1 Of particular relevance to the present article are Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978)Google Scholar; Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, Lawrence (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271–313 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Young, Robert J. C., Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar.

2 Said, Orientalism, 67.

3 To emphasize this division in no way proposes that it is static and not susceptible to modification. Thus, for example, the essential fluidity of the space between other and self forms the hallmark of Bhabha's, Homi theory of cultural hybridity, as elaborated in his chapter ‘The Commitment to Theory’, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 28–56 Google Scholar.

4 Said, Orientalism, 3. A representative selection of the critical literature on janissary music of the eighteenth century includes Al-Taee, Nasser, Representations of the Orient in Western Music (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 123–160 Google Scholar; Betzwieser, Thomas, Exotismus und ‘Türkenoper’ in der französischen Musik des Ancien Régime (Laaber: Laaber, 1993)Google Scholar; Margaret Griffel, ‘“Turkish” Opera from Mozart to Cornelius’ (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1957); Head, Matthew, Orientalism, Masquerade and Mozart's Turkish Music (London: Royal Musical Association, 2000)Google Scholar; Hunter, Mary, ‘The Alla Turca Style in the Late Eighteenth Century: Race and Gender in the Symphony and the Seraglio’, in The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Bellman, Jonathan (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 43–73 Google Scholar; Locke, Ralph, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 110–126 Google Scholar; and Rice, Eric, ‘Representations of Janissary Music (Mehter) as Musical Exoticism in Western Compositions, 1670–1824’, Journal of Musicological Research 19/1 (1999), 41–88 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Honour, Hugh, Chinoiserie: The Vision of Cathay (London: John Murray, 1961)Google Scholar.

6 Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, 272.

7 I do not intend to suggest that this more assimilationist model of intercultural interaction is wholly inapplicable to the Turkish example. Thus, for instance, Matthew Head discusses the element of reflexive critique in the third movement of Mozart's Violin Concerto in A major, k219, according to such a conceptual framework; see his Orientalism, Masquerade and Mozart's Turkish Music, 11–14.

8 This is the title which appears in published editions of Metastasio's works before 1754 – for example, Opere Drammatiche Del Sig. Abate Pietro Metastasio . . . Volume Quarto (Venice: Giuseppe Bettinelli, 1747). For convenience, I shall consistently refer to the libretto and all of its settings as Le cinesi. According to Michael Talbot, the term ‘componimento’ indicates a ‘“composition”, usually in reference to a dramatic poem to be set to music as a serenata. It occurs with particular frequency in the repertory of the Viennese court during the Baroque period’. ‘Componimento’, in Grove Music Online <www.oxfordmusiconline.com> (8 May 2015).

9 Zeremonialprotokolle, 1735–1738 (Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv, Vienna, OMeA ZA-Prot. 16), f. 7v.

10 Yonan, Michael, ‘Veneers of Authority: Chinese Lacquers in Maria Theresa's Vienna’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 37/4 (2004), 657 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Reported by von Dittersdorf, Carl Ditters in his Lebensbeschreibung: Seinem Sohne in die Feder diktiert (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1801), 79 Google Scholar.

12 Zeremonialprotokolle, 1735–1738, f. 8r.

13 von Khevenhüller-Metsch, Rudolf and Schlitter, Hanns, eds, Aus der Zeit Maria Theresias: Tagebuch des Fürsten Johann Josef Khevenhüller-Metsch, kaiserlichen Oberhofmeisters 1742–1776, volume 3: 1752–1755 (Vienna: Holzhausen, 1910), 33 Google Scholar. Khevenhüller-Metsch mentions these dances only in connection with the first performance of L'eroe cinese on 13 May and not with the three further performances, which, however, may be reasonably presumed not to have omitted the entr'actes. A special addendum to the issue of 12 October 1754 of the Wienerisches Diarium provides a lengthy account of the festivities at Schloss Hof Palace and reports a dance following Gluck's opera, but without details that would necessarily suggest an exotic character. The site of the ball is described as follows: ‘Nach solch Chinesischer Opera verfügten Sich die Allerhöchsten Herrschaften in einen mit vielen Spiegeln auch Crystallenen Hang= und Wand=leuchtern auf das herrlichste ausgeziert= und ungemein= prächtig=beleuchteten Saal, in welchen Dieselbe Sich einige Stunden mit Tanzen unterhielten.’ (Following this Chinese opera the most high nobility availed themselves of a hall which was decorated very splendidly and illuminated with exceptional magnificence by numerous mirrors as well as crystal lights hanging from the ceiling and walls, in which these noble personages entertained themselves in dance for several hours.)

