WHAT WAS ENLIGHTENMENT?

So perhaps it is from the operatic masterpieces of the age that we can best learn an
important lesson: it is a considerable distortion of the way things were to describe
the so-called Enlightenment exclusively as an “age of reason”—especially if we
persist in assuming (as the romantics would later insist) that thinking and feeling,
“mind” and “heart,” are in some sense opposites. Gluck and Piccinni show us how far
from true this commonly accepted dichotomy really is. The impulse that had led
them and their artistic contemporaries to question traditional artifice and attempt
the direct portrayal of “universal” human nature was equally the product of “free
intellect” and sympathy—community in feeling. This last was based on introspection
—“looking within.” The community it presupposed and fostered was one that in
principle embraced the whole of humanity regardless of race, gender, nationality, or
class. The objective of “enlightened” artists became, in Wye J. Allanbrook’s well-
turned phrase, “to move an audience through representations of its own
humanity.”12 And not only move, but also instruct and inspire goodness: free
intellect and introspective sympathy went hand in hand—or in a mutually regulating
tandem—as ministers to virtue.

The notion of free intellect—or “Common Sense,” as the American revolutionary

Thomas Paine put it in the title of his celebrated tract of 1776—was the one that
tended to attract attention by dint of its novelty and its political implications. “Man is
born free; and everywhere he is in chains,” wrote Rousseau at the beginning of his
Social Contract (1762), perhaps the most radical political work of the eighteenth
century, and the obvious source of Paine’s main ideas. The chains to which he
referred were not only the literal chains of enforced bondage, but also intellectual
chains that people voluntarily (or so they may think) assume: religious superstition,
submission to time-honored authority, acquiescence for the sake of social order or
security in unjust or exploitative social hierarchies. The remedy was knowledge,
which empowered an individual to act in accord with rational self-interest and with
the “general will” (sensus communis) of similarly enlightened individuals.

Dissemination of knowledge—and with it, of freedom and individual empowerment

—became the great mission of the times. The most concrete manifestation of that
mission was the Encyclopédie, the mammoth encyclopedia edited by Diderot and
Jean d’Alembert with help from a staff of self-styled philosophes or “lovers of
knowledge” including Rousseau, who wrote the music articles among others. The
first volume appeared in 1751, and the final supplements were issued in 1776. By the
end, the project had been driven underground, chiefly by the Jesuits, who were
enraged at its religious skepticism and persuaded the government of Louis XV to
revoke the official “patent” or license to print. Even the clandestine volumes were
subjected to unofficial censorship by the printer, who in fear of reprisal deleted the
most politically inflammatory passages. These embattled circumstances only
enhanced the prestige of the Encyclopédie, giving it a heroic aura as a new forbidden
“Tree of Knowledge,” and contributing to its enormous cultural and political
influence.

That influence can be gauged by comparison with the famous essay Was ist
Aufklärung? (“What Is Enlightenment?”) by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant.
It was published in 1784, eight years after the Encyclopédie was completed. The
answer to the question propounded by the title took the form of a popular Latin
motto, originally from Horace: Sapere aude! (“Dare to know!”).13 “Enlightenment,”
Kant declared, “is mankind’s exit from its self-incurred immaturity,” defined as “the
inability to make use of one’s own understanding without the guidance of another.”

“Enlightened” ideas quickly spread to England as well, where free public discussion
of social and religious issues—both in the press and also orally, in meeting places like
coffee houses—was especially far advanced. From England, of course, they spread to
the American colonies, as already suggested by comparing Rousseau and Paine.
Whether or not (as often claimed in equal measure by its proponents and detractors)
the Enlightenment led directly to the French revolution of 1789, with its ensuing
periods of mob rule, political terror, and civil instability, there can be no doubt that it
provided the intellectual justification for the American revolution of 1776—a
revolution carried out on the whole by prosperous, enterprising men of property and
education, acting in their own rational and economic self-interest. The Declaration of
Independence, and the American Constitution that followed, can both be counted as
documents of the Enlightenment. As mediated through two centuries of amendment
and interpretation, moreover, the American Constitution, as a legal instrument that is
still in force, represents the continuing influence of the Enlightenment in the politics
and social philosophy of our own time.

It would be wrong, however, to think of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment within

its own time as nothing but a vehicle of civic unrest or rebellion. The philosophes
themselves believed in strong state power and saw the best realistic hope of
freedom in the education of “enlightened despots” who would rule rationally, with
enlightened sympathy for the interests of their subjects. A number of European
sovereigns were indeed sympathetic to the aims of the Encyclopedists. Frederick II
(“the Great”) of Prussia—C. P. E. Bach’s employer and a great patron of the arts and
sciences, many of which (including flute-playing and even musical composition) he
practiced himself—corresponded with Voltaire (François Marie Arouet, 1694–1778),
the “godfather” of the Enlightenment, and entertained d’Alembert at Sans Souci
(“Without-a-Care”), his pleasure palace in Potsdam. Catherine II (“the Great”), the
German-born Empress of Russia and a protégée of Frederick’s, corresponded
enthusiastically with Diderot himself, whose much-publicized praise of Catherine and
her liberality was largely responsible for her flattering sobriquet.

The liberality of an autocrat had its limits, though. Kant was a bit cynical about
Frederick’s: “Our ruler,” he wrote, “says, ‘Argue as much as you want and about
whatever you want, but obey!’”14 And after the French revolution, which Frederick
did not live to see, his protégée Catherine turned quite reactionary and imprisoned
many Russian followers of her former correspondents.

