Pietro Metastasio's output of twenty-seven drammi per musica and over one hundred texts in various other genres includes two works that feature ostensibly Chinese subject matter: Le cinesi (The Chinese Ladies) of 1735, revised in 1749, and L'eroe cinese (The Chinese Hero) of 1752. Linked by their shared geographical focus but highly contrasting in structure and narrative premise, the two librettos diversely embodied Austrian images of China during an era in which the ruling Habsburg monarchy faced an urgent crisis involving the accession to the throne of Empress Maria Theresia, eldest daughter of Charles VI, who died in 1740 without leaving a male heir. This article argues that the broad challenge to Maria Theresia's political legitimacy, which took shape in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), represents a significant context for interpreting the settings of Le cinesi and L'eroe cinese performed in or near Vienna around the middle of the century. More specifically, it examines the discursive function of the China that Metastasio envisioned: as mouthpiece for expressing notions of imperial sovereignty and longevity, thereby bolstering a threatened dynasty's sense of its inviolable self at a precarious stage of its history. However, this usage of a foreign culture also raises the question of what was to be gained by such a circuitous manner of expressing native concerns. In the following discussion I shall elaborate upon a thesis that idealized Chinese traits of loyalty, deference and wisdom formed part of a ventriloquistic strategy that facilitated discussion within the conformist and authoritarian Habsburg context, by assigning to fantasized others responsibility for the expression of critique. Furthermore, this strategy finds its concrete analogue in the notably self-referential character of both the text of the librettos and the music of settings of Le cinesi by Antonio Caldara (1735) and Christoph Gluck (1754) and of L'eroe cinese by Giuseppe (Joseph) Bonno (1752), as detailed analyses below will aim to demonstrate.

The case study presented here seeks to illuminate a distinctive set of problems surrounding the interchange between Europe and China during the early modern period, especially the discursive phenomenon of a monologic stance posing as a dialogic one. The conceptual framework I adopt draws its inspiration chiefly from the postcolonial critiques of Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Robert J. C. Young and others who have extensively theorized the complex dynamics of intercultural encounters.Footnote ¹ Among the many useful viewpoints offered by their work, an emphasis on alterity as an inevitable dimension of human experience particularly informs my arguments. Since no mode or paradigm of understanding possesses an unbounded capacity to interpret all reality, any culture or individual necessarily confronts what Said calls ‘the assault on it of untreated strangeness’ – that is, the existence of domains of unaccountable otherness that expose the limits of the self's familiar world.Footnote ² Acknowledging the tension engendered by the incompatibility of other and self – two entities that resist integration – is fundamental to any investigation of an increasingly globalized world.Footnote ³

Within the realm of musicological research concerned with the eighteenth century, studies of alterity have frequently relied upon Said's analysis of the ideological underpinnings of the East–West binarism, whereby the division of humanity into two unequal halves serves as a technique of confronting a foreign threat, through implied assertion of Europe's civilization vis-à-vis a rival such as the Ottoman Empire.Footnote ⁴ Such a conceptual model less successfully clarifies the West's reception of China during this period, however, because of the latter's status as a powerful yet extremely distant kingdom with little immediate presence (at least before the nineteenth century) and thus a ready subject for fanciful imagination. The particular form of cross-cultural interaction exemplified by the ‘vision of Cathay’ entailed fantasized interchange with others, manifesting a practice of ‘dialogic monologism’ whose true orientation pointed inwards.Footnote ⁵ This merely apparent outreach beyond the confines of self represents a problem of voicing that Spivak analysed with trenchant insight in her celebrated essay of 1988, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’. Regarding the habit of inner discourse among multiple fictive identities as a defining trait of elite consciousness in recent centuries, Spivak questioned whether decentring necessarily occurs as a result of reflexive self-displacement by proposing their essential contribution to an opposite process: ‘The much-publicized critique of the sovereign subject thus actually inaugurates a Subject’.Footnote ⁶ Taking this remark as its point of departure, the following discussion posits that the seemingly laudatory depiction of the Chinese in Metastasio's Le cinesi and L'eroe cinese is in fact more concerned with constructing the ideal Austrian subject as embodied by Maria Theresia. The two librettos and their settings by Caldara, Gluck and Bonno illustrate a kind of interrelationship with foreign peoples different from the antagonistic duality of Orient and Occident; rather, they highlight the modern problem of a dialogue which aggressively transforms its interlocutors into covert mouthpieces for a dominant self and redirects the potential centrifugal force of intercultural exchange into a strengthening of the monologic temperament.Footnote ⁷

Maria Theresia's personal involvement with Metastasio's China operas began when she sang one of the principal roles in a performance on 21 February 1735 of the setting by the imperial Vice-Kapellmeister Antonio Caldara (1671–1736) of Le cinesi, a one-act entertainment that at the time was entitled only Componimento drammatico che introduce ad un ballo cinese.Footnote ⁸ According to the Zeremonialprotokolle of the court – which provide descriptive accounts of diplomatic, religious and festive occasions deemed worthy of preservation in an official written record – this performance took place in the ‘Stiegl=Zimmer’ (possibly a Spiegel-Zimmer or mirror room) of the reigning Empress Elisabeth Christine's private chambers in the imperial palace or Hofburg. The protocols further note the adornment of the space with ‘Lackierten Indian[ischen] Wänden’ (lacquered Indian walls).Footnote ⁹ The art historian Michael Yonan has clarified that the eighteenth-century Austrian usage of ‘indianisch’ as well as of ‘japanisch’ and ‘chinesisch’ referred to Asia in general, and the mention of lacquer makes a Chinese décor a certainty, as naturally fits the subject matter of Metastasio and Caldara's chamber opera.Footnote ¹⁰ Lacquer would make a reappearance in 1754, when a new setting by Christoph Gluck (1714–1787) of the revised version of the libretto, now entitled Le cinesi, formed a part of four days of opulent festivities sponsored by the Austrian imperial field marshal Prince Joseph Friedrich von Sachsen-Hildburghausen in honour of the imperial family and held at his palace of Schloss Hof, some thirty kilometres to the east of Vienna.Footnote ¹¹ With regard to the ballo cinese that followed the 1735 performance at the Hofburg, the ceremonial protocols record that this consisted specifically of a ‘Masquirter Tanz’ (masked dance).Footnote ¹² The exotic aspect of the evening as a whole thus came particularly to the forefront in this ball, whose participants evidently wore Chinese masks. In 1752, the performances at Schönbrunn Palace of L'eroe cinese in the setting by Giuseppe Bonno (1711–1788) also featured exotic dance in the form of two entr'actes, the first ‘Chinese’ and the second ‘Tartar’.Footnote ¹³ Hence the various Austrian incarnations of Metastasio's China librettos over a period of nearly two decades embodied a conspicuous visual and theatrical chinoiserie. However, this outward manifestation of a distancing exoticism represents only one facet of a comprehensive dialectical process whereby the foreign became assimilated within the native in Metastasio's two texts and their operatic realizations.

