1 Isherwood, Robert, Music in the Service of the King: France in the Seventeenth Century (Ithaca and London, 1973)Google Scholar . A reading of the tyrant as a potential representation of the Sun King is strengthened by the uncanny affinities between the balletic incompetence of the dancing oppressor and the eponymous ‘bourgeois gentilhomme’ from the well-known comédie-ballet, a figure that has recently been interpreted as a satire of the Sun King. For these interpretations of the Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670), see Fleck, Stephen, Music, Dance, and Laughter: Comic Creation in Molière's Comedy-Ballets (Paris, 1995)Google Scholar ; Whaples, Miriam K., ‘Early Exoticism Revisited’, in The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Bellman, Jonathan (Boston, 1998), 3–25Google Scholar ; and Cowart, Georgia, The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV and the Politics of Spectacle (Chicago, 2008)Google Scholar .

2 It is not until the end of this act, after having guaranteed the support of Amour and Pallas, that Cadmus resolves to rescue Hermione. Moreover, the gods alone – without the involvement of the putative ‘hero’ – are the agents of the opera's resolution.

3 Downing Thomas has recently drawn attention to subversive potential of the awkward gap between the king as represented in the prologue and the operatic hero who, he points out, is usually full of shortcomings. See Thomas, Downing A., Aesthetics of Opera in Ancien Régime, 1647–1785 (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar . In her dissertation on the ballet de cour, Rose Pruiksma also challenges understandings of the genre as a mere ‘glorification of the King and stupefying of the nobility’ (33), suggesting that theatre was also tailored to the interests and ideologies of the nobility. These conflicting interests, she argues, often led to many revealing gaps in Louis XIV's façade of the nation. See Pruiksma, Rose, ‘Constructions of French Identity in the Court Ballets of Louis XIV’, Ph.D. diss. (University of Michigan, 1991)Google Scholar .

4 Matthew Head has voiced some concerns about the concept of colonial ambivalence; after flirting with Bhabha's theories and pointing to the inconsistencies of Mozart's ‘exoticism’, he ultimately reaffirms his indignation with Saidian force: ‘A deconstructive and/or psychoanalytic approach emphasizing ambivalence and internal contradiction in Orientalist discourse should not lose sight of the role of such dissent, apparent or real, within the mechanism of domination’. See Head, Matthew, Orientalism, Masquerade and Mozart's Turkish Music (Aldershot, 2000), 134Google Scholar .

5 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, 2000)Google Scholar .

6 Cusick, Suzanne, ‘Dancing with the (In)grate’, in Gender and Sexuality in Early Music, ed. Borgerding, Todd M. (New York, 2002), 283–288Google Scholar ; Cusick, Suzanne, ‘Gender, Musicology, and Feminism’, in Rethinking Music, ed. Cook, Nicholas and Everist, Mark (Oxford, 1999), 471–498Google Scholar ; and Le Guin, Elisabeth, Boccherini's Body: An Essay in Carnal Musicology (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

7 For the most outstanding and relevant examples of the apparently irreconcilable positions on the location of agency in ‘postmodern’ interpretations, see Tomlinson, Gary, ‘Musical Pasts and Postmodern Musicologies: A Response to Lawrence Kramer’, Current Musicology, 53 (1993), 18–24Google Scholar ; Kramer, Lawrence, ‘Music Criticism and the Postmodern Turn: In Contrary Motion with Gary Tomlinson’, Current Musicology, 53 (1993), 25–35Google Scholar ; response by Tomlinson, 36–40; Tomlinson also expanded upon his theory vis-à-vis the agency question in Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others (Chicago, 1994); in his preface to Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutic Essays (Princeton, 2001), Richard Taruskin criticised Tomlinson for ventriloquism; in ‘Contemplating Music Archaeology’, The Journal of Musicology, 13/3 (1995), 404–23, Karol Berger charged Tomlinson's same publication with positivism. Tomlinson's, The Singing of the New World (Cambridge, 2007)Google Scholar reaffirms his contested model of agency with the call for ‘dialogue’ with colonial pasts that Bloechl ultimately affirms.

