Ziegel, Aaron2020-08-182020-08-182019Aaron Ziegel, "Representing a Christian Nation: Sacred and Providential Discourses in Opera in the United States, 1911-1917," Music and Politics 13, no. 1 (Winter 2019). doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0013.1061938-7687https://doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0013.106http://hdl.handle.net/11603/19459Music excerpts can be streamed directly in the context of the article by clicking on the external link to the article on the Music & Politics website.As the genre of American opera was coming of age during the 1910s, composers and librettists began to incorporate the materials of sacred music into the operatic context with surprising frequency. This often took the form of prayer arias, sacred choruses, hymnody, or choral apotheoses, examples of which appear in Frederick Converse’s The Sacrifice (1911), Victor Herbert’s Natoma (1911), Mary Carr Moore’s Narcissa (1912), and Henry Hadley’s Azora (1917). These composers modeled their efforts after familiar European precedents, including Wagner’s Lohengrin, Gounod’s Faust, and Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, among other works. Close examination of the music, however, reveals a distinctively American approach in which sacred materials function to reinforce statements of patriotic nationalism. By situating these long-overlooked American operas alongside contemporaneous commentary on the United States’ sense of its sacred purpose, this article illustrates how the composers and librettists sought to participate in the discourses of providentialism, the “Christian nation” concept, manifest destiny, and “True Americanism” in order to craft a characteristically national style. The inclusion of sacred musical ingredients thus helped redefine the genre for US listeners, as the operas’ characters give voice to their Americanness through the sacred music they sing.application/pdf41 pagesen-USAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United Stateshttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Opera -- United States -- History -- 20th centurySacred musicNationalism in musicConverse, F. S. (Frederick Shepherd), 1871-1940. SacrificeHerbert, Victor, 1859-1924. NatomaMoore, Mary Carr, 1873-1957. NarcissaHadley, Henry, 1871-1937. Azora, the daughter of MontezumaText