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3 - Nina d’Aubigny’s ‘Italian Voice’
- By Carolin Krahn
Edited by Axel Körner, University College London, Paulo M. Kühl
Book:

Italian Opera in Global and Transnational Perspective

Published online:

17 March 2022

Print publication:

24 March 2022, pp 59-76
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Summary

Around 1800, the human voice was not only considered a musical instrument; it also served as a central motif in the national historiography of music. This chapter investigates a popular source in German-speaking music pedagogy on the systematic education of the (primarily female) voice: Nina d’Aubigny von Engelbrunner’s Briefe an Natalie über den Gesang (1st ed. Leipzig 1803, 2nd ed. 1824). This 'manual' is based on thirty-one fictive letters and is heavily charged with stereotypes of 'the Italian'. The chapter discusses the multiple levels on which the idea of a decidedly Italian voice is constructed and shaped against a transnational background. A close reading shows how the voice served as a wide-ranging projection screen beyond strictly musical topics, tackling anthropological, moral, aesthetic and societal questions, all of them attempting to spread clichés of Italian music into German everyday musical life.