8 Bhabha, Homi, The Location of Culture (New York, 1994), 86Google Scholar .

9 Here, in this excerpt from her introduction, Bloechl summarises the argument expressed in: Oliver, Kelly, Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (Minneapolis, 2001)Google Scholar .

10 The dualism is most strongly emphasised when Bloechl writes: ‘Rameau's own talent and ambition, as well as his hybrid influences, prevented him from crafting a lyrical theatrical idiom whose expression was proof against the ravages of unreason, as this was understood by French opera audiences’ (215).

11 Isherwood, Music in the Service of the King, 145.

12 In her chapter on Lully's theatrical chaconnes, Rose Pruiksma interprets the allegorical significance of the Ballet d'Alcidiane somewhat differently. She argues that, in view of the impending marriage of Louis XIV, his role as a sexually promising Moor instead of Polexandre – the heroic lover – suggests that the ballet (and the famous ‘Chaconne des Maures’ in particular) may have served more as an aural and physical lesson for the king. See Pruiksma, Rose, ‘Music, Sex, and Ethnicity: Signification in Lully's Theatrical Chaconnes’, in Gender and Sexuality in Early Music, ed. Borgerding, Todd M. (New York, 2002)Google Scholar .

13 For the most recent engagement with debates surrounding the allegorical readings of Dido and Aeneas and the questions of intention and audience that such readings raise, see Welch, Anthony, ‘The Cultural Politics of Dido and Aeneas’, this journal, 21/1 (2009), 1–26Google Scholar . For a critique of the rush to attribute singular, fixed meanings in the Dido debates, see Hume, Robert D., ‘The Politics of Opera in Late Seventeenth-Century London’, this journal, 10 (1998), 15–43Google Scholar .

14 Recent discussions of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Stephen Fleck and Miriam Whaples have made it hard to deny the potentially subversive elements of this comédie-ballet. See Fleck, Music, Dance, and Laughter and Whaples, ‘Early Exoticism Revisited’.

15 Much like the scene discussed by Cowart, the prologue to Cadmus et Hermione incorporates a chorus of shepherds and shepherdesses who draw attention to their dual role as spectators and performers. Not only do they highlight their status as witnesses to the prologue's deus ex macchina and the opera that is about to follow, but they reflect on their role in the creation of ‘eternal ornaments’ (‘d’ornements immortels') of the king's victories – comments that may refer to the opera itself. They also suggest the breaching of divisions between audience and performers with their litany of imperatives to on-stage and off-stage audiences alike: ‘let us be quiet’ (‘taisons-nous’), ‘let us listen’ (‘ecoutons’) and ‘let us sing of the glory of his court’ (‘chantons la gloire de son cours’). Here one might argue that these invocations were a mode of prescribing reception and containing dissent; by regurgitating orchestral or solo material in monumental homophony, they provide the very model of passive and reverential spectators under absolutism.

16 This is a problem that Miriam Whaples comes up against when she writes: ‘It is hard to find in Le bourgeois gentilhomme any parody that could be turned against Soliman Aga [the king's Turkish nemesis]’. See Whaples, ‘Early Exoticism Revisited’, 13 .

17 Isherwood, Music in Service of the King 208; Thomas, Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime 96.

18 In Chapter 3 of Aesthetics of Opera in Ancien Régime, Downing Thomas suggests that Armide's recourse to the operatic sublime encourages spectators to identify with the undone woman instead of with Renaud, the putative ‘hero’ (126–7).

19 In his article for Grove Music Online, James Anthony contrasts the emerging ballet heroïque of the 1720s with the ‘frivolous’ genre of first-period opéra-ballet. See Anthony, James R., ‘Opéra-ballet’. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online (accessed 6 October 2009) www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/20378Google Scholar .