The prototype of all the “enlightened despots” of eighteenth-century Europe was the
Austrian monarch, Joseph II (reigned 1765–90). Beginning in 1780, when he came to
full power on the death of his mother, the co-regent Maria Theresia, Joseph
instituted liberal reforms on a scale that seemed to many observers positively
revolutionary in their extent and speed. He wielded the powers of absolutism, just as
the philosophes had envisaged, with informed sympathy for the populace of his
lands. He annulled hereditary privileges, expropriated church properties and
extended freedom of worship, and instituted a meritocracy within the empire’s civil
service. Above all, he abolished serfdom. (Catherine, by contrast, notoriously
extended the latter institution into many formerly nonfeudalized territories of the
Russian empire.) Yet few of Joseph’s reforms outlived him, largely because his
brother and successor, Leopold II, was impelled, like Catherine, into a reactionary
stance by the revolutionary events in France, and Leopold’s successor Francis II
(reigned 1792–1835) created what amounted to the first modern police state. This
anxious response to the French Revolution on the part of formerly “enlightened”
autocrats is one of many reasons for regarding the political legacy of that great
historical watershed as ambiguous at best.

Notes:
(12) Wye J. Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1983), p. 16.

(13) Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”

(Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?, 1784), trans. James Schmidt, in What
is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions,
ed. J. Schmidt (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), p. 58.

(14) Kant, “An Answer,” trans. Schmidt, p. 59.

THE “DA PONTE” OPERAS

After Die Entführung, Mozart did not complete another opera for four years. Part of the
reason for the gap had to do with his burgeoning career in Vienna as a freelancer, which
meant giving lots of concerts, which (as we will see) meant writing a lot of piano concertos.
But it was also due to Joseph II’s unexpected disbanding of the national singspiel company
and its replacement by an Italian opera buffa troupe at court whose regular composers
Giovanni Paisiello, Vincente Martìn y Soler, and Antonio Salieri—Italians all (Martìn being a
naturalized Spaniard)—had a proprietary interest in freezing out a German rival, especially
one as potentially formidable as Mozart.
fig. 9-7 Lorenzo da Ponte, engraving by Michele Pekenino after a painting by Nathaniel

Rogers (Mozarteum, Salzburg).

Mozart’s letters testify to his difficulty in gaining access to Lorenzo da Ponte (1749–1838,
original name Emmanuele Conegliano), the newly appointed poet to the court theater. (There
was a certain typically Joseph II symbolism in the fact that a specialist in opera buffa should
have been chosen to replace the aged Metastasio, the paragon of the seria, who died in 1782 at
the age of 84.) “These Italian gentlemen are very civil to your face,” Mozart complained to his
father in 1783. “But enough—we know them! If Da Ponte is in league with Salieri, I shall never
get anything out of him.”20 It was these letters, and the intrigues that they exposed, that led to
all the gossip about Salieri’s nefarious role in causing Mozart’s early death, and all the dubious
literature that gossip later inspired.

Mozart’s wish to compete directly with “these Italians” is revealed in another passage from the
same letter to his father, in which he described the kind of two-act realistic comedy (but
frankly farcical, not “larmoyante”) at which he now aimed. This was precisely the kind of
libretto that Da Ponte, a converted Venetian Jew, had adapted from the traditions he had
learned at home and brought to perfection. In this he was continuing the buffa tradition of
Carlo Goldoni, which sported lengthy but very speedy “action finales” at the conclusion of
each act and a highly differentiated cast of characters. About this latter requirement Mozart is
especially firm:
The main thing is that the whole story should be really comic, and if possible should include
two equally good female parts, one of them seria, the other mezzo carattere. The third female
character, if there is one, can be entirely buffa, and so may all the male ones.21

This mixed genre insured great variety in the musical style: a seria role for a woman implied
coloratura and extended forms; buffa implied rapid patter; “medium character” implied
lyricism. Da Ponte’s special gift was that of forging this virtual smorgasbord of idioms into a
vivid dramatic shape.

Mozart (aided, according to one account, by the Emperor himself) finally managed to secure
the poet’s collaboration in the fall of 1785. The project was all but surefire: an adaptation
of La folle journé e, ou le mariage de Figaro (“The madcap day; or, Figaro’s wedding”), one of
the most popular comedies of the day. It was the second installment of a trilogy by the French
playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732–99), of which the first
installment, Le barbier de Séville (“The barber of Seville”), had already been turned into a
hugely successful opera buffa by Paisiello (1782; first staged in St. Petersburg, Russia). These
plays by Beaumarchais were the very epitome of that old standby, the servant-outsmarts-
master routine, familiar on every operatic stage since the very earliest intermezzi: La serva
padrona was of course the first classic of this type. In the spirit of the late eighteenth century,
the old joke became much more pointed and audacious than before—“outrageously cheeky,”
in Heartz’s words.22 And yet, with both master and servant now portrayed as rounded and
ultimately likeable human beings rather than caricatures, the ostensible antagonists are
ultimately united in “enlightened” sympathy.

Thus, contrary to an opinion that is still voiced (though more rarely than it used to be),
Beaumarchais’s Figaro plays were in no way “revolutionary.” The playwright was himself an
intimate of the French royal family. In his plays, the aristocratic social order is upheld in the
end—as, indeed, in comedies (which have to achieve good “closure”) it had to be. It could even
be argued that the plays strengthened the existing social order by humanizing it. Hence
Joseph II’s enthusiasm for them, which went—far beyond tolerance—all the way to active
promotion.

In the play Mozart and Da Ponte adapted for music as Le nozze di Figaro, the valet Figaro
(formerly a barber), together with his bride Susanna (the mezzo carattere role), acting on
behalf of the Countess Almaviva (the seria role), outwits and humiliates the Count, who had
wished to deceive his wife with Susanna according to “the old droit du seigneur” (not really a
traditional right but Beaumarchais’s own contrivance), which supposedly guaranteed
noblemen sexual access to any virgin in their household. All three—Figaro, Susanna, and the
Countess—are vindicated at the Count’s expense. But the Count, in his discomfiture and
heartfelt apology (a moment made unforgettable by Mozart’s music), is rendered human, and
redeemed. On the way to that denouement there is a wealth of hilarious by-play with some
memorable minor characters, including an adolescent page boy (played by a soprano en
travesti, “in trousers”) who desires the Countess, and an elderly pair of stock buffo types (a
ludicrous doctor and his housekeeper) who turn out to be Figaro’s parents.

