Western European Opera and Operetta Companies Touring in the South-Eastern Mediterranean during the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century

This paper focuses on the activity of itinerant musical theatre companies touring in the South-Eastern Mediterranean during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It aims to investigate the processes of cultural transfer and amalgamation between West and Orient in the domain of opera and operetta. These companies were the carriers of western cultural products from metropolitan cities such as Milan and Paris to the periphery, within and beyond European borders. In more detail, the wane of the 19th century saw the decline of the powerful Ottoman Empire and a corresponding increasing tendency towards Europeanization and westernization in the wider domain of the SE Mediterranean. Greece, in particular, functioned as a cultural crossroads between East and West. Within this socio-cultural landscape, from 1840 Italian opera companies began to tour Greek theatres, and even further towards the Near East; they were followed, from 1870 onwards, by French operetta and vaudeville companies. These troupes, usually consisting of second or third-rate artists, followed specific travel routes, which will be presented and explored. The proposed research will attempt to shed light on an unknown and unexplored area of the world history of music, and to fill a serious bibliographic gap.