14 A-Wn Mus. Hs. 17597. In the ceremonial protocols for 1735 the court lady is identified as ‘die Kay:^er Cammer=Freyle Gräfin Füchsin’ (f. 7v).

15 The notion of self-othering is one developed by Stuart Hall to describe a crucial dimension of the experience of colonization: ‘They had the power to make us see and experience ourselves as “Other”.’ See his ‘Cultural Diaspora and Identity’, in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 225. As applied in the present article to Metastasio's China operas, the concept is more aligned with a voluntary practice of masquerade for the purpose of constructing an identity of self. Studies of this phenomenon related to eighteenth-century culture include During, Simon, ‘Rousseau's Patrimony: Primitivism, Romance and Becoming Other’, in Colonial Discourse/Postcolonial Theory, ed. Barker, Francis, Hulme, Peter and Iversen, Margaret (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 47–71 Google Scholar, and Head, Orientalism, Masquerade and Mozart's Turkish Music, chapter 4, ‘Turkish Music, Masquerade and Self-Othering’, 90–111.

16 Mungello, David E., The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800, fourth edition (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 12 Google Scholar: ‘During the period 1500–1800, the predominant image of China was captured in the sagely Confucius (551–479 BC) . . . By contrast, one of the most common images of the period 1800–2000 was the hostile depiction of John Chinaman, a vicious-looking, pigtailed Chinese male with long nails.’

17 See Croll, Gerhard, ‘Glucks Debut am Burgtheater: Semiramide riconosciuta als Festoper für die Wiedereröffnung des Wiener Burgtheaters 1748’, in Gerhard Croll: Gluck-Schriften. Ausgewählte Aufsätze und Vorträge 1967–2002, ed. Brandenburg, Irene and Richter, Elisabeth (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2003), 97–103 Google Scholar, and also Jonášová, Milada, ‘ Semiramide riconosciuta: Eine Oper zur Prager Krönung Maria Theresias 1743’, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 56 (2009), 53–120 Google Scholar, which discusses an earlier setting of Metastasio's libretto, by an unknown composer or composers, performed at the 1743 coronation in Prague of Maria Theresia as Queen of Bohemia.

18 Metastasio mentions the new libretto for the first time in letters of 9 January 1752 to his elder brother Leopold Trapassi and to Antonio Tolomeo Trivulzio.

19 Text cited from Brunelli, Bruno, ed., Tutte le opere di Pietro Metastasio, volume 3 (Milan: Mondadori, 1951), 714 Google Scholar. I am indebted to Professor Giorgio Biancorosso of the University of Hong Kong for his assistance in the translation of this passage.

20 di Sala Felice, Elena, ‘Delizie e saggezza dell'antica Cina secondo Metastasio’, in Opera e libretto II, ed. Folena, Gianfranco, Muraro, Maria Teresa and Morelli, Giovanni (Florence: Olschki, 1993), 85–106 Google Scholar, especially 105.

21 The estimated years of King Li's and King Xuan's reigns are taken from Shaughnessy, Edward L., ‘Calendar and Chronology’, in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC, ed. Loewe, Michael and Shaughnessy, Edward L. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 25 Google Scholar.

22 Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste, Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique et physique de l'empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise . . . (Paris: P. G. Lemercier, 1735)Google Scholar, volume 1, 316–318. Metastasio mentions his debt to this account in the argomento of the libretto of L'eroe cinese. In China as in Europe, imperial rule was legitimated through the concept of divine right.

