- Title
- 'Ethiopian Entertainers' and opera burlesque: Blackface parodies in colonial Australia
- Creator
- English, Helen J.
- Relation
- Opera, Emotions and the Antipodes. Historical Perspectives: Creating the Metropolis ; Delineating the Other p. 137-165
- Relation
- Routledge Research in Music 1
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003035909
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- Blackface minstrelsy companies from the United States of America and England arrived in the Australian colonies from 1850 onwards, performing the opera burlesques that had been a staple of their shows since their emergence in the 1840s. These parodies were generally referred to as Ethiopian operas, “Ethiopian” being a common nomenclature for blackface. William Mahar describes Ethiopian opera developed in the US as the amalgamation of two apparently contradictory musical styles: classical operatic and popular minstrel. When the first touring minstrel groups arrived in the Australian colonies, this opera burlesque style was introduced to Antipodean audiences. The reception of both minstrel performers and burlesque opera reveal blurred boundaries between legitimate and popular theatre in the mid-nineteenth century, and the role of the audience in determining content. The focus of this chapter is on the first wave of touring groups, their burlesque opera content and its reception.
- Subject
- opera burlesques; blackface; minstrel; touring groups
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1437492
- Identifier
- uon:40366
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780367476960
- Language
- eng
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