Mozart and Da Ponte had such a success with this play that their names are now inseparably
linked in the history of opera, like Lully-and-Quinault or Gluck-and-Calzabigi, to mention
only teams who have figured previously in these chapters. The triumph led to two more
collaborations. Don Giovanni followed almost immediately. It was a retelling of an old story,
long a staple of popular legend and improvised theatrical farce, about the fabled Spanish
seducer Don Juan, his exploits, and his downfall. Its first performance took place on 29
October 1787 in Prague, the capital of the Austrian province of Bohemia (now the Czech
Republic), where Le nozze di Figaro had been especially well received; it played Vienna the
next year. Its success was only gradual, but by the time he came to write his memoirs, Da
Ponte (who died an American citizen in New York, where from 1807 he worked as a teacher of
Italian literature, eventually at Columbia University) could boast that it was recognized as “the
best opera in the world.”23

Their third opera, produced at the Burgtheater on 26 January 1790 (a day before Mozart’s
thirty-fourth birthday), was the cynical but fascinating Cosí fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli
amanti (“Women all act the same; or, The school for lovers”), which had only five
performances before all the theaters in Austria had to close following the death of Joseph II. It
would be Mozart’s last opera buffa. The plot concerns a wager between a jaded “old
philosopher” and two young officers. The old man bets that, having disguised themselves,
each officer could woo and win the other’s betrothed. Their easy success, much to their own
and their lovers’ consternation, has made the opera controversial throughout its history.

Many textual substitutions and alternative titles have seen duty in an attempt to soften the
brazenly misogynistic message of the original. That message, preaching disillusion and
distrust, is perhaps larger (and more dangerous) than its immediate context can contain. Its
ostensible misogyny can be seen as part of a broad exposure of the “down side” of
Enlightenment—a warning that reason is not a comforter and that perhaps it is best not to
challenge every illusion. Some, basing their view on the assumption—the Romantic
assumption, as we will learn to identify it—that the music of an opera is “truer” than the
words, have professed to read a consoling message in Mozart’s gorgeously lyrical score.
Others have claimed that, on the contrary, Mozart and Da Ponte have by that very
gorgeousness in effect exposed the falsity of artistic conceits and, it follows, unmasked
beauty’s amorality.

The tensions within it—at all levels, whether of plot, dramaturgy, musical content, or
implication—between the seductions of beauty and cruel reality are so central and so deeply
embedded as to make Cosí fan tutte, in its teasing ambiguity, perhaps the most
“philosophical” of operas and in that sense the emblematic art work of the Enlightenment.

Notes:
(20) Blom, ed., Mozart’s Letters, Ibid., p. 208.

(21) Blom, ed., Mozart’s Letters, Ibid., p. 208.

(22) Heartz, Mozart’s Operas, p. 108.

(23) The Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte, trans. Elisabeth Abbott (New York: Orion Press,
1959), p. 232.

Women in Music Timeline

810

Birth of Kassia, composer of Byzantine chant. Read more...

1098

Birth of Hildegard of Bingen (d 1179), German Benedictine abbess,

visionary, writer and composer. Read more...
1122

Eleanor of Aquitaine, important patron of troubadours, is

born. Read more...

c12th-13th century
Lifetime of Beatriz, countess of Dia (b late 12th century), composer
of A chantar m'er de so qu'eu no volria, the only surviving melody
known to be by a woman troubadour. Read more...
1490

The 16-year-old Isabella d'Este arrives at the court of Mantua as

bride of Francesco II. Under her patronage, the Gonzaga court saw
its most glorious artistic period. Read more...

1533

Birth of the future Elizabeth I of England. An accomplished

musician herself, Elizabeth was among history's most important
patrons of music. Read more...

1557

The publication record for female composers begins, with an organ

setting of the hymn Conditor alme by the Spanish nun Gracia
Baptista in Luis Venegas de Henestrosa's Libro de cifra nueva para
tecla, harpa, y vihuela. Read more...
1568

Maddalena Casulana publishes her first book of madrigals, the first

music publication devoted to the works of a woman. Her aim, as
she states in the dedication, is 'to show to the world the foolish
error of men who so greatly believe themselves to be the masters of
high intellectual gifts that [these gifts] cannot, it seems to them, be
equally common among women'. Read more...

1580

Foundation of Ferrara's famous 'Concerto delle donne' led by Laura

Peverara, an ensemble of virtuosic singers that became a model for
similar groups elsewhere and influenced the style of the Italian
madrigal in the last 20 years of the sixteenth century. Read more...

c1580

Probable birthdate of the singer and composer Adriana

Basile. Read more...

1593
Vittoria Aleotti publishes her Ghirlanda de madrigali. Although
probably student works, these four-voice madrigals show a
command of an impressive variety of sixteenth-century styles. Read
more...
7 March 1608

Just 18 years old, the already-famous singer Caterina Martinelli

dies while preparing to sing the title role in Monteverdi's
opera Arianna. Monteverdi, with whose family the young singer had
lodged for three years, writes the beautiful Lagrime d'amante al
sepolcro dell'amata in her memory. Read more...
1609

Benedictine nun Caterina Assandra publishes her Motetti,

op.2. Read more...
1611

Lucia Quinciani becomes the first woman to publish a monody,

setting a text from Guarini's famous pastoral drama Il pastor
fido. Read more...
1618

Francesca Caccini publishes her Primo libro delle musiche, a book

of monodies. Read more...
1619

Birth of the composer and singer, Barbara Strozzi. Read more...

