Project at AIAS

In nineteenth-century theatrical magic shows, music was a ubiquitous but unacknowledged presence. Little is known about the styles and genres of music that were used, the featured musical performers, and the music’s function in constructing the illusionist’s mise-en-scène. For the first part of my project, I use archival sources to develop an historical account of music in magic shows, lingering on figures of particular interest like the illusionist Robert Heller, who started his career as a virtuoso pianist and ended it performing stage illusions interspersed with selections of solo piano music. My approach interweaves histories of magic, music, spectacle, and popular entertainment in ways that challenge perceived divisions between genres considered to be “high” (opera, ballet, symphonic music) and “low” (street entertainment, circuses, variety shows).

The second part of the project uses the historical evidence I have gathered as an interpretive lens; through it, I examine sorcerer and conjurer figures in opera and ballet, like the Magician in Stravinsky’s Petrushka, the Chinese conjurer in Satie’s Parade, Von Rothbart in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and Klingsor in Wagner’s Parsifal.