo Fall's Die Rose von Stambul, LehaVs Das Land des LUchelns, and
Miss Saigon.
An adequate interpretation of a Western work set in the East, I conclude,
must maintain two perspectives in a state of creative tension. On the one
hand is the work's essential Westcrnness—its irrelevance to the East, and the
East's to it—and, on the other, is its power to reflect and even shape, perhaps
damagingly, the attitude and behavior of Westerners toward the non-West-
ern world. I propose that we accept these as being two irreconcilable yet
equally valid points of view, and, at the risk of intellectual messiness—per-
haps,richness—take care not to privilege one over the other.

NOTES
i. For examples of tbc representation of the 2. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New
Orient in specific works, see my Tclicicn York: Pantheon, 1978), pp. 3-4,09-20.
David: compositeur saint-simonien et orien- Various responses to Said (James Clifford,
talisint^ in La Saint-Simoniens ft UOrient: Homi Bhabha) are listed in my "Con-
vcrslamodcrmti, ed. Magali Morsy (Aix-en- strutting," p. 263; on applying Said to
Provence: fidisud, 1990), pp. 13J-53, and my portrayals of the Far East, sec A^attOTwm
"Constructing the Oriental 'Other': Saint Orientalism, ed. Warren I. Cohen (East
Sacns's Samson etDalila™ Cambridge Open T arising: Michigan State University, 1983).
Journal, voL 3 (1991), pp. 261-302. In progress 3. On identifying borrowed material, see
are studies of ethnic representation in, among Norbert Christen, Giacomo Puaini:
other -woT)a,Aida and West Side Story. AnMtytiscbeUntcmukungenderMttodik,
 ORIENTALISM IN OPERA

Harmonik, und Instrumentation (Hamburg: Carlos to Falstaff (New York: Oxford

Vcrlag der MnmlralimhanHhing Karl Dieter University Press, 1978-81), p. i$>2-
Wagner, 1978), csp. pp. 207-17. Turandot has
been particularly well served recently: Jiirgen Jabrbunderts: Historiscb-systematiscbe
Maehder, cd., Esotismo t colon look neWopera Untersucbungen BUTMetamorphose erne Bstbctis-

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di Puccini (Pisa: Giardini, 1985); William cbenfiktion (Munchen: Musikvedag E.
Ashbrook and Harold Powers, Puamft Katzbichlcr, 1986), p. 47.
lurundot": The End cftbe Great Tradition 10. Ashbrook and Powers, Puccini's
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); "Jurandot," p. 98.
Kii-Ming Lo, Turandot aufder Opembuhne n. As Ashbrook and Powers briefly hint
(Ph.D. dissertation, Heidelberg, 1988, forth- (ibid., pp. 17-18,93). In fact, Mo-li-hua is
coming in book form). Further bibliography harmonized by I in alternation with bVII or
in my "Constructing," p. 262. V7, thus introducing notes foreign to the
4. This discussion of visual art summarizes melody (i.e., degrees 7 and 4).
a longer passage, on poetry (e.g. Hugo) and 12. In "Signore, ascolta!" the diatonic
painting, in my "Constructing," pp. 264-71, progression of die harmony (TV-V-I in mm.;
280. At the IMS meeting, it was illustrated by and 6; see mus. ex. 3) is dear. However, Iiu's
slides of art works by Delacroix, Gerome, second aria, diough its melody is less overtly
Tissot, Regnault, and Moreau, and by nine- pentatonic, may be said to retain more
teenth-century photographs of the Middle "sapore cincsc" (Puccini's term), thanks to its
East. See, among many fine studies, Mary more oblique harmonization (see Ashbrook
Anne Stevens, c d , The Orientalists: Delacroix and Powers, ibid., pp. 98-100).
to Matisse: The Allure ofNortb Africa and the 13. Carl Dahlhaus, Ninetttntb-Century
Near East (Washington, D . C : National Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley:
Gallery of Art, 1984). University of California Press, 1989), pp.
$. Locke, "Constructing," pp. 262HS3. 217-26.
6. James Parakilas proposes an insightful 14. At this modulation to the subdominant,
typology of operas that are built upon the scale-degree 8 in the original pentatonic mode
theme of East-West contact, beginning now becomes scale-degree 5 in the mode built
precisely with die eighteenth-century onE.
"Turkish Captivity" operas and moving 15. To be sure, the question of who is and
through "Age of Discovery" operas (e.g.: isn't exotic or Oriental in Aida and in what
Sponnni's Fernand Corttz) to operas based on way is a complex one, as will be noted below.
the theme of T h e Soldier and the Exotic 16. The "shifting" is apparent in musical
[Woman]," such as Carmen, Lakmd, and example 5, where the tonic chord is used as
Madama Butterfly. [Ed: T h e Soldier and the upbeat to the (inherently weaker) nrdpn? In
Exotic: Operatic Variations on a Theme of effect, the tune always seems to enter a half-
Racial Encounter" will appear in a future measure "early" (e.g., in the solo flute, begin-
issue of this journal.] In contrast, the present ning halfway through m. 12 of the duet).
article focuses more on works in which the 17. This root-position progression—I-iii-vi-
tenor is less obviously, or not at all, represen- II—produces or implies <~hairn of parallel
tative of the West. fifths and octaves.
7. See Round Table no. 2 ("Contributions 18. Similar passages to "O Kami!"—though
of the New World to the Music of xhc Old"), none as dose in spirit and detail as the
and especially the article by Jurgen Maehder, Bizet—arc found at several points in Aida, act
in die forthcoming Proceedings cftbe 1992 1, secene 2 (e.g., the block chords, many in
Meeting ofthe International Musitolqgieal root position, of Ramfis's "S sacro brando")
Society. and in Carlos Gomes's Bguarany (1870)
8. Compare die almost identical description repeated alternation of I and iii in a chorus of
of Aida in disposition* scenica, quoted in Julian Brazilian TnHian«- Ricordi pianorvocal score,
Buddcn, The Operas ofVerdi, vol. 1, From Don PP- J47-48).
 R A L P H P. LO C K E

19. Locke, "Constructing," 280-85. cidi azzunf: Exoticism and Dramatic

20. On tritones, augmented triads, Discourse iaAidaf Cambridge OperaJournal,
unresolved major sevenths, and "bicentric" voL 3 (1991), pp. 49-62. Perhaps this even-
harmonies in this and other execution-related hamVdnf^ conveys a mature appreciation,
numbers, see Ashbrook and Powers, Pwcwnrt on Verdi's part, of the necessary evils of state

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"Timmdotf pp. 16,89-9+, 100-107. A barbaric religion and warfever,as Delia Seta implies.
Occident is powerfully constructed in such Perhaps (less admirably?) it reflects instead
diverse works as Prokofiev's Fiery Angel, the aging rebel's disenchantment with his old
Poulenc's La Dialogues da carmdites, Ward's ideals of political activism, with the possibility
The Crucible, von Einan's Der Bauch der alien of an individual's engaging productively in
Dame, the musical La Miserable—perhaps it the public realm.
has become increasingly harder to deny or 22. On this passage's harmony and "forbid-
disguise as the twentieth century advances. ding" orchestration, see Budden, Operas, vol.
21. As noted by Fabrizio Delia Seta, a< O 3, pp. 250-51.