3 Feb 1625

Francesca Caccini's opera La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola

d'Alcina is performed in Florence. It is the first opera composed by
a woman. Read more...
1629

Francesca Campana publishes her Arie for 1-3 voices. Read more...

1630

Claudia Rusca, a Milanese nun, publishes a collection of Sacri

concerti. Read more...
1640
Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, an Benedictine nun in Milan, publishes
her Primavera di fiori musicali. Read more...
1644

Barbara Strozzi publishes her first book of solo madrigals. Read

more...

1655

Sophie Elisabeth, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, studies

composition with Heirich Schätz. Read more...

1655

Three songs by Lady Mary Dering are included in Henry

Lawes' Select Ayres and Dialogues, which is dedicated to her. Read
more...
1665

Isabella Leonarda, a nun and prolific composer, publishes her first

book of motets. Read more...

1667

Sophie Elisabeth, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, publishes her

second collection of hymn melodies. Read more...

1685

In Paris Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre composes music for

a ballet, Les jeux à  l'honneur de la victoire. Read more...
1689

In Bologna, composer and painter Angiola Teresa Moratori

Scanabecchi's oratorio, Il martirio di S Colomba is performed at the
Oratorio of S Filippo Neri. Read more...
1692

Amalia Catharina, Countess of Erbach, publishes a collection of

Pietist songs. Read more...

15 March 1694

Jacquet de la Guerre's opera, Cephale et Procris has its premiére at

the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris. Read more...
 20 March 1703

Maria de Raschenau's oratorio Le sacre visioni di Santa Teresa is

performed in Vienna. Read more...
1707

Camilla de Rossi is commissioned by Joseph I to compose an

oratorio, Santa Beatrice d'Este. Read more...
15 Nov 1711

Birth of Kitty Clive, star of the London stage and famous

interpreter of the music of Handel. Read more...

4 Nov 1713

Pallade e Marte, a 'componimento dramatico' by Maria Margherita

Grimani, is performed in Vienna for Charles VI's nameday. Read
more...
Aug 1721

Jacquet de la Guerre's Te Deum is sung in Paris on the occasion of

the recovery of the young Louis XV from smallpox. Read more...
18 Oct 1736

Les Génies, ou Les caractères de l'Amour, by an 18-year-old

composer known today only as Mlle Duval, is performed at the
Opéra in Paris. Read more...
1736

Julie Pinel publishes a collection of French airs. Read more...

1740

Wilhelmina, Princess of Prussia sees her opera Argenore performed

at the court opera in Bayreuth. Read more...
1740

Elisabeth de Haulteterre publishes her Premier livre de sonates for

violin and continuo. Read more...
1747

Maria Teresa Agnesi's cantata Il restauro d'Arcadia is given at the

Teatro Regio in Milan. Read more...
1754
Maria Antonia Walpurgis takes a leading role in her own opera, Il
trionfo della fedeltà  at Dresden. Read more...
1756

Anna Bon dedicates her op.1 flute sonatas to her employer,

Frederick the Great. Read more...

6 Feb 1760

Walpurgis's opera Talestri, regini della amazoni is given at

Nymphenburg and, unusually for opera of the period, is published,
by Breitkopf in Leipzig. Read more...
1768

Maddalena Laura Lombardini Sirmen performs her own violin

concerto at the Concert Spirituel in Paris. Read more...

1773

Marianne von Martínez is made an honorary member of the

Bologna Accademia Filarmonica. Read more...

1777

Anne Louise Boyvin d'Hardancourt Brillon de Jouy, a friend of

Benjamin Franklin, composes her March des insurgents to celebrate
a colonies victory in the American Revolutionary War. Read more...
1782

Corona Schröter takes the lead role in Goethe's Die Fischerin, for

which she composes the first setting of his poem 'Der Erlkönig'
later treated to a famous setting by Schubert. Read more...
1785

Maria Hester Park publishes keyboard sonatas with violin

accompaniment in London. Read more...

1791

Maria Theresia von Paradis's melodrama Ariadne und Bacchus has

its première at the Schlosstheater in Laxenburg. Read more...
1801
Three sonatas for piano, by the distinguished Mozart singer
Margarethe Danzi, are published posthumously in Paris. Read
more...

1807

Military music by pianist Maria Brizzi Giorgi is performed for

Napoleon when he passes through Bologna. Read more...

1811

Louise Reichardt publishes 12 Gesänge in Hamburg. Read more...

1812

Amalie, Princess of Saxony, composes a comic opera, Le nozze

funeste. Read more...
1820

Maria Aghate Szymanowska publishes a Divertimento for violin and

piano and a Sérénade for cello and piano in Leipzig. Read more...
6 Oct 1820

Birth of 'the Swedish Nightengale' Jenny Lind. Read more...

1823

Sophie Bawr writes the first published history of women in music,

contributing the volume on the Histoire de la musique to
the Encyclopédie des dames, published in Paris. Read more...
1836

Première of Piano Concerto by Clara Wieck (later Schumann) at the

Gewandhaus in Leipzig, with the 16-year-old composer as the
soloist. Read more...

1838

Louise Farrenc composes her Piano Quintet in A minor,

op.30. Read more...

1842

Emilie Zumsteeg publishes six lieder, op.6. Read more...

1846
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel composes her Piano Trio op.11. Read
more...

1849

Felicita Casella's Portuguese opera Haydée is given in

Oporto. Read more...
17 Jan 1855

Ann Mounsey's oratorio The Nativity is performed at St Martin's

Hall, London. Read more...
1859

Marie Grandval's operetta Le sou de Lise is performed at the

Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens. It is published under a pseudonym
'Caroline Blangy'. Read more...
1865

Casella's opera Cristoforo Colombo is given at the Théâtre Impérial,

Nice. Read more...
1867

Liliuokalani, later Queen of Hawaii, publishes He mele lahui Hawaii,

used until 1876 as the Hawaiian national anthem. Read more...
1874

Soledad Bengoecha de Cármena's zarzuelas Flor de los cielos and El

gran día are given at the Teatro Jovellanos, Madrid. Read more...
1879

Maude Valérie White is the first woman to win the Mendelssohn

Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Read more...

