Book Review: The Shaping of French National Identity: Narrating the Nation’s Past, 1715–1830 by Matthew D’Auria

Abstract

powerful, as people in charge of society. Any art form could be pressed into the service of Banks’ thesis. Painting, literature and spoken theatre reflect the same cultural preoccupations. Nevertheless, Banks argues, opera was vital because of its emotional appeal. He suggests that Beethoven’s Fidelio may have incited the Vienna Congress delegates to abolish slavery. To reconcile the two timescales is no straightforward matter. Opera treats history in a mythologized version. For this reason, Banks does not start from its mythologized representation. In the beginning was Creation, artistically represented in Haydn’s Creation and Wagner’s prelude to Das Rheingold. Banks distinguishes 36 topics, which he organizes into three parts: (1) new answers to timeless questions: the basics, such as humanity’s relation to God, to history, to the individual, or to a sense of home; (2) the modern West liberates itself from the Middle Ages – not a narration of the passing of the Middle Ages into Modern Times, but of the treatment of the Middle Ages in opera; and (3) from despotism to pluralism – covering everything from a critique of absolute rulership to the rise of the creative artist and the emancipation of ordinary people. In the way Banks develops his thesis, his great familiarity with the repertoire is well demonstrated. Operas are creatively selected and juxtaposed to illustrate a theme. The disadvantage, however, is the treatment of opera as an art form of cultural signals rather than of content. Opera still comes across as an emotionally exalted art form, rather than a medium for profound and nuanced thinking. Precisely those operas that acquired fame for their philosophical nuance are conspicuously absent. There is no trace of Don Giovanni, nor of The Magic Flute, no Rusalka, not even Pelléas et Mélisande. Messiaen’s Saint-François d’Assise could have offered the necessary balance in a rather one-sided reading of religion as an oppressive force. The fallacy of treating complex art works as mere symptoms runs throughout the book as a whole. Reducing Faust, for instance, to a moralizing story about a sexual liaison in a small bourgeois town amounts to an extreme reduction of one of the most complex philosophical undertakings of western culture. For which readership can this book be intended? Historians may find it of little use. Opera lovers may be a likely audience. The best place for this book is in education. It is widely documented, beautifully illustrated, and above all written with verve. In a single volume, it offers much material that may be of use in an educational setting, especially if treated as a starting point for discussion.