At the origins of musical Japanism: facets of the oriental in Saint-Saëns’ opera «The Yellow Princess»

- · 20.03.2025

Original article
DOI: 10.56620/2227-9997-2025-1-26-40

Yulia P. Medvedeva

M. I. Glinka Nizhny Novgorod State Conservatory, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia,
jul-medvedeva@yandex.ru, https://orcid 0000-0003-0780-5584
Abstract: Camille Saint-Saëns’s one-act comic opera «The Yellow Princess» (1872) is one of the composer’s orientalistic works and the first example of Japonism in music. The author of the article analyzes the origins and identifies specific national vectors of orientalism in the text and musical fabric of the opera. The work is based on a comprehensive approach, including the use of culturalhistorical, comparative, comparative-analytical and musical-analytical methods. The article proves that Saint-Saëns’s oriental aspirations at the time of his work on «The Yellow Princess» were formed under the influence of the cultural atmosphere of France after the Paris World Exhibition of 1867. Interest in Japan, which had just opened up to interaction with the European world, information about Japanese literature and painting, and a complete lack of knowledge about Japanese theater and music became the reason for a special interpretation of Japonism in «The Yellow Princess»: Japan in the opera turns out to be partly China, and partly the conventional «romantic East». The scientific novelty of the study is related to two points. Firstly, despite the revival of the opera in the performing practice of the last ten decades, «The Yellow Princess» is practically an unstudied work; secondly, for the first time in the scientific literature, the idea is expressed and substantiated that under the name of Japan in European music of the 19th century, China actually appears, and musical Japanism in the initial phase of its development is a special modification of chinoiserie («Chinese style»).

Keywords: «The Yellow Princess», Saint-Saëns, Louis Gallet, japonism, chinoiserie, orientalism, exoticism, Japan in music, China in music, French opera

For citation: Medvedeva Yu. P. At the origins of musical Japanism: facets of the oriental in Saint-Saëns’ opera «The Yellow Princess». Scholarly papers of Gnesin Russian Academy of Music. 2025;(1):26-40. (In Russ.) DOI: 10.56620/2227-9997-2025-1-26-40

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