Mikko

Saira

In my thesis, I study the circulation of music and theatre in Northern Europe, and the history of music and theatre in Turku as part of multidimensional European cultural life in 1790–1827. I analyse, what cultural life tells us about the worldviews, ideals and self-images of the elite, high society and intellectuals. My study is part of the research project Opera in the periphery? Åbo and Paris as musical and theatrical capitals, 1790–1840, funded by the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland.

I examine the circulation of compositions and plays that were performed in Turku. Circulation is an analytical concept, which refers to material’s, such as sheet music, scripts or libretti, circling to different places, changes, local adaptations and use. Furthermore, in a larger framework, I study the notions and meanings that contemporaries gave to the compositions and plays. The works of playwrights and composers were part of a broader struggle for social rights, and hence the ideals of the period found their way among the bourgeois audience per the French genres, drame bourgeois and opéra-comique.

A study, which deals with repertoire, its circulation and local meanings that were given to the repertoire, brings us knowledge about the cultural life of Turku and Finland. Moreover, it tells us about the European connections of the cultural activities, and thus, about the cosmopolitan nature of the elites of 18th and 19th centuries.