Church, State and an Operatic Outlaw: Jules Massenet'sHérodiade

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>When Jules Massenet began work on <jats:italic>Hérodiade</jats:italic> in the late 1870s, he likely expected to see his work premiered at the Paris Opéra. But the coveted Parisian premiere was not to be. Based on a liberal reworking of the infamous tale of Herod, Salome and John the Baptist, <jats:italic>Hérodiade</jats:italic> undoubtedly challenges traditional Catholic doctrine. Yet Massenet's opera was not as ‘secular’ as it may seem. I argue here that it draws instead on a Republican-friendly brand of Catholicism that encouraged individual religiosity as an anticlerical strategy. Herein, I argue, lay the reasons why <jats:italic>Hérodiade</jats:italic> was outlawed. It was not so much the libretto's liberal transformations of biblical characters as what those transformations represented both to the Catholic Church and to the French state: in the end the representation of a simultaneously Republican and Catholic Christ presented a dangerous analogue to the country's strained political situation.</jats:p>

Religious Music in China

“…Music and opera in France can express political opinions indicating a dangerous analog to the country's strained political situation (Walker, 2019). Differently, the traditional religious music of Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism in China usually does not carry solid political views or express significant social changes since these traditional religions are under the government's control and guidance in China.…”

“…The enormous influence of the relationship between the state and the church in France on the development of church music reminds us that the interactions between politics and religion at the macro level have unavoidably direct or indirect impacts at the micro-level, including music [1] . Interestingly, though the Chinese government established its power in 1949 and claimed to embrace atheism, multiple religions have still widely existed and developed, encompassing traditional religions of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and the 'western' Christianity.…”