{"product_id":"voicing-britannia","title":"Voicing Britannia","description":"According to a widely held view in eighteenth-century Britain, Britons were somehow inherently unmusical, and this supposed shortcoming was, in fact, a virtue. George Colman explicated this view when he wrote in 1762 that \"for arts and arms, a Briton is the thing! John Bull was made to roar--but not to sing.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHowever, he was responding to an already changing cultural landscape. The 1760s saw the emergence of English-language opera, and the rise of a new generation of British singers ready and able to perform it. In response to long-held suspicions toward Italian opera and its singers, this turn was a bold attempt to offer British audiences a new vision of themselves: as a singing nation. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis is the bookâs central theme: the question of whether Britons could sing, and how it was negotiated in public discourse within an evolving cultural landscape. Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources, the text follows three groups of groundbreaking singers--high-pitched men, virtuosic prima donnas, and Jews--who sought to shift the landscape of opera in Britain, all the while challenging the prevailing gender norms and social categories. These attempts gave rise to a certain interplay--between an evolving cultural form seeking approval, and an insistent reticence that clung to the conventional. Eventually, the effort to adopt opera as a national vehicle, over a period of several decades, only helped to galvanize a guarded attitude toward music--an attitude that Britons were forced to admit was constitutive of their national identity.","brand":"Oxford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45787291680815,"sku":"9780197784044","price":105.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0770\/2855\/6847\/files\/imageloader_87db226e-888f-458d-a890-bb3f36c79a65.jpg?v=1786148197","url":"https:\/\/tssbooks.com\/products\/voicing-britannia","provider":"tssbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}