Exposition

THE FIRST JEWISH OPERA COMPANY: Dessauer’s Industry and Recreation of Amusement and Culture (2023)

Nicole Wolfsohn
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About this exposition

This research is about the first Jewish opera company in history. The company called _Industrie et Récréation d’Amusement et Culture_ and consisting of singers, actors and musicians, was founded in 1784 by Jacob Horst Dessauer (around 1764-1840), a German-born singer and music teacher and one of the most interesting figures in the Yiddish theater scene in Amsterdam – so far, so good, but a look from above is enough to see that this work is being used to talk about another problem: Jewish music, or music of the Jews, and especially it’s art music. The work is divided into four different chapters, the first one is a little introduction to the topic of the Jewish music and art music, the second chapter contains a critical reflection about the history of the music of the Jews but also general history and context of the 18th century, the third chapter called “Ashkenazi Amsterdam; _The Abduction from the Seraglio_ in Yiddish” is the main chapter and is entirely dedicated to the opera company by Dessauer and its Yiddish works, and last but not least our fourth chapter is the conclusion of this work. This is an example of art music in a community in the 18th century, an “attempt at integration” from a person that had built a whole company from nothing. But to understand its specialness, you have to go through the history of the music of the Jews, which is complex and intricate as the cross-section of an onion, to get inside you have to take off the peel layer by layer.
typeresearch exposition
date18/11/2022
published19/07/2023
last modified19/07/2023
statuslimited publication
share statusprivate
copyrightNicole Wolfsohn
licenseCC BY-NC-ND
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1818209/1818208
published inKC Research Portal
portal issue3. Internal publication


comments: 1 (last entry by Inês de Avena Braga - 22/02/2023 at 10:11)