1881

Augusta Holmès' dramatic symphony Les Argonautes has its

première in Paris. Read more...
1882

Cécile Chaminade's opéra comique, La Sévillaneis privately

performed in Paris. Read more...
16 Sept 1887
Birth of composer and highly influential teacher of composition,
Nadia Boulanger. Read more...

1887

Luise Adolpha Le Beau composes her Piano Concerto, op.37. Read

more...

1890

Amy Marcy Beach composes her Mass in E flat. Read more...

1891

Ethel Smyth completes her Mass in D. Read more...

21 Aug 1893

French composer Lili Boulanger is born. Read more...

1897

Beach publishes her 'Gaelic' Symphony. Read more...

1898

Mary Wurm founds and conducts a women's orchestra in

Berlin. Read more...

1899

Tekla Griebel Wandall's opera Skøn Karen is performed in

Copenhagen. Read more...
1904

Pauline Viardot composes an opéra comique, Cendrillon, on the

story of Cinderella. Read more...
11 Nov 1906

Ethel Smyth's opera The Wreckers has its première (in German,

as Standrecht) at the Neues Theater, Leipzig. Read more...
1907

Rebecca Clarke becomes the first female pupil of Charles Villiers

Stanford at the Royal College of Music. Read more...

1908
Dutch composer and conductor Elisabeth Kuyper becomes the first
woman to teach theory and composition at the Berlin Hochschule
für Musik. Read more...

1910

After meeting Emmeline Pankhurst, Ethel Smyth composes

her March of the Women, which becomes an anthem of the British
women's suffrage movement. Read more...
1910

Alma Mahler publishes Fünf Lieder in Berlin. Read more...

1912

Ethel Smyth serves two months in Holloway Prison for her activism
on behalf of women's suffrage. Read more...

1912

At a time when nearly all major symphony orchestras are

exclusively male, Henry Wood admits four women, including the
violist/composer Rebecca Clarke, into the New Queen's Hall
Orchestra. Read more...

1913

Lili Boulanger becomes the first woman to win the Prix de

Rome. Read more...

7 April 1915

Birth of the great Jazz singer Billie Holiday. Read more...

25 April 1917

American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald is born. Often considered the

quintessential female jazz singer, she influenced countless
American and international popular singers of the post-swing
period. Read more...

1918

Music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge founds the South

Mountain Chamber Music Festival (later the Berkskhire Music
Festival) an important summer festival of chamber music. Read
more...

1919

Rebecca Clarke's Viola Sonata ties for first place with Ernst Bloch's
Viola Suite in the prestigious Coolidge Competition. The tie is
broken in favour of Bloch by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge herself
who, however, becomes an important patron of Clarke. Read
more...

1922

Ethel Smyth is made a DBE, the first female composer to be so

honoured. Read more...

1924

Elisabeth Kuyper founds the American Women's Symphony

Orchestra in New York City. Read more...

1927

Ruth Crawford's Violin Sonata is performed in New York at the

League of Composers concert. Read more...

1928

Imogen Holst wins the Cobbett Prize for composition at the Royal
College of Music in London. Read more...

1930

Elizabeth Maconchy's suite The Land is played at the London

Promenade Concerts. Read more...
1933

Margaret Bonds performs Florence Price's Piano Concerto with the

Chicago Symphony. The occasion marks two firsts for African
Americans. Price is the first African American woman to have a
work performed by a major symphony and Bonds is the first African
American to perform as soloist with the Chicago SO. Read more...

23 Nov 1935
Ethel Leginska conducts her own opera, Gale at the Chicago City
Opera. Read more...
1939

Elisabeth Lutyens writes her Chamber concerto no.1, using her

own version of the 12-note method. Read more...

9 April 1939

Having been denied the use of Constitution Hall in Washington,

DC, African-American singer Marian Anderson, with the support of
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, gives a concert at the Lincoln
Memorial, drawing an audience of some 75,000 people. Read
more...

27 Aug 1942

At the age of 20, Maria Callas sings her first Tosca, a role on which
she would leave an indelible mark. Read more...

30 Oct 1944

Première of Martha Graham's ballet Appalachian Spring to music by

Aaron Copland. Read more...
5 June 1947

American performance artist and composer Laurie Anderson is

born. She made an unexpected crossover into the popular domain
with her song 'O Superman', and became one of the most
influential women composers of her time. Read more...

3 April 1954

Peggy Glanville-Hicks's opera The Transposed Heads has its

première (in a concert version) at the Louisville Symphony. Read
more...
1957

Avril Coleridge-Taylor composes the Ceremonial March to celebrate

Ghana's independence. Read more...
1961

In Tokyo, Mieko Shiomi with two colleagues forms Group-Ongaku,

an experimental ensemble. Read more...
 1 March 1962

Louise Talma's The Alcestiad is the first opera by an American

woman to be produced at a major European opera house, at
Frankfurt. Read more...
1963

Esther Ballou's Capriccio for violin and piano is given its first

performance at the White House, Washington, DC. Read more...
1968

Ruth Anderson founds the electronic music studio at Hunter

College, New York. Read more...

1968

Dorothy Rudd Moore helps found the Society of Black

composers. Read more...

1968

Jazz pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams' Music for Peace,

later known as Mary Lou's Mass, is commissioned by the
Vatican. Read more...
1969

Meredith Monk's theatre piece Juice is given at the Guggenheim

Museum in New York. Read more...
1973

Nicola LeFanu, daughter of composer Elizabeth Maconchy, has her

work, The Hidden Landscape performed at the Proms concerts in
London. Read more...
1975

Musicologist Janet Knapp becomes the first female president of the

American Musicological Society. Read more...

