Performing Power in Oratorio at the Court of D. Maria I (1777-1792)

Abstract

The court of Maria I, particularly in the middle years of the 1780s, provides a compelling case study on sacred dramatic musical forms such as oratorio within projects of royal legitimization. This article aims, first, to develop a basic outline of the patronage of oratorio at the Portuguese court in the second half of the eighteenth century, offering a basis for understanding the political, ceremonial, and aesthetic changes that took place in the context of court musical performance after 1750. Situating the active portion of Maria I’s reign (r. 1777-91) in a comparative framework against that of her father and predecessor José I (r. 1750-77), the article subsequently examines several original oratorios that Maria I went on to sponsor at her court in the 1780s. Viewed as part of a larger gendered strategy of monarchical power, the oratorios commissioned in the 1780s gain a symbolic dimension relative to Maria I’s self-fashioning and suggest that her legitimization came, in part, from the careful representation of the pious female ruler and the amplification of court musical ceremony surrounding her heir, Prince José and his future queen, Maria Benedita.