23 Du Halde's Description also contains a translation by the Jesuit father Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare of an alternative version of the story, the Zhaoshi gu'er or ‘Orphan of Zhao’ attributed to the thirteenth-century playwright Ji Junxiang. This translation is entitled ‘Tchao chi cou ell, ou le petit orphelin de la maison Tchao. Tragédie chinoise’ and appears in the third volume of the compendium. In Ji's telling, the narrative becomes a tale of vengeance involving two rival families, the Zhao and the Tu, the latter of which attempts to seize the imperial throne through murder of the former but is eventually met with a violent retribution. Adrienne Ward has noted that Metastasio probably knew Ji's version yet avoided the element of revenge in his own libretto because it did not suit his aim of depicting heroic fidelity and deference. See Ward, Adrienne, Pagodas in Play: China on the Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera Stage (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2010), 103 Google Scholar and also 111–114, which compares L'eroe cinese with Voltaire's L'orphelin de la Chine, first performed in Paris in 1755.

24 Zeremonialprotokolle, 1751–1752 (Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv, Vienna, OMeA ZA-Prot. 23), f. 557v–558r; Wienerisches Diarium, 17 May 1752; Khevenhüller-Metsch and Schlitter, Aus der Zeit Maria Theresias, 32.

25 On the supposed Chinese inclination towards submissiveness and obedience for the sake of greater social harmony, Du Halde writes, ‘Leur anciens sages ont été convaincus, que ce profond respect qu'on inspire aux enfans pour leur parens, les rend parfaitement soumis: que cette soumission entretient la paix dans les familles: que cette paix qui régne dans les familles particulieres, produit le calme & le tranquillité dans les villes: que ce calme empêche les révoltes dans les provinces, & met l'ordre dans tout l'Empire.’ (Their ancient sages were convinced that this deep respect which is inculcated in children for their parents renders them perfectly submissive, that this submission maintains peace in the family, that this peace which reigns in individual families produces calm and tranquillity in the cities and that this calm prevents rebellion in the provinces and promotes order throughout the empire.) Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique et physique de l'empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise, volume 2, 146.

26 This passage from the letter is cited and translated in Yonan, ‘Veneers of Authority’, 653 and 668, note 2.

27 Yonan, Veneers of Authority’, 665. See also the same author's Empress Maria Theresia and the Politics of Habsburg Imperial Art (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2011). The documentary reports note the attendance of the three ambassadors at mass and a banquet before the opera, but do not mention a visit by them specifically to the Vieux-Laque-Zimmer, though they may well have seen the room on other occasions. In any case, the palace in its entirety served as an expression of imperial triumphalism and did so loosely by means of diverse symbolic elements, not all of which were China-themed (such as the Gloriette, the arch standing atop a hill behind the palace). The site transmitted an ideological totality without its individual components necessarily reinforcing one another in a systematic fashion.

28 In a letter of 27 December 1749 to Farinelli, Metastasio writes, ‘Eccovi il componimento che desiderate’ (Here is the composition you desire) (Brunelli, Tutte le opere, volume 3, 450). The first performance of this revised version took place in 1751 at Aranjuez Palace outside Madrid, in a setting by Nicola Conforto.

29 All citations from the libretto are taken from Brunelli's edition (Tutte le opere, volume 2, 341–354).

30 Lo, Kii-Ming, ‘China-Mythen im italienischen Opernlibretto des Settecento’, in Politische Mythen und nationale Identitäten im (Musik-)Theater: Vorträge und Gespräche des Salzburger Symposions 2001, ed. Csobádi, Peter, Gruber, Gernot, Kühnel, Jürgen, Müller, Ulrich, Panagl, Oswald and Spechtler, Franz Viktor (Anif/Salzburg: Müller-Speiser, 2003)Google Scholar, volume 1, 189; Ward, Pagodas in Play, 170; Angela Kang, ‘Musical Chinoiserie’ (PhD dissertation, University of Nottingham, 2011), 96.