6 Sept 1977

Thea Musgrave's opera, Mary Queen of Scots has its première at

the Edinburgh Festival. Read more...
1981
Performance artist Laurie Anderson's O Superman reaches number
2 on the British pop charts. Read more...
1989

Composer Irma Ravinale is appointed Director of the Conservatorio

di S Cecilia in Rome. Read more...

1995

International Alliance for Women and Music is founded. Read

more...

27 Feb 1997

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra votes to accept women

members of the orchestra. As of the end of 2006, the orchestra
included one woman, a harpist. Read more...

9 July 2000

Following a campaign by musicologist Liane Curtis, Amy Marcy

Beach's name is added to the frieze of famous composer names on
the Hatch Memorial Concert Shell in Boston, Massachusetts.
Beach, a native of Boston, is the only female composer on the
frieze. In celebration, the Boston Pops performs Beach's Bal
Masque. Read more...
22 March 2000

Jessye Norman sings the première of Judith Weir's woman.life.song

at Carnegie Hall Read more...
Opera Timeline
6 Oct 1600

Jacopo Peri's opera, Euridice , the earliest to survive complete, is

performed at the Pitti Palace in Florence on the occasion of the
wedding of Maria de’ Medici and Henri IV of France. Read more...
 24 Feb 1607

Claudio Monteverdi's opera, Orfeo, is performed before an

exclusive audience at the Ducal palace in Mantua. Read more...
1643

Monteverdi's last opera, L’incoronazione di Poppea is performed at

the Teatro SS Giovanni e Paolo, in Venice. Read more...
2 March 1647

Roman composer Luigi Rossi's Italian opera Orfeo, is produced at

the French court. In keeping with local style, the opera includes a
ballet scene. Read more...
5 Jan 1649

Francesco Cavalli's enormously successful opera Giasone has its

première at the Teatro S Cassiano in Venice. Read more...
19 Jan 1674

Jean-Baptiste Lully's Alceste has its première at the Paris

Opéra. Read more...
10 Jan 1676

Lully's Atys has its première at St Germain-en-Laye, Paris. Read

more...
c1683

John Blow's tragic opera, Venus and Adonis, today considered the

first English opera, has its première, either in London or at the
court of Windsor. Read more...
15 Feb 1686

Lully's final collaboration with the librettist Quinault, the tragédie

lyrique Armide, has its première at the Paris Opéra. Read more...
1689

Henry Purcell composes his opera Dido and Aeneas for

performance by the students at a girls' school in Chelsea. Read
more...
2 May 1692
Purcell's semi-opera, The Fairy-Queen, adapted from
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has its première at the
Queen’s Theatre in London. Read more...
30 Jan 1700

Alessandro Scarlatti's opera L’Eraclea is perfomed at Naples,

Teatro S Bartolomeo. In the tradition of earlier, Venetian, opera it
mixes comic scenes into the othewise serious story. Read more...
27 April 1720

Radamisto, Handel's first opera for the newly formed Royal

Academy of Music has its première in London. Read more...
Jan 1721

A. Scarlatti's, Griselda, has its première at the Teatro Capranica, in

Rome. Although very rarely performed today, Scarlatti's operas
were enormously popular and influential in their own day. Read
more...
13 Feb 1725

Handel's Rodelinda has its première at the King’s Theatre,

London. Read more...
19 Jan 1728

The Beggar’s Opera, a ballad opera in three acts, arranged by

Johann Christoph Pepusch to a libretto by John Gay, takes London
by storm. Read more...
5 Sept 1733

G. B. Pergolesi's intermezzo La serva padrona is performed

between the acts of his opera seria Il prigioniero superbo at Naples,
Teatro S Bartolomeo. La serva padrona was one of the most popular
intermezzos in the 18th century and has become the 'textbook'
intermezzo familiar to most students of music. Read more...
23 Aug 1735

Première at the Paris Opéra of Jean-Philippe Rameau's opéra-

ballet, Les Indes galantes, a fascinating window on 18th century
exoticism. Read more...
6 Feb 1760
Niccolò Piccinni's, La buona figliuola has its première at the Teatro
delle Dame in Rome. The libretto, by the great Carlo Goldoni, is
adapted from Samuel Richardson's hugely popular English
novel, Pamela. Read more...
26 Dec 1767

Christoph Willibald Gluck's reform opera Alceste has its première

at the Vienna, Burgtheater. Read more...
Sept/Oct 1768

Probable performance of the twelve-year-old Mozart's

singspiel Bastien und Bastienne at the home of Dr Franz Anton
Mesmer, the inventor of ‘magnetism therapy’, which Mozart would
later parody in Così fan tutte. Read more...
1 May 1769

Mozart's first full opera buffa, La finta semplice, to a libretto based

on Goldoni is performed at the Archbishop's palace in Salzburg.
The day is uncertain but it was probably the first of May. Read
more...
26 Dec 1770

Mozart's first opera seria, Mitridate, re di ponte, is a success in

Milan despite the composer's youth and the opera's running time of
six hours. Read more...
3 Aug 1777

Joseph Haydn's Il mondo della luna has its première at Eszterháza.

