La muette de Portici de Auber y la construcción nacional de Bélgica

Abstract

The objective of this study is to analyze the importance that a musical composition had in the independence movement of Belgium against the Netherlands, which would begin on August 25, 1830 during a performance at the La Monnaie Theater in Brussels of La Muette de Portici de Daniel François E. Auber, a work that narrates the rebellion of a Neapolitan fisherman against the rule of the Crown of Aragon in 1647. The libretto was translated into German, English, Italian, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Croatian and Slovenian; with this the nationalist propaganda was assured. In Paris alone, it was performed more than five hundredtimes between 1828 and 1880, also contributing to the revolutionary climate in the French capital in 1830. The operating mechanisms of the Belgian public were similar to those generated in the Italy of the Risorgimento: the plot and the score had achieved exalt with his message a public sensitive to a revolutionary discourse of this type. The effectiveness of the content has meant that the validity of Auber's lyrical drama as a cultural trait that helps to distinguish Belgium continues to be maintained in the present.