31 That the aria's satirical self-portrait unquestionably targets Silango is confirmed in the preceding recitative, during which Lisinga suggests ‘an affected young man returned from abroad’ (‘Un giovane affettato tornato da’ paesi’) as Tangia's subject and Silango remarks in an aside, ‘They are referring to me’ (‘Qui ci anderà del mio’).

32 Writing on 9 March 1754 to Ranieri Calzabigi, at a time when the planning for the Schloss Hof festivities may have already begun, Metastasio evidently referred for the first time to the libretto by the title Le cinesi (in a letter of 26 July 1753 to Tommaso Filipponi, he still used the original title, though abbreviated to Ballo cinese). For the Spanish performances of 1751, the work was called La festa cinese.

33 Brunelli, Tutte le opere, volume 3, 867.

34 Gerhard Croll, ‘“Le Cinesi”, eine Opernserenade von Christoph Willibald Gluck’, in Gerhard Croll: Gluck-Schriften, ed. Brandenburg and Richter, 125.

35 Dittersdorf, Lebensbeschreibung, 79–80.

36 Leopold, Silke, ‘Glucks Chinesinnen’, in Geschichte und Dramaturgie des Operneinakters, ed. Kirsch, Winfried and Döhring, Sieghart (Laaber: Laaber, 1991), 77 Google Scholar.

37 In a letter of 16 June 1736 to Mattia Damiani, Metastasio categorized Le cinesi as a festa teatrale: ‘Dopo il Gioas re di Giuda ho scritto tre picciole feste teatrali . . . La prima di esse feste non ha altro titolo che Componimento drammatico che serve d'introduzione ad un ballo cinese, la seconda Le Grazie vendicate, e l'ultima Il Palladio conservato.’ (Following Gioas re di Giuda [Joash, King of Judah] I have written three small feste teatrali . . . The first of these feste has no title other than Componimento drammatico che serve d'introduzione ad un ballo cinese [Dramatic Composition which Serves as the Introduction to a Chinese Dance], the second Le Grazie vendicate [The Graces Avenged], and the last Il Palladio conservato [The Palladium Safeguarded].) Brunelli, Tutte le opere, volume 3, 143. On the ‘sub-operatic’ genres and their contribution to the development of reform opera see Raymond Monelle, ‘Gluck and the “Festa Teatrale”’, Music & Letters 54/3 (1973), 308–325, and Jacques Joly, Les fêtes théatrales de Métastase à la cour de Vienne (1731–1767) (Clermont-Ferrand: Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines de l'Université de Clermont-Ferrand II, 1978).

38 Bruno Brizi, ‘Le componenti del linguaggio melodrammatico nelle Cinesi di P. Metastasio’, in Venezia e il melodramma nel Settecento, ed. Maria Teresa Muraro, volume 2 (Florence: Olschki, 1981), 396–397.

39 The first settings were of five drammi per musica, Il Demetrio (1731), Adriano in Siria (1732), L'olimpiade (1733), Demofoonte (1733) and La clemenza di Tito (1734), and of a festa teatrale, L'asilo d'amore (1732). Following Le cinesi, three more first settings of Metastasio's drammi per musica would follow before Caldara's death in December 1736: Achille in Sciro, Ciro riconosciuto and Il Temistocle (all from 1736).

40 Locke, Ralph, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 62–64 Google Scholar. Despite the dual pretences of Le cinesi taking place in China and ‘Prenditi il figlio’ in Troy, I do not intend to suggest that Gluck's subversion of da capo form evokes the kind of specifically geographic otherness by which Locke defines the characterization of an ‘Elsewhere’. In my view, the otherness in the aria and in the opera as a whole is principally mental in nature, and, as Said has argued, geography as an issue in the dynamics of intercultural encounters has little to do with substantive physical reality. See his Orientalism, chapter 1:II, ‘Imaginative Geography and Its Representations: Orientalizing the Oriental’, 49–73.

41 In order to follow the analyses presented in the following pages of the arias from Gluck's Le cinesi, the scholarly critical edition of the work should be consulted: Gerhard Croll, ed., Le cinesi, from Christoph Willibald Gluck: Sämtliche Werke, series 3, volume 17 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1958). Only the opening bars and a crucial passage from the middle of ‘Prenditi il figlio’ are given within the body of this article's text.