Haydn's operas were mostly composed to the taste of his employers
at Eszterháza. Although they never achieved the international
stature of his instrumental works, or of the operas of his younger
contemporary Mozart, they have begun to receive more attention in
recent years. Read more...
29 Jan 1781

Mozart's first mature opera, Idomeneo has its première in Munich

at the Residenztheater. Read more...
16 July 1782

Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail has its première at the

Vienna Burgtheater. Read more...
 15/26 Sept 1782

Giovanni Paisiello's, Il barbiere di Siviglia has its première at the

Hermitage, St Petersburg. Though it would be eclipsed by Rossini's
later setting of the same story, the opera was an enormous success
at the time. Read more...
26 Feb 1784

Haydn's final opera, Armida has its première at Eszterháza. Read

more...
21 Oct 1784

André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry's rescue opera Richard Coeur-de-

Lion has its première at the Comédie-Italienne, Paris. Read more...
1 May 1786

Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, the first of his three great

collaborations with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, has its première at
the Vienna Burgtheater. Read more...
29 Oct 1787

Mozart's Don Giovanni has its première at the National Theatre,

Prague. Although the legendary title character serves as the
central force of the story, it is the three women, whose lives are
altered through their encounters with him, who live in the
memory. Read more...
8 Jan 1788

Première of Antonio Salieri's Axur, re d’Ormus to a libretto by

Lorenzo da Ponte. Da Ponte and Salieri are both best known to
modern audiences as Mozart's collaborator and competitor,
respectively. But in late 18th-century Vienna, both were highly
respected artists in their own right, as the contemporary success of
this opera shows. Read more...
26 Jan 1790

Mozart's Così fan tutte, which then and now is as irresistable as it

is controversial, has its première in Vienna, at the
Burgtheater. Read more...
6 Sept 1791
Produced just weeks before his final opera, the more
famous Zauberflöte, Mozart's last opera seria, La clemenza di Tito,
has its premère at the National Theatre in Prague. Read more...
30 Sept 1791

Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, has its première at the Theater auf der

Wieden in Vienna. An allegory set in no real locality or historical
period, the work was intended by the composer, and by librettist
and fellow Freemason Emanuel Schikaneder, as a coded
representation of Freemasonry. Read more...
7 Feb 1792

Domenico Cimerosa's Il matrimonio segreto has its première at the

Vienna Burgtheater, 7 February 1792. Read more...
20 Nov 1805

Beethoven's only opera, the rescue opera Fidelio, has its premère at

the Vienna Theater an der Wien. Read more...
22 May 1813

Gioachino Rossini's L’italiana in Algeri has its premère at Teatro S

Benedetto, Venice. Despite an unenthusiastic welcome in Venice,
the opera went on to great success and was the first of the
composer's operas to be produced in Germany. Read more...
20 Feb 1816

Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, set to the same libretto as Paisiello's

opera of 1782, has its première at the Teatro Argentina in
Rome. Read more...
25 Jan 1817

Rossini's much loved setting of the Cinderella story, La

Cenerentola, has its première at the Teatro Valle in Rome. Read
more...
18 June 1821

Carl Maria von Weber's 'magic opera', Der Freischütz, has its

première at Berlin, Schauspielhaus. Read more...
27 Oct 1827
Vincenzo Bellini's Il pirata has its première at La Scala, beginning a
phenomenally successful six-year collaboration between the
composer and librettist Felice Romani. Read more...
3 Aug 1829

Rossini's grand opera, Guillaume Tell, has its première at the Paris

Opéra. Read more...
26 Dec 1830

Gaetano Donizetti's Anna Bolena, one of his several operas on

subjects from English history, has its première at the Teatro
Carcano in Milan. Read more...
26 Dec 1831

Bellini's opera Norma, which includes the great coloratura aria

'Casta diva', has its première at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan. Read
more...
6 March 1831

Bellini's La somnambula has its première at the Teatro Carcano in

Milan. Bellini, who died before his 34th birthday, produced a string
of lasting favourites in just nine years from 1827 to 1835. Read
more...
21 Nov 1831

Giacomo Meyerbeer's first great success, Robert le diable, has its

première at Paris Opéra. Read more...
12 May 1832

Donizetti's L’elisir d’amore has its première in the Teatro

Cannobiana, Milan. Read more...
24 Jan 1835

Bellini's final opera, I Puritani, with its now famous 'mad scene', has
its première at the Théâtre Italien, Paris. Read more...
26 Sept 1835

Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor has its première at the Teatro S

Carlo in Naples. The obbligato accompaniment to the famous mad
scene, usually heard on flute and performed on that instrument in
the first production, was originally composed for glass harmonica,
which contributes to the eery quality of the scene. Read more...
 9 Dec 1836

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka's A Life for the Tsar, considered the first
full Russian opera, has its première at the Bol’shoy Theatre in St
Petersburg. Read more...
29 Feb 1836

Meyerbeer's grand opera Les Huguenots has its première at the

Paris Opéra. Read more...
2 Jan 1843

Der Fliegende Holländer, Richard Wagner's first mature opera, has

its première at the Königliches Sächsisches Hoftheater, in
Dresden. Read more...
14 March 1847

Première at the Teatro della Pergola, Florence, of Macbeth, the first

of Verdi's three great operas based on the plays of
Shakespeare. Read more...
11 March 1851

Première at Teatro La Fenice in Venice of Verdi's Rigoletto, based

on Victor Hugo's novel Le roi s'amuse. Read more...
6 March 1853

Verdi's La traviata, composed, it seems, in not much more than six

weeks, has its première at Teatro La Fenice, Venice. Read more...
19 March 1859

Charles Gounod's most popular opera, Faust, has its première in

Paris at the Théâtre Lyrique. Read more...
4 Nov 1863

Première of Hector Berlioz's grand opera Les Troyens at the

Théâtre Lyrique, Paris. Read more...
10 June 1865

Wagner's Tristan und Isolde has its première in Munich, at the

Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater. Read more...
24 Dec 1871

Verdi's Aida has its première at the newly opened Cairo Opera

House. Read more...
 5 April 1874

Johann Strauss's light opera, Die Fledermaus has its première at

Theater an der Wien, Vienna. Read more...
8 Feb 1874

Modest Musorgsky's Boris Godunov has its première at the

Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg. Read more...
3 March 1875

