Theatrical Encounters During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Abstract

We are at war', the French president, Emmanuel Macron repeated six times in a martial tone during a speech on 16 March 2020, calling for a 'general mobilization' (Pietralunga & Lemarié, 2020). In the face of the Covid-19 crisis, Macron and other political leaders resorted to wartime rhetoric to justify their governments' drastic emergency measures. This was a problematic move, since this was not a war in any conventional sense of the word; citizens were not called to leave their homes and families to go fight for their country but they were ordered to stay home, to avoid gatherings and travel in order to minimize physical interaction. Using a rhetoric of 'total war' has become a popular stratagem of world leaders during the pandemic when seeking their populations' compliance with the imposed measures. After all, an important characteristic of the concept 'total war' is that it entails 'the complete mobilization of a society's resources to achieve the absolute destruction of an enemy' (Bell, 2007: 7). With a highly contagious virus as the enemy, it meant that theatres and concert venues around the world were to close their doors and cancel all performances for the foreseeable future.Many artists started to advocate for the arts, framing their efforts in reference to this crisis: theatre, opera, and music were championed especially for their supposed potential to offer comfort and distraction. For instance, Joyce DiDonato and Piotr Beczała organized a house concert performing selections from the cancelled Metropolitan Opera production of Jules Massenet's Werther (1887). The plot of Goethe's 1774 novel, on which this opera was based, had first caused furore on stages across Europe around 1800 during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (Cristea, 1971). Over two centuries later, the plot was rehearsed against a new background of crisis, with DiDonato stating that they performed 'at this moment of huge uncertainty' with 'the intention of remembering that there is beauty in the world, there is