The myth on the “first national opera”: The cases of Serbia and Croatia

Marković, Tatjana (2011) The myth on the “first national opera”: The cases of Serbia and Croatia. Studia Musicologica, 52 (1-4). pp. 165-177. ISSN 1788-6244

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Abstract

The so-called first national operas were usually not the earliest national operas, but works arbitrarily chosen in accordance to the given political and cultural circumstances. In the majority of cases, they reached this status during Romanticism, when the ideology of nationalism and historicism was dominant. This fact determined the topic and the language of libretti, as well as the musical means themselves, leading to the “contradictory” result of “global” musical setting of “local” narrative. The understanding what is national and what is international, and for whom, opens the question if “national opera” exists at all. It seems that the key criterion in this respect is actual reception. This thesis will be considered through the cases of the first Croatian and Serbian operas, written between 1846 and 1904, in the framework of their social and political contexts.

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