Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)
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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:57:05am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Comic Subversions and Intertexts in Early Modern Opera Session Chair: Catherine Gordon Discussant: Kate Van Orden | |
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Beyond Slapstick: Hasse’s La Contadina, “Turkish” Opera, and the Intermezzo Genre University of Utah This paper reconsiders Johann Adolf Hasse’s La Contadina (1728), a remarkably successful intermezzo whose extensive “Turkish” subplot unsettles assumptions about the comic thematization of the Ottoman Empire in early eighteenth‑century musical theater. While scholars such as Larry Wolff have argued that comic “Turkishness” in early modern opera functioned largely as lighthearted travesty, offering European audiences a playful mirror of their own shortcomings, the second act of La Contadina resists such characterization and departs radically from the intermezzo genre’s customary slapstick. Indeed, it stages a strikingly violent—and gendered—vision of Ottoman alterity that engages Enlightenment discourses on civilization, barbarism, and the nature of power. Drawing on work by Emily Wilbourne, Mary Hunter, and Gordana Lazarevich, I show that Hasse’s intermezzo both employs and subverts generic conventions: the comic tactics of disguise and pseudo‑foreign language, typically used to reinforce the female protagonist’s dominance, instead facilitate a dramatic reversal in which the male singing character, Tabarano, weaponizes his Turkish persona to assert control through threats of physical and sexual violence. This shift not only complicates the gender dynamics central to intermezzo dramaturgy but also resonates with broader eighteenth‑century concerns surrounding gendered authority, the Ottoman seraglio, and the emerging concept of “civilization.” I argue further that La Contadina contains what may be one of the earliest notated examples of an alla turca musical topic. Hasse’s aria for Tabarano in Act II and the “Ballo da Turco” concluding the intermezzo deploy signature leaps of a fourth, ornamental runs, and directionless phrasing that reappear in Hasse’s later opera seria for Dresden, Solimano (1753). La Contadina thus suggests an earlier, southern origin for the style long associated with Austro-German cities and courts. The barbarity and exotic difference that it encodes underscore Tabarano’s volatility and amplify the intermezzo’s destabilizing representation of Turkishness. Far from a disposable comic trifle, La Contadina emerges as a work that defied audiences’ expectations, circulated widely across Europe, and reveals the intermezzo as a space in which Enlightenment notions of East and West could be actively negotiated. | |