Pages
170
Files
Download Full Text (9.0 MB)
SJSU Faculty Member
Karl Toepfer
Description
The book describes the historical context for the Scaramouche tragic pantomime created by Poul Knudsen and Jean Sibelius in 1913. The pantomime had numerous productions in various European countries between 1922 and 1977, and the book examines all of them according to all available evidence. The text explains the historical and cultural significance of the pantomime and how it uniquely explores a dark and complex intersection of female sexuality, marriage, and class control of erotic desire. The authors examine all productions of Scaramouche from the premiere production in Copenhagen in 1922 to the last major production in Karl-Marx-Stadt, East Germany in 1977, including productions in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Latvia, France, Germany (1927), and Denmark (1950). The comparative approach to production history, accompanied by many illustrations, allows the reader to see Scaramouche as more than a historical object; it is a historical agent, causing a remarkable array of actions and responses to its themes and strange perspective on sexuality rather than a unifying feeling across languages and eras. The book is innovative in its unprecedented international scope relative to theatrical production history. Few, if any, production histories compare evidence from so many different languages and decades. The reader encounters a huge number of “voices” responding to Scaramouche in media reviews, memoirs, and other sources, and therefore understands how productions of the pantomime “awakened an avalanche of language” up to 1977, while since then, though scholars now claim it to be one of Sibelius’s major achievements, it has disappeared entirely from the stage for mysterious reasons that the book attempts to identify.
ISBN
979-8-218-54810-0
Publication Date
2024
Document Type
Book
Publisher
Vosuri Media
City
San Francisco
Keywords
Alexander Saxelin, Ballet 1920-1977, Danish Theater 1913-1950, East German Theater 1977, Finnish Theater 1923-1974, German Theater 1927, Hermann Rudolph, Johannes Poulsen, Lilebill ibsen, Marquis de Cuevas Ballet, Modernist theater 1913-1977, Pantomime, Poul Knudsen, Rolf Lagerborg, Rosella Hightower, Ruth Snellman, Scaramouche, Sibelius, Swedish theater, Swedish Theater 1923, Ulrike Hallberg
Disciplines
Comparative Literature | Dance | Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Modern Languages | Modern Literature | Music Performance | Performance Studies | Photography | Playwriting | Scandinavian Studies | Theatre History
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Toepfer, Karl E. and Kurki, Eija, "Sibelius’s Scaramouche: A Comparative Production History of a Tragic Pantomime, 1913–1977" (2024). Open Educational Resources. 22.
https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/oer/22
Included in
Comparative Literature Commons, Dance Commons, Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Modern Languages Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Music Performance Commons, Performance Studies Commons, Photography Commons, Playwriting Commons, Scandinavian Studies Commons, Theatre History Commons