The story of Le cinesi concerns three purportedly Chinese ladies who, in order to while away some leisure time, decide to perform samples of each of three prevalent European operatic genres of the day and to judge their relative merits. The extant manuscript score of Caldara's setting in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, notes the singers who participated in the private performance of 1735. Maria Theresia, at the time eighteen years old, sang the role of Lisinga, who presents an example of serious opera, while her younger sister Maria Anna and a ‘Contessa Fixin’ (probably the Countess Karoline von Fuchs-Mollard) took on the roles of Sivene and Tangia, assigned pastoral and comic opera respectively.Footnote ¹⁴ The evaluation leads to a preference for none of the three genres, each of which demonstrates its own particular flaw: excessive passion (serious), insufficient diversity (pastoral) and too acerbic a view of human character (comic). Instead, preference is given to dance, ‘che non fa pianger, non secca e non offende’ (which does not cause tears, does not bore and does not offend).

The conceit in Le cinesi of the characters assuming the identities of Chinese ladies in order to assess the virtues and faults of an allegedly foreign European art form underscores the dialectical phenomenon of self-othering, a figurative or actual wearing of alien masks in order to represent and explore the self in ways not possible by more conventional means.Footnote ¹⁵ The question arises as to how the cross-cultural impersonation specifically enhances the meta-operatic aspect of the work, achieving a goal less easily attainable by characters openly acknowledged as Westerners. In addition to the enjoyment of striking and unusual artifice, which is not peculiar to any particular era or locale, it must have been eighteenth-century Europe's idealized view of China as a nation that deeply cultivated knowledge and learning that prompted the ‘Sinicizing’ of an act of self-critique within an elite Austrian context.Footnote ¹⁶ The ramifications of this complex approach of one culture to another would only intensify in the coming years.

As previously noted, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor since 1711 and Maria Theresia's father, died in 1740 without leaving a male heir. This circumstance sparked the century's second major war of succession, the first having occurred following the decease in 1700 of another Habsburg monarch, Charles II of Spain, whose extensive physical infirmities had rendered him incapable of producing children. In the earlier conflict, which eventually resulted in a favourable outcome for the House of Bourbon, the future Charles VI figured as a central participant, aspiring and ultimately failing to attain the title of Spanish king. As holder of the Roman imperial title in Vienna, he issued the edict known as the Pragmatic Sanction in 1713 with the aim of ensuring recognition of a daughter as his successor in case of such need and thereby of avoiding further catastrophic loss of the Habsburgs’ dominions. Despite Charles's apparent success in gaining the agreement of other leading European powers to this measure, war nonetheless ensued upon his death, and Maria Theresia could not win general acceptance of her legitimate status as empress until 1748, with the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. As negotiations for the cessation of hostilities progressed, a staging of Metastasio's Semiramide riconosciuta in a new setting by Gluck took place on the occasion of the reopening of the imperial court theatre or Burgtheater in Vienna. Gerhard Croll has remarked on the topical character of this performance: the tale of Semiramide, Queen of Assyria, who by disguising herself as her own son has ascended to the throne previously occupied by her consort, allegorically represented the contemporary situation of a female monarch struggling for acknowledgment within a patriarchal ruling culture.Footnote ¹⁷ In the immediate wake of the Austrian succession crisis, opera's appropriation of the East thus served as a means by which to explore difficult issues of political legitimation.

In late 1751 or early the following year, Maria Theresia ordered a new dramma per musica for festivities planned to celebrate her thirty-fifth birthday on 13 May 1752.Footnote ¹⁸ This resulted in yet another Eastern-themed work and the second of Metastasio's two China librettos, L'eroe cinese. In a letter of 18 February to his good friend Carlo Broschi, known as Farinelli or il Farinello, the poet cheekily deplored being limited to ‘storie orientali’ and the consequent lack of opportunity to contrast virtue and vice, because of the propriety of Orientals with regard to dress. This in fact suited the female singers of the opera's cast, who would not have to display their limbs since they would conveniently be playing male characters: ‘affinché i braconi e gli abiti talari di quelle nazioni inviluppino i paesi lubrici delle mie attrici, che rappresentano parti da uomo’ (so that the large trousers and the priests' cassocks of those nations would cover the lubricious regions of my actresses, who play male roles).Footnote ¹⁹ Elena Sala di Felice has persuasively demonstrated that L'eroe cinese manifests a deeply Sinophilic attitude corresponding to Metastasio's rationalist-Deist outlook, which naturally found appeal in a Confucian socio-political ethos regarded as free of the superstitions of divine revelation.Footnote ²⁰ In addition, the story of a faithful Chinese minister who voluntarily sacrifices his own son in order to preserve the rightful dynastic house offered its own vividly pointed commentary in relation to the opposition faced by Maria Theresia in assuming the throne of the Habsburg monarchy. In order to construct this specific allegorical message, Metastasio drew upon the historical account of the Chinese emperor Li Vang (King Li of Zhou, reigned 857/853–842/828 BC) that appears in Jean-Baptiste Du Halde's 1735 Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique et physique de l'empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise. This was a four-volume encyclopedia of then-current European knowledge of the Middle Kingdom compiled from the reports of Jesuit missionaries by a member of the order, though not one who had himself travelled to China. As related in this work, a popular uprising overthrew the cruel and tyrannical Li Vang and demanded the killing of his infant heir, Suen Vang (King Xuan of Zhou, reigned c827/825–782 BC), but Tchao Kong, a high-court official and later regent, turned over his own boy in place of the dauphin to a murderous crowd who were unaware of the substitution, and witnessed the child's slaughter with his own eyes.Footnote ²¹ While serving as interim ruler, he took on the role of surrogate father to Suen Vang, biding time until that point when he could finally secure recognition of the latter as the authentic Son of Heaven.Footnote ²² To this narrative of extraordinary loyalty, Metastasio added the refusal of the minister, whom he renamed Leango, to accept the position of emperor for himself though the populace clamours for him to do so, following years of his successful governance as regent.Footnote ²³ Thus the heroism referred to in the libretto's title consists not in any martial or military feats, but in an unequivocal fidelity to a divinely ordained ruling house. Few spectators of the opera in 1752 could have missed the particular relevance of such a tale to an empress who had recently confronted the emphatic denial of her right to hold the Austrian monarchical title.

