Abstract

The relationship between opera and nationalism has mainly been studied within the context of the long nineteenth century, and it has been a key focus of opera research in East Central Europe. In this talk, I seek to rethink this relationship in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, building on contemporary scholarship that develops postcolonial and decolonial theory for the study of socialism and post-socialism. On the one hand, this approach helps challenge reductive understandings of East Central European culture and politics in terms of nationalism—as opposed to the presumably “post-nationalist” West—as well as the “methodological nationalism” prevalent in opera and music studies of the region. On the other hand, it is vital to recognize opera’s continual role as a prime site for the expression of national imaginaries, which have been deployed for varied political purposes in changing historical circumstances, ranging from resistance to propaganda.

Drawing on case studies from the former Czechoslovakia and today’s Czech Republic, I will focus on instances in which national opera repertories were mobilized in times of threat to state sovereignty. I will also pay attention to how national imaginaries were naturalized or neutralized to serve the cultural politics of state socialism, and how they were challenged after the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989. A close examination of the complex intersection of decoloniality and national identity will offer insights into the ambivalent condition of “non-obvious nationhood” ascribed to the region, as well as the productivity of the concept of nationalism for approaching its cultural production.