While European powers were at war with the Ottoman Empire for much of
the eighteenth century, European opera houses were staging operas
featuring singing sultans and pashas surrounded by their musical courts
and harems. Mozart wrote The Abduction from the Seraglio. Rossini
created a series of works, including The Italian Girl in Algiers. And
these are only the best known of a vast repertory. This book explores
how these representations of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the great
nemesis of Christian Europe, became so popular in the opera house and
what they illustrate about European-Ottoman international relations.
After Christian armies defeated the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683, the
Turks no longer seemed as threatening. Europeans increasingly understood
that Turkish issues were also European issues, and the political
absolutism of the sultan in Istanbul was relevant for thinking about
politics in Europe, from the reign of Louis XIV to the age of Napoleon.
While Christian European composers and publics recognized that Muslim
Turks were, to some degree, different from themselves, this difference
was sometimes seen as a matter of exotic costume and setting. The
singing Turks of the stage expressed strong political perspectives and
human emotions that European audiences could recognize as their own.