The primary documentary sources that provide accounts of the first performance of L'eroe cinese report the presence of three foreign ambassadors among the audience members: Fabrizio Serbelloni, Emmanuel Dieudonné (Marquis de Hautefort) and Pietro Beccadelli (Prince of Camporeale), representing the Papal States, France and Naples respectively (see Figure 1, which reproduces the description in the court protocols of the event, including a diagram of the seating placement of the empress, emperor and principal guests).Footnote ²⁴ The opera's imperative to its viewers to adopt a proper stance of deference towards a now acknowledged monarch, transmitted in the guise of a matchless instance of ‘Chinese’ fealty, therefore reached beyond Maria Theresia's own subjects to include a noteworthy set of eminent international guests.Footnote ²⁵ The location of the performance may have contributed as well to fulfilling the ideological aims underlying the celebration of the empress's thirty-fifth birthday. Schönbrunn Palace, situated outside Vienna's central city walls and remodelled during the mid-eighteenth century from an imperial hunting lodge into the resplendent new summer residence of the Habsburg family, functioned as a powerful visual emblem of Maria Theresia's secure position upon the Austrian throne following years of conflict and uncertainty. Its interior space features a number of rooms decorated in an exotic manner, among them the celebrated Vieux-Laque-Zimmer, which served as a reception chamber for distinguished foreign personages awaiting an audience with the empress and on whose walls hung numerous lacquered Chinese panels surrounding portraits in Western style of members of the imperial family. In a letter to Prince Joseph Wenzel Liechtenstein, Maria Theresia remarked that ‘All the diamonds in the world are nothing to me. Objects made in India, especially lacquered woods . . . are the only things that give me pleasure.’ (‘Rien au monde tous les diamants ne me sont rien, mais ce qui vient des Indes, surtout le laque et même la tapisserie, sont les seules choses qui me font plaisir.’Footnote ²⁶ ) Michael Yonan has argued that lacquer held a particular attraction for the empress because its durability and transformation of wood into a permanent material, incapable of decay, lent it an essential symbolic value in an ideological programme of dynastic longevity. The international visitors thus gazed at artworks not only of exotic character but also of profound local significance, an experience not dissimilar to that of the ambassadors who attended the performance of L'eroe cinese, though in the instance of the Vieux-Laque-Zimmer the European dimension is ‘unmasked’ by the inclusion of the portraits. Yonan summarizes his analysis as follows: ‘If we take as a starting point the claim that this room is a statement about Habsburg dynastic vigor, then that statement relies partially upon the Far East in order to convey its message.’Footnote ²⁷ At Schönbrunn, theatrical and visual media employed in an orientalist manner reflected an inward-looking orientation as much as a facing outwards towards the world at large; or, rather, they fully assimilated otherness within their original cultural paradigms. This monologism also characterized the performance in 1735 of Le cinesi in the Hofburg's Mirror Room and that of 1754 at Schloss Hof Palace.

Figure 1

Description of the first performance on 13 May 1752 of Giuseppe (Joseph) Bonno, L'eroe cinese (Zeremonialprotokolle, 1751–1752, Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv, Vienna, OMeA ZA-Prot. 23, fols 557v–558r), with seating diagram and listing of principal audience members: A. Emperor Franz Stephan, B. Empress Maria Theresia, C. Fabrizio Serbelloni, papal nuncio, D. Emmanuel Dieudonné (Marquis de Hautefort), ambassador of France, E. Pietro Beccadelli (Prince of Camporeale), ambassador of Naples, F. Prince Dietrichstein, G. Prince Auersperg, H. Prince Trautson, J. Count Johann Joseph Khevenhüller-Metsch, K. other ministers (‘die übrige Vornehmere Kayl:^r Königl:^r Ministri’), L. court and city ladies (‘die Hof: und Stadt: Dames’). Used by permission

In 1749 Metastasio revised the libretto of Le cinesi in fulfilment of a request from Farinelli, who intended to present the work for the name-day celebrations of King Ferdinand VI of Spain.Footnote ²⁸ The principal modification to the text consisted of the addition of Silango, brother of Lisinga and lover of Sivene, who has just returned from travels in Europe. This new character introduced a disruptive element into the scenario which undercut not only the plot's conceit of a superior Chinese vantage point but also the very premise of the theatrical situation – namely, the assumption of fictive identities. During the opening recitative, following the ladies’ decision to carry out an examination of the different operatic genres, which would itself entail role-playing and thus the figurative wearing of masks, Silango's unexpected intrusion sparks a protest against the impropriety of his male presence, to which he responds with a mordant comment upon Chinese social mores: ‘Ma è una follia cinese’ (But it is a Chinese folly).Footnote ²⁹ Shortly afterwards he offers a comparably trenchant opinion of the planned evaluation by alleging that China lacks the operatic form, which only Europe could claim to possess.Footnote ³⁰ The subverting effect of Metastasio's revision extended into the presentation of samples of each genre: the segment devoted to the pastoral category expanded into a pair of arias, one each for Silango (as the shepherd Tirsi) and Sivene (as the shepherdess Licori), thereby implicating these ‘Chinese’ lovers themselves in the Arcadian evocation of idealized amorous sentiment; while the comic aria next performed by Tangia, who is jealous of Sivene, became a parody of Silango as Parisian dandy, the latter having specifically visited the French capital.Footnote ³¹ Hence the extreme artifice of Westerners impersonating Asians who in turn impersonate characters from European opera seems almost to display a reflexive awareness of its unprecedented constructedness, in a kind of violation of the convention of the fourth wall. In the 1735 version of the libretto, the suspension of disbelief necessary for theatrical performance received no challenge; in the revision, however, the suspension begins to dissolve under the force of a keen self-consciousness, as certain remarks within the text itself seem to demonstrate awareness of the characters’ actual, non-Chinese identity at the meta-theatrical level – that is, in a world lying outside of the dramatic scenario. In all, Metastasio's enrichment of his libretto resulted in a far greater discursive complexity and a more deeply problematized interrelationship of self and other.