Georges Bizet's Carmen has its première in Paris at the Opéra-

Comique. Carmen is arguably the world's best known opera
heroine. Read more...
13 Aug 1876

First performance of Wagner’s complete Ring cycle at Bayreuth,

13–17 August 1876. Read more...
23 Jan 1881

Pyotr Il'ych Tchaikovsky's Yevgeny Onegin (Eugene Onegin) has its

première at the Malïy Theatre in Moscow. An earlier performance
had been given in 1879 by students at the Moscow
Conservatory. Read more...
26 July 1882

Wagner's final opera, Parsifal has its première at the Bayreuth

Festspielhaus. A 30-year embargo placed on performances outside
Bayreuth was ignored by a number of opera houses, including the
Metropolitan in New York, which staged it for the first time in
1903. Read more...
19 Jan 1884

Première at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, of Jules

Massenet's Manon. Read more...
5 Feb 1887

Otello, one of the most universally respected of Verdi’s operas, is

premièred at La Scala. Read more...
 

19 Dec 1890
Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades has its première at the Mariinsky
Theatre in St Petersburg. Read more...
17 May 1890

Pietro Mascagni's one-act verismo opera, Cavalleria rusticana, has

its première at the Teatro Costanzi, Rome. Read more...
21 May 1892

Ruggero Leoncavallo's I pagliacci has its première at the Teatro Dal

Verme, Milan. Based, like Cavalleria rusticana, on a true
story, Pagliacci was composed with the earlier opera in mind, and
the two are linked in modern performance tradition. Read more...
1 Feb 1893

Puccini's Manon Lescaut has its première at La Scala. When his

publisher tried to dissuade him from composing an opera on a
subject that had already had great success in a treatment by
Massenet (see 1884, in this timeline), Puccini is said to have
replied 'Why shouldn’t there be two operas about her? A woman
like Manon can have more than one lover.’ The opera's success has
borne him out. Read more...
9 Feb 1893

Verdi's great comic portrait, Falstaff, has its première. Read more...

1 Feb 1896

Puccini's perennial favourite, La bohème, has its première at the

Teatro Regio, Turin. Read more...
14 Jan 1900

Puccini's Tosca has its première at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.

The libretto is based on the play of the same name by Victorien
Sardou, who created the title character for the great actress Sarah
Bernhardt. Read more...
30 April 1902

Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande is given its première at the

Opéra-Comique, Paris. Read more...
17 Feb 1904

Puccini's Madama Butterfly has its première at La Scala. Read

more...
 9 Dec 1905

Richard Strauss’s opera Salome has its première at the Dresden

Hofoper. Read more...
11 Nov 1906

Ethel Smyth's opera The Wreckers has its première (in German,

as Standrecht) at the Neues Theater, Leipzig. Read more...
25 Jan 1909

R. Strauss's Elektra is premièred at the Dresden Hofoper. Read

more...
26 Jan 1911

R. Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier has its première at the Königliches

Opernhaus, Dresden. The opera was a favourite of the composer,
and its glorious final trio was performed at a memorial service after
his death. Read more...
12 June 1917

Hans Pfitzner's opera, Palestrina, a fictional account of the Council

of Trent and the composition of Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli,
has its première at the Prinzregententheater, Munich. Read more...
23 March 1918

Charles Wakefield Cadman's opera Shanewis has its première at

the Metropolitan Opera, New York. The opera is loosely based on
the life of the Cherokee/Creek mezzo-soprano Tsianina Redfeather,
who advised Cadman on the work. Read more...
24 May 1918

Béla Bartók's opera Bluebeard's Castle has its première at the

Opera in Budapest. Read more...
14 Dec 1925

Alban Berg's opera, Wozzeck has its première at the Staatsoper in

Berlin. Read more...
25 April 1926

Puccini's final opera, Turandot left incomplete at the composer's

death and completed by Franco Alfano, has its première at La Scala
under the baton of Toscaninni, who stops the opera at the death of
the slave Liù, where Puccini's own completed score ends. Read
more...
31 Aug 1928

Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's Die Dreigroschenoper opens to

great success in Berlin. It would become one of the longest-running
musical shows in Broadway history. Read more...
23 Feb 1928

Igor Stravinsky's opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex is given its first

performance in an unstaged production at the Théâtre Sarah
Bernhardt, Paris. The first staged performance was at the Vienna
Staatsoper on 23 Feb 1928. Read more...
8 Feb 1934

Virgil Thomson's 'opera to be sung', Four Saints in Three Acts, is

premièred in Hartford, CT. Read more...
10 Oct 1935

George Gershwin's magnum opus, his folk opera Porgy and Bess,

has its première in New York. Read more...
2 June 1937

Berg's opera, Lulu has its première at the Stadttheater in

Zürich. Read more...
7 June 1945

Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes receives its first

performance at London's Sadler's Wells. Read more...
11 Sept 1951

Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress has its première at La Fenice,

Venice. The libretto, by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman is based
on a series of paintings by William Hogarth (1732–3). Read more...
8 June 1953

Britten's Gloriana, an opera about Elizabeth I of England

commissioned to celebrate the coronation of Elizabeth II, has its
première at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Read more...
29 May 1962
Michael Tippett's King Priam has its première at the Coventry
Festival. Read more...
25 July 1976

Philip Glass's first opera, Einstein on the Beach, has its première at

the Avignon Festival. Read more...
6 Sept 1977

Thea Musgrave's opera Mary Queen of Scots has its première at the

Edinburgh Festival. Read more...
21 May 1986

Harrison Birtwistle's Mask of Orpheus has its première at the

London Coliseum. Read more...
22 Oct 1987

John Adams' opera Nixon in China, a treatment of the US

President's 1972 meeting with Chairman Mao, has its première at
the Houston Grand Opera. Read more...