42 The 1990 recording of Le cinesi by Rene Jacobs directing the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi GD77174) almost exactly halves the tempo, roughly from 66 to 33 minims per minute.

43 Dittersdorf, Lebensbeschreibung, 80: ‘Es war nicht das liebliche Spiel der brillanten Sinfonie allein, die stellenweise von kleinen Glöckchen, Triangeln, kleinen Handpauken und Schellen und dergleichen bald einzeln, bald zusammen begleitet wurde, welches die Zuhörer gleich anfangs, ehe noch der Vorhang aufgezogen war, in Entzücken versetzte; die ganze Musik war durch und durch Zauberwerk.’ (It was not only the delicious playfulness of the sparkling symphony, accompanied now and again by little bells, triangles, small hand-drums, etc., sometimes singly, sometimes all together, which, at the very outset, and before the raising of the curtain, transported the audience: the music was from first to last an enchantment. Translation from The Autobiography of Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Dictated to His Son, trans. A. D. Coleridge (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1896), 71.)

44 The previously cited recording by Rene Jacobs illustrates the effectiveness of employing percussion instruments in the final dance.

45 Kang, ‘Musical Chinoiserie’, 96–103. See also Brown, Bruce, Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 304–307 Google Scholar, which discusses Gluck's use of polonaise rhythm in his ballet La halte des Calmouckes (1761).

46 Young, Colonial Desire, especially chapter 7, ‘Colonialism and the Desiring Machine’, 159–182.

47 Ward, Pagodas in Play, 114–115. Du Halde more specifically portrays Confucius as nobly dedicated to society's ethical development and hence indifferent to the trappings of position: for example, ‘On lui offrit plusieurs magistratures, qu'il n'accepta que pour avoir lieu de répandre sa doctrine, & de réformer les mœurs.’ (He was offered a number of magistracies, which he accepted only with a view towards spreading his doctrine and reforming customs.) Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique et physique de l'empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise, volume 2, 384. Sala de Felice, ‘Delizie e saggezza dell'antica Cina’, 104–106, discusses the relationship between Metastasio's Deistic philosophy and his (mis)understanding of a Confucian ethos which presumed the existence of a transcendent yet natural-rational order and therefore contrasted sharply with the Christian emphasis on revelation. In accord with such an ethical system, both an emperor and his subjects fulfilled permanent, inviolate moral obligations, the one through promotion of the greater good and the other through obedience.

48 All citations from the libretto are taken from its publication for the opera's first performances at Schönbrunn: L'eroe cinese Dramma per Musica da rappresentarsi nell'Imperial Corte. Da Dame e Cavalieri l'anno MDCCLII (Vienna: Van Ghelen, 1752).

49 Ward, Pagodas in Play, 110.

50 Translation from Ward, Pagodas in Play, 108.

51 Ward, Pagodas in Play, 108.

52 Ward, Pagodas in Play, 109.

53 See Brown, A. Peter, ‘Caldara's Trumpet Music for the Imperial Celebrations of Charles VI and Elisabeth Christine’, in Antonio Caldara: Essays on His Life and Times, ed. Pritchard, Brian W. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1987), 3–48 Google Scholar, and ‘The Trumpet Overture and Sinfonia in Vienna (1715–1822): Rise, Decline and Reformulation’, in Music in Eighteenth-Century Austria, ed. David Wyn Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 13–69.

54 Head, Orientalism, Masquerade and Mozart's Turkish Music, 91: ‘The prevailing mode of eighteenth-century cross-cultural identification was masquerade.’ See also Koselleck, Reinhart, ‘The Eighteenth Century as the Beginning of Modernity’, in The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, trans. Todd Samuel Presner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 154–169 Google Scholar.

55 Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, 280.

56 Head, Orientalism, Masquerade and Mozart's Turkish Music, 14.

57 Such an examination of Chinese writings represents the next step in the investigation of the present topic. By itself, it would form its own article-length study.

58 Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ 292.