When Prince Sachsen-Hildburghausen hosted the visit of the imperial family at Schloss Hof in September 1754, his programme included the first performance of Le cinesi in Gluck's setting.Footnote ³² However, the choice of this work may well have come from Maria Theresia herself, for Metastasio remarked in a letter of 19 November 1753 to the prince that ‘our most august lady, I do not know for what project, has requested it most impatiently’ (‘per l'augustissima padrona, che lo ha, non so per quel disegno, frettolosamente richiesto’).Footnote ³³ The empress's consciousness of having sung the part of Lisinga in 1735 can hardly have represented a trivial circumstance as she looked forward to an expanded version of the opera, this time with the famed contralto Vittoria Tesi in the role she herself had taken nearly two decades earlier. Croll has suggestively noted that the 1748 performance of Semiramide riconosciuta had also featured Tesi, so that her reappearance six years later in Le cinesi imparted to the latter work a subtle hint of the issues of dynastic legitimation surrounding Maria Theresia, especially given that both women had played the same vocal-dramatic character.Footnote ³⁴ Further, a character named Lisinga also appears among the cast of L'eroe cinese as the imperial heir's love interest and eventual consort, thereby supplying a further element interlinking the Austrian empress and Metastasio's two China librettos. Finally, the décor at Schloss Hof reprised the exoticizing spaces of the Hofburg and Schönbrunn. Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739–1799), who held a position as violinist in the orchestra maintained by Prince Joseph during the 1750s, left an account of the performance of Le cinesi at Schloss Hof which describes the striking visual effect of a theatre arrayed in brilliant fields of azure lacquer, shimmering gold-coated foliage and bars of prismatic glass from which emanated rainbow-like colours.Footnote ³⁵

The foregoing discussion has sought to illuminate the significant contexts and associations which drew together Le cinesi and L'eroe cinese within a specific political discourse. Metastasio's representation of China evidently served two purposes in relation to the Habsburg monarchy's striving for both preservation and recognition. First, the projection of native concerns through the voices of fantasized outsiders may well have facilitated the kind of critical discussion less easily carried out by imperial subjects openly acknowledging themselves as such, given the authoritarian nature of Austrian society in this period. Second, the selection of the Chinese as these outsiders may have reflected the status of the Middle Kingdom within Europe as a markedly distant other with little concrete immediacy. Despite the substantial knowledge disseminated through works such as Du Halde's encyclopedia, China possessed little of the tangible presence of nearer foreign lands such as Turkey and so represented a most pliable resource for the wide-ranging construction of self. In particular, its purported exemplary traits of social harmony and cultivated wisdom lent it a special usefulness.

Silke Leopold has emphasized the unique character of Le cinesi, which results from the juxtaposition of three different genres of opera.Footnote ³⁶ Her observation takes no account, however, of the cross-cultural aspect of Metastasio's scenario, illustrating a common (though by no means universal) tendency in musicological writings to regard the Chinese element as an incidental curiosity or as simple exotic colour. As we have seen, though, the pretence of transcending local boundaries helped to open up a space for critical reflection. Though the original specific impetus for the presentation of so idiosyncratic a work at the Viennese imperial court in 1735 may well remain unknown, the critical exploration carried out in Le cinesi of opera – a medium long exploited by the Habsburgs to express their worldview – suggests at least a sense of need for renewal in the face of pressing challenges, whether anticipated or actual. Fittingly, in all of its diverse generic, narrative, textual and musical facets, Le cinesi vividly realized the meta-operatic essence of its theme.

In the first place, the genre of Le cinesi, though most often identified by Metastasio as componimento drammatico, belongs within a larger group of ‘sub-operatic’ types which also includes the festa teatrale, the azione teatrale and the serenata and which stood outside the mainstream of the dramma per musica in fostering the reform tendencies epitomized by Gluck's later work.Footnote ³⁷ At a more detailed level, a study by Bruno Brizi of the linguistic style of Le cinesi notes the remarkable device of ‘un esotismo nell'esotismo’, or of Orientalism turned on its head to become Occidentalism, with all things European transformed from the normative into the alien. Reflecting this exceptionally high degree of artifice, the libretto features a vocabulary replete with terms such as ‘fingere’, ‘rappresentare’, ‘figurare’ and ‘inventare’, the numerous occurrences of which manifest an acute consciousness of the powerful tensions between truth and appearance contained in the scenario.Footnote ³⁸ Tangia's cautionary assertion ‘Ma l'inventare è men facile assai di quel che pare’ (but invention is much less easy than it seems), which follows the ladies’ resolution to carry out their evaluation of the operatic genres, would seem therefore to emphasize the fragility of maintaining the pretence of Chinese identity, particularly in the revised version of the text, with its complicating presence of Silango, and in Gluck's musical setting of 1754. (Further, Tangia's remark represents Metastasio's subtle gesture of praise at his own ingenuity in recasting the libretto.)

