# CES: The Singing Turk: Ottoman Power and Operatic Emotions on the European Stage from the Siege of Vienna to the Age of Napoleon #### calendar\_today Date and Time **September 28, 2017** 04:15PM - 06:00PM EDT #### pin\_drop Location **Adolphus Busch Hall, Hoffmann Room, 27 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA** New Directions in European History Study Group SPEAKER Larry Wolff Silver Professor; Professor of History, New York University This lecture will consider the huge cultural phenomenon of operas about Turks that played out across the stages of Europe from the 1680s to the 1820s. Though the best-known of these operas, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio," is still widely performed, most of these operas about Turks are unknown today. They include operas by such important composers as Handel, Rameau, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, and Rossini, as well as many others. The lecture will try to understand this cultural phenomenon in the geopolitical context of European-Ottoman relations and the intellectual context of the Enlightenment; it will also address the significance of such operas for thinking about Christian-Muslim relations, piracy and captivity, harem and gender politics, and enlightened despotism in eighteenth-century Europe. ## Sponsors - [New Directions in European History Study Group](https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/study-groups/000044-new-directions-in-european-history-study-group) **[See a video excerpt of Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio" ](https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/events/2017/09/the-singing-turk-ottoman-power-and-operatic-emotions-on-the-european-stage-from-the-siege-of-vienna-to-the-age-of-napoleon)** Contact: James McSpadden See also:- [ Elsewhere at Harvard ](/events/elsewhere) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#) Save: [ Add to calendar calendar\_today ](https://history.fas.harvard.edu/node/1117471/event-feed.ics) Copy link link