In 1735, Antonio Caldara had adopted the strategy of exaggerating the conventions of each operatic type, a sensible and perhaps unsurprising way of realizing the text's parodistic aim. As imperial Vice-Kapellmeister since 1716 and a prolific creator to that point of approximately forty operas for the Viennese court, including the first settings of six of Metastasio's librettos, he could accomplish the task called for by the reflexive premise of Le cinesi with a fluent efficiency and comfortable mastery of the requisite stylistic vocabulary.Footnote ³⁹ Lisinga's demonstration of serious opera, which dramatizes the predicament faced by Andromache – Trojan princess and widow of Hector, who must either submit to the threatening amorous demands of the Epirean king Pyrrhus or sacrifice the life of her son Astyanax – appropriately consists of an accompanied recitative followed by a da capo aria. The recitative sets the tone for a charged piece of theatre by means of commonplace yet vivid devices such as aggressive interjections by the violins and tremolos in the violins and continuo at ‘per quella mano che fa l'Asia tremar’ (by that hand which made Asia tremble). The aria ‘Prenditi il figlio’ (Take the child) then depicts Andromache's heroic yet wavering resolve either to preserve marital honour or to save her child through a mannered and frequent shifting of tempo between allegro and adagio as well as the employment of characteristic traits of ‘high’ baroque style (Example 1): elaborate melismas highlighting significant words such as ‘crudeltà’ and ‘pietà’ (bars 5–6 and 12–13), sequential patterning (likewise bars 5–6 and 12–13) and a quasi-polyphonic texture achieved by overlapping, antiphonal exchanges between the violin and voice parts (bars 1–2 in particular). Sivene's exemplar of pastoral opera, ‘Non sperar, non lusingarti’ (Do not hope, do not flatter yourself), also presents an abundance of the relevant stylistic formulas, in this instance in order to evoke a world of idealized amorous sentiment in which Licori responds to Tirsi's impulsive wooing with a call for temperate love (Example 2). Within the framework of an expansive 12/8 metre and continuous siciliano rhythm, first and second violins in unvarying pizzicato sonority initially proceed in ‘sweet’ parallel thirds and sixths above a tonic pedal point (bars 1–2), then gently exchange ornamental trills conceivably intended to mimic sounds of the natural realm (bar 3), and finally produce a slight but unthreatening increase of tension through a chain of 2–3 suspensions (bars 4–7), leading to the entry of the voice part, which joins fully in the stock language of an assumed rusticism. Lastly, Tangia's comic parody ‘Ad un riso, ad un'occhiata’ (At a smile, at a glance) depicts a Parisian dandy readying himself before the mirror in preparation for his latest round of social engagements. The music he sings accordingly features a galant manner that reflects a worldly consciousness of position, with meticulous and even fussy rhythmic detail providing a sonic equivalent to physical-social grooming (Example 3). The clipped prosody of the melodic material, a quality augmented by the 2/4 metre and allegro tempo, especially comes to the fore in this da capo aria's seconda parte, during which insistent repeated notes underscore an anxious preoccupation with winning recognition as a ‘uom di qualità’ (man of quality) (bars 69–73). Furthermore, the pitch repetition finds its analogue at a higher structural level in the tendency to restate motives immediately, as at ‘passeggiar in questo stile’, ‘che non dicesse’ and the melisma on the last syllable of ‘qualità’. In the last of these examples, the precisely matched rhythm of each of the four bars produces an effect of one beat per bar, while the melodic contour generates a pulsation twice as slow (note the sequential repetition of bars 75–76 down a step at 77–78); Caldara thus builds a vocal line from articulated, balanced phrase units, illustrating a formal procedure that would begin to predominate during the middle of the century. On the whole, then, by means of what one might describe as overt, straightforward parody, Caldara gave musical substance to the meta-operatic principle of Le cinesi in a fashion that keeps separate the agent and target of caricature, maintaining the privileged status of the former. This separation becomes clear in a comparison with Gluck's setting of 1754.

Example 1

Antonio Caldara, ‘Prenditi il figlio’, Componimento drammatico che introduce ad un ballo cinese, bars 1–16, transcribed from Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 17597. Used by permission

Example 2

Caldara, ‘Non sperar, non lusingarti’, Componimento drammatico, bars 1–8, transcribed from Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 17597

Example 3

Caldara, ‘Ad un riso, ad un'occhiata’, Componimento drammatico, bars 59–82, transcribed from Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 17597

Working with Metastasio's extensive transformation of his text, Gluck actively took up the heightened self-reflexive implications of the revision. Like Caldara, he prefaced Lisinga's aria with a turbulent accompanied recitative whose instrumental tremolos evoke Andromache's deeply unsettled emotional state. However, for the aria, in place of amplified cliché or over-fulfilment of expectation, he chose instead to subvert a fundamental convention of the dramma per musica – namely, da capo form – and therefore to challenge the very terms of the scenario's critical premise. In other words, Gluck's ‘Prenditi il figlio’ prompts the question of whether it still belongs to the genre it aims to satirize, or whether it departs from this genre to enter into the domain of a stylistic other, in an act of ‘Sinicizing’ not only the opera's personages but also its composer, who did not write music in a fully normative Western style. In this regard, the discussion by Ralph Locke of the apparent lack of Asian elements in orientalist musical works of the eighteenth century as compared to those of the nineteenth century is highly relevant. Asianness in eighteenth-century Europe, an imaginative notion in any case, did not attempt ethnographic precision but rather tried to ‘characteriz[e] an Elsewhere’, realizing through concrete musical means an experience of alterity that depended upon subjective conceptions of normality established within a particular cultural environment.Footnote ⁴⁰

Gluck's subtle manipulation of da capo aria form, making clear references to its hallmarks while simultaneously undercutting them, merits a detailed scrutiny, especially with regard to the issue of textual and musical reprise and their mutual coordination.Footnote ⁴¹ As in Caldara's setting, changes of tempo help to underscore the turbulent psychological drama of the quandary confronting Andromache, though they are now effectively written in through the manipulation of note values, and the effect differs greatly from that of the earlier aria. In place of a clear sectionalization, the impetuous, onrushing quality of Gluck's treatment of Metastasio's text instead fosters the sense of a near-continuous sweep. A precipitous semiquaver ascent through an octave in the violins propels the music directly into its vocal part without a ritornello and also establishes the principal tonality of B minor, as Andromache voices her determination to sacrifice Astyanax (Example 4a). When she reacts in horror at the cruelty of such a resolution, the instrumental accompaniment shifts to mostly quavers, and the first violins enrich the vocal line with an elaborated version of the appoggiaturas heard on ‘Ah, no!’ (bars 3–6). A recurrence of the opening semiquavers, inverted to form two rapid scalar descents which steer the tonality to the key of the relative major, signals the return of the princess's resolve (bars 10–12), this time to offer herself up to Pyrrhus, but there follows a second hesitation conveyed through music of similar quality and content to that of the first. A perfect authentic cadence then provides an audible marker of the end of the text's prima parte (bar 23), yet reinforces the prevailing key of D major against the convention of a caesura in the tonic at this place in the formal structure of a da capo aria. Furthermore, the impulsive forward movement of the music results in a strong elision into the seconda parte, an effect enhanced by almost immediate modulation to other keys (G major at bar 25, E minor at bar 29) as well as by the most intensive use of semiquavers thus far (five bars of tremolos in the violins and viola for ‘che barbaro dolor’ (what cruel sorrow), followed after a brief interval by an additional four bars of the same texture for a repeat of the same words). As the shifting tonality finally settles onto F sharp minor for the putative close of the seconda parte (bar 46; see Example 4b), Gluck then interposes what seems like the beginning of the reprise of the prima parte as Andromache circles back to her original intent to reject Pyrrhus's demands, forcibly suppressing all rival thoughts with a ‘Ma no!’ not from Metastasio's own pen and evidently added by the composer himself (bars 46–47).

Example 4a

Christoph Gluck, ‘Prenditi il figlio’, Le cinesi, bars 1–10 (Christoph Willibald Gluck: Sämtliche Werke, series 3, volume 7, ed. Gerhard Croll (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1958)). Used by permission

Example 4a

(continued) Gluck, ‘Prenditi il figlio’, bars 11–23

Example 4b

Gluck, ‘Prenditi il figlio’, bars 44–55

Example 5

Giuseppe (Joseph) Bonno, ‘Nel camin di nostra vita’, L'eroe cinese, Act 1 Scene 7, bars 10–15, transcribed from Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 18265. Used by permission

Example 5

(continued) Bonno, ‘Nel camin di nostra vita’, bars 16–21

The elided nature of the form continues here as an insistent repetition of the tonic F♯ in the violins transforms the most anchored of scale degrees into a dynamic and unstable pitch, demanding resolution to a G that acts as the seventh of a dominant chord. Hence a musical return to the relative major (D) rather than to the expected tonic minor accompanies the textual return, even as a recurrence of the ascending-semiquaver figure in the violins helps to confirm the start of a recapitulation (bars 47–48). The unsettling effect of Gluck's carefully achieved subversion of traditional formal procedures then becomes greatest in the following bars: already hinted at by the small but telling revision of text, a passage exhibiting the only conspicuous alteration of texture in the aria rearranges the linear order of Metastasio's words, placing ‘che fo?’ (what shall I do?) before ‘Ah, no! È troppa crudeltà’ (Ah, no! It is too cruel) and thereby dramatizing Andromache's inner perturbation (bars 51–57). In addition, this startling change of affect undoubtedly calls for a marked reduction of tempo, even if not explicitly indicated in the score, before the propulsive energy of the aria resumes in bar 58.Footnote ⁴²

Reflecting the disruptive nature of this episode, the reprise of the prima parte is thrown into doubt as the text of the seconda parte, again accompanied by tremolos in violins and viola, resumes in bars 65–66 and gradually reinstates the principal key of B minor over a span covering bars 66–77. Nevertheless, the music withholds a strong perfect authentic cadence until bars 85–87, in spite of the words of the prima parte having returned nine bars earlier, and the matter of whether or not the ‘true’ reprise has now begun also remains in doubt as Andromache omits the initial lines of this textual segment, repeating only the concluding phrases (‘Oh dei che fo? Pietà, consiglio’ (O gods, what shall I do? Have pity, offer counsel)) in an unpredictable order to bring the aria to its close. In summary, Gluck's setting of ‘Prenditi il figlio’ retains a sense of the overall tripartite structure implied by Metastasio's text and employs tonal and motivic articulations towards that end, so that the aria does not precisely exemplify through-composition. At the same time, the complex manipulation of these tonal and motivic features, refusing them the kind of coordination typical of da capo form, so subverts conventional expectations as to thrust parody and caricature, which usually gratify one's comfortable viewpoints concerning the difference between the normative and the strange, into a domain of fully fledged reflexivity, so differentiating this version of Le cinesi from Caldara's.

The remaining arias of Gluck's opera also illustrate the same extension of parody beyond the confines of a performer's assumed role to encompass the performer him- or herself. Silango's ‘Son lungi e non mi brami’ (I am far away and you do not long for me) addresses its wooing not only to Licori but also to Sivene, as Arcadia and ‘China’ blur into one another through mutual participation in the stylized representation of unrequited love. Its ingratiating, mock-serious expression of Tirsi's amorous suffering takes form especially in a gentle alternation of duple and triplet quavers in both vocal and instrumental melodic lines, set within the framework of a relaxed triple metre and lightly pulsating accompaniment, as well as in the theatricality of a lengthy melisma on ‘m'ami’ corresponding to Silango's own facetious character as earlier delineated in his recitatives, with the singer and first violin reinforcing one another's ‘self-importance’ by proceeding colla parte (bars 33–44). Sivene's ‘Non sperar, non lusingarti’ similarly constitutes a double reply to Tirsi and Silango, the music both achieving the character of a mild rebuff and reinforcing the dialogical link between the two arias through shared features such as its sinuous quaver figures – most notably the impressive elongation of the first violin's line between bars 5 and 18, which culminates in an unctuous chromaticism that barely hints at the pathos of the minor mode – and its melismas highlighting those words that signify resistance to an impulsive love, such as ‘ma non voglio delirar’ (bars 30–36, 38–39). Lastly, Tangia's ‘Ad un riso, ad un'occhiata’ conflates its French dandy and Silango (who, one should recall, has returned to China from Paris) in order to voice her jealousy of the latter's passion for her rival, Sivene, through a cutting and acerbic portrait of his self-preoccupation. In other words, the performer assumes the identity of the dandy for the purpose of mocking him, representing him in an intentionally exaggerated and grotesque way. This is realized through aristocratic dotted rhythms, overweening in their ceaseless insistence upon making themselves heard; high flute trills, whose abrasive timbre combined with their lack of integration within the overall texture likewise imply an egotistical temperament; and a seconda parte in adagio tempo, minor tonality and occasional monophony conveying the vainglorious solemnity of one who sadly wonders how others could possibly fail to recognize his excellence.

The complexity of the overlapping levels of masquerade in Gluck's Le cinesi endangers the stability of the pretended identities in this work, at times conspicuously widening the ‘tears’ in the veneer to display the original relation of native and foreign. Thus the opening sinfonia features the sounds of janissary percussion instruments such as triangles, bells and small hand-held drums; Dittersdorf's autobiography confirms the use of these instruments during the performance at Schloss Hof, though they do not appear in Gluck's score.Footnote ⁴³ The addition of the same kind of Orientalizing timbres also suits the concluding dance, and, on the evidence of Dittersdorf's testimony, corresponds to an appropriate performance practice for the mid-eighteenth century, though once again the score does not require their inclusion.Footnote ⁴⁴ The choice specifically of a polonaise for this closing section of Le cinesi contributes further to subverting the conceit of a European identification with the Chinese, the quasi-universal claims for dance by the four personages notwithstanding. A recent dissertation completed at the University of Nottingham by Angela Kang argues that the genre of polonaise functioned as a signifier of otherness in Vienna during the middle of the eighteenth century, and that its conjunction with ‘Turkish style’ produced an overtly exotic final segment to Gluck's opera.Footnote ⁴⁵ On the whole, then, one can observe in his setting of Le cinesi that simultaneous approach towards and distancing from alien cultures which Robert J. C. Young has identified as an essential trait of the colonizing mindset, terming the phenomenon ‘colonial desire’.Footnote ⁴⁶ This paradoxical stance towards foreignness as both alluring and threatening marks an appropriative process whereby the self seizes upon the other only for those aspects that can benefit the self and refuses an acceptance of the complex human entirety of the other. The double-faceted nature of the Western engagement with China in Le cinesi, illustrated by the work's dialectical treatment of identity whereby diverse masks fluidly alternate between relative transparency and relative opacity, therefore epitomizes a broad problematic of trans-cultural encounters during an era of rapidly advancing globalization.

The performances of L'eroe cinese at Schönbrunn likewise included exotic dances, as entr'actes, and the drama similarly makes use of characters from the Middle Kingdom as surrogate voices for expressing convictions related to the political situation in central Europe following the end of the War of the Austrian Succession. Thus the earliest presentations of Metastasio's second China opera also exemplify a duality of assimilation and differentiation, though in this instance with the latter element isolated in sections lying outside the narrative frame. Generally speaking, L'eroe cinese pursues a dialectic between different perspectives with less intensity than Le cinesi and certainly does not count as a meta-operatic work; nonetheless, it too attains a referential and even self-critical stance, especially regarding the twin, complementary ideals of selfless devotion to a people's welfare (on the part of a monarch) and appropriate deference to legitimate authority (on the part of a monarch's subjects), of which Chinese society allegedly represented the exemplar. Thus Leango's enjoinders to Siveno, the concealed but soon-to-be-revealed heir whose actual name is Svenvango, to serve tirelessly the good of those whom he rules and thereby to conform harmoniously with the divine, natural order of things constitutes the libretto's implicit reminder and encouragement to Maria Theresia, herself only recently acknowledged as the true empress. The minister's recognition of his own lack of authentic imperial status and consequent refusal to occupy the throne also reflects a didactic aim, and in this connection Adrienne Ward has aptly described Leango as an Italianized Confucius, noting Du Halde's characterization of China's most famous sage as a gentle philosopher who renounced titles and privilege.Footnote ⁴⁷

The construction of others as paragons of wisdom and virtuousness from whom Europeans can learn receives its clearest illustration in Scene 7 of the opera's third act, when the regent learns of Siveno's apparent death as a result of an insurrection and expresses his anguish with the words ‘Abbiam perduto / Voi Cinesi il re vostro: io di tant'anni / I palpiti, i sudori’ (We have lost / You Chinese your king: I the many years / Of fear, of sweat).Footnote ⁴⁸ Given the theatrical situation of a direct address to the members of the audience by Leango, ‘il re vostro’ could refer equally to Siveno and to Maria Theresia, the loss of whom would represent a catastrophic event for those present at Schönbrunn, including the foreign ambassadors.Footnote ⁴⁹ In breaking the fourth wall thus and reiterating information already given by a different character, Leango directly engages his real-life European listeners: do you truly know the horror of losing a(n authentic) king?

The music composed by Bonno makes its own important contribution to highlighting the themes of kingly devotion and heroic deference articulated by Metastasio's text, especially through affective heightening of key terms and phrases. Appointed in 1739 as court composer in Vienna, where he would eventually attain the position of imperial Kapellmeister in 1774, Bonno, like Caldara before him, collaborated frequently with Metastasio and possessed a comfortable mastery of the stylistic conventions of the dramma per musica. Thus, for instance, the initial sections of the opera introduce the primo uomo–prima donna pair of Siveno and Lisinga in arias characterized by elaborate, rhythmically detailed melody and extended melismas, features that indicate the exalted status of the future imperial couple; while the sentiments of love expressed in the climactic third act by Siveno and Ulania, the sister of Lisinga and beloved of Minteo, the heir's rival for the throne, are realized in a language of overt pastoralism consisting of triple metre, flat-side tonalities and ‘rustic’ scoring (hunting horns and flutes for Siveno, traverso flutes and bassoons complemented by muted violins for Ulania). However, Bonno reserves another defining trait of opera seria, accompanied recitative, for two narrative-thematic cruxes, both of which centre on Leango: Act 1 Scene 6, in which the minister reflects upon his imminent revelation of the miraculous survival of the authentic ruling house and invokes the aid of the gods in bringing his arduous project to its long-awaited conclusion, and the seventh scene of Act 3 discussed above. These passages, concerned respectively with the two fundamental notions developed within the libretto – a divinely righteous order and proper respect for the authority that derives from such an order – thus receive a significant musical emphasis. The first proceeds to a simple recitative for Leango and Siveno in which the former advises the latter on the responsibilities of wise leadership and rejects calls from the populace to become emperor himself. Then follows an aria sung by Leango whose manifestly Dantean text reiterates humanity's need for guidance from a higher metaphysical domain: ‘Nel camin di nostra vita, / Senza i rai del ciel cortese / Si smarrisce ogni alma ardita, / Trema il cor, vacilla il piè’ (On the road of our life / Without the rays of the kindly heavens / Every earnest soul gets lost / The heart trembles, the foot hesitates).Footnote ⁵⁰ Ward's literary-philosophical analysis of L'eroe cinese singles out ‘ciel’ as the crucial term here, but in fact Bonno chose rather to dramatize ‘Trema il cor’ with representationally appropriate tremolos as well as sudden, disruptive appearances in forte dynamic of a unison texture (Example 5, bar 18). Thus his music particularly enhances the psychological dimension of the situation, emotionally underscoring the ever-present danger of a tragic failure of Leango's mission. This affective function takes on the more significance in view of Ward's assertion, founded upon an exclusive concentration on textual content, that ‘Leango's aria encapsulates a more expository, aphoristic sentiment, as opposed to expressing an emotional state’.Footnote ⁵¹ The totality of the opera's diverse media, working together in conjunction, would surely have engendered a rather more comprehensive reception of the aria in 1752 at Schönbrunn.

The second passage of accompanied recitative opens with Lisinga imparting to the regent the news, later revealed to be false, of Siveno's death as a result of an insurrection sparked by Minteo's claim to the throne. An indication of ‘Adagio e piano’ then marks the beginning of a lament in which Leango expresses his sense of devastation at the waste of years of devoted effort, pronounces the loss of the heir as one for all ‘Chinese’ people, and questions a divine justice that would permit such an outcome to his sacrifice. The entire scene concludes with an arioso setting, marked allegro, of a text evidently intended by Metastasio as a truncated aria, with the interruption occurring as Ulania suddenly enters and informs the minister that Siveno has in fact not died. The fluid, shifting nature of this climactic phase of the narrative represents the furthest departure in Bonno's opera from the schematic alternation of recitative and aria characteristic of dramma per musica, and through its atypical nature it effectively foregrounds the deep unease pervading the struggle to restore the fallen dynasty.

Example 6a

Bonno, ‘Perdona l'affetto’, L'eroe cinese, Act 2 Scene 6, bars 10–20, transcribed from Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Mus. Hs. 18265

Leango's music includes two further arias, in the second and third acts respectively. Scene 6 of Act 2 opens with a recitative in which the minister at last communicates the truth of Siveno's imperial lineage to his ‘son’ and then embraces him, in a final act of paternal affection. His succeeding aria then asks for pardon, since Leango must thenceforth stand in a relationship of subject and not of father to Siveno, so that the preceding gesture did not reflect a strictly proper attitude towards the now clarified hierarchy. The conjunction of ‘mio figlio’ (my son) and ‘mio re’ (my king) within the text encapsulates the reconfiguring of mutual positions, with their succession corresponding to the actual progression of events. Bonno's music affirms the thematic centrality of the pairing through its frequent repetitions of this phrase, yet curiously seems to favour Siveno's earlier identity over his current one. Against a background of gentle, continuously flowing semiquavers in the second violins which depict the profusion of feelings experienced by Leango, the vocal melody leads to a figure consisting of an expressive rising gesture for ‘mio figlio’ and a simple cadential rounding-off for ‘mio re’; a differentiation of forte and piano dynamics, indicated for first violins which double the singer's line, reinforces the unequal emphasis (Example 6a, bars 18–19). Such a musical treatment apparently inverts the relative importance of the regent's former and present relations to Siveno, but, as Ward has pointed out, ‘mio figlio’ refers not only to the imperial heir but also to Leango's own murdered child.Footnote ⁵² Therefore, the highlighting of ‘my son’ in fact conforms wholly with an appropriate deference, since Leango's sacrifice of his infant boy represents the ultimate heroic act of obedience to the State. The seconda parte of the aria's da capo form supports the validity of this interpretation, for here the music departs for the only time from its predominantly diatonic character to become notably dissonant at ‘quel sangue, quel pianto’ (that blood, those tears), explicitly conveying the horror felt by the minister as he recalls the killing of his son (Example 6b).

Example 6b

Bonno, ‘Perdona l'affetto’, bars 43–50

Leango's third-act aria occurs in Scene 4, in which Minteo declares his loyalty to Siveno after having discovered the inaccuracy of his own claim to imperial descent and the regent praises him as a king in his own right for giving way to the true monarch. Bonno fittingly employs topoi associated with nobility in the aria, which features a scoring of clarini, trumpets and timpani in addition to strings and oboes, dotted rhythm and the ‘martial’ key of C major. The clarini in particular link this music with the most exalted form of Viennese imperial solemnity, for their bright sonority functioned as a clear sonic marker of the highest ceremonial and religious occasions at the Habsburg court, as prescribed in official documents such as liturgical rubrics.Footnote ⁵³ The fact of their exclusive appearance in the introductory sinfonia, the final chorus and Leango's aria is therefore significant, the more so as the traits of sharply defined rhythm and C major tonality shared by all three pieces underscore their fundamental structural-thematic importance. The elevation of the kingly attribute to a general and ‘solemn’ virtue encompassing those who recognize genuine authority manifestly applies not only to Minteo but also to Leango, and furthermore to anyone capable of practising such exemplary behaviour. In disseminating its moral, didactic and ultimately polemical argument, Metastasio's and Bonno's L'eroe cinese offered its eighteenth-century audiences the chance to consider their appropriate place within a divinely legitimated socio-political order.

The dialectical nature of both Le cinesi and L'eroe cinese entails a critical process which takes place entirely within an Austrian consciousness diversified by the strategic temporary assumption of foreign identity. This talking with oneself by means of a pretence of cultural difference represents a characteristic tendency of the eighteenth century and also of later eras.Footnote ⁵⁴ Spivak, discussing the explicitly colonial practices of a more recent period, formulates the modern intellectual habit of dialogic monologism as ‘the persistent constitution of the Other as Self's shadow’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Matthew Head's Orientalism, Masquerade and Mozart's Turkish Music expresses a similar argument: ‘The fact that Orientalism in eighteenth-century culture functioned in part as a critique . . . is not evidence of an innocent openness to non-European culture, but, on the contrary, to unabashed appropriation of the Other within the paradigms and textuality of the West.’Footnote ⁵⁶ Since no encounter among diverse peoples, whether between Europe and China or any other cultures, can wholly avoid grappling with the discomfiture of unfamiliarity from the subjective vantage point of oneself, Head crucially underscores his sense of a near-total asymmetry with the qualifier ‘unabashed’. Hence a countering of the powerful impulse to centre upon one's native concerns forms the essential task in approaching others. With regard to Asia-themed works produced in the West, this decentring requires consideration of insider perspectives on narrative and cultural material such as the tale of a dynasty's overthrow and restoration. Careful study of both imaginative and scholarly accounts ‘from within’ may well result in characterizations at variance with notions of Chinese wisdom, learning and deference; at the least, it would mediate against the reduction of a people to a set of idealized stereotypes and extend to them the privilege of a full human complexity instead of reserving it exclusively for the self.Footnote ⁵⁷ Insofar as Le cinesi and L'eroe cinese exemplify a discursive practice symptomatic of modernity, the challenge articulated by Spivak possesses a compelling relevance: ‘how to keep the ethnocentric Subject from establishing itself by selectively defining an Other’.Footnote ⁵⁸