Performing Arts in Changing Societies is a detailed exploration of genre development within the fields of dance, theatre and opera in selected European countries during the decades before and after 1800.

1. Performative Arts between Rules and Realities: The Adaptive History of GenreSvein Gladsø and Randi M. Selvik2. Opera at Home: Performance and Ownership in Eighteenth-Century FranceDavid Charlton3. Nationalism in Eighteenth-Century German opera? – Changing Views on the Nation in two Operas of Johann Friedrich ReichardtMårten Nehrfors Hultén4. Marvellous Changes – Changes within the Marvellous: Carl Maria von Weber’s Oberon as Transfer between Cultural Tendencies and Historical DiscoursesT. Sofie Taubert5. Syngespill – a Favourite or a Substitute?Cecilie Louise Macé Stensrud6. ‘Ce mot de Wahrheit, quelle expression elle lui donna’ – The Melodrama, its Performances and Performers in late Eighteenth-Century ViennaVera Grund7. Amphions of the North – Court Kapellmeisters in the Musical Life of Sweden around 1800Owe Ander8. Representative Performances, Political Propaganda and the Question of Financing – The Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm 1773–1823Karin Hallgren9. What Place for a Woman? Dancing in London’s Theatres circa 1770–1810Sarah McCleave10. Dance and Social Education in Early Nineteenth-Century ChristianiaElizabeth Svarstad11. ‘Nemo ei in orbe terrarum in artibus par est’: The Rope and Wire Repertoire of Itinerant Artist Michael Stuart Anne Margrete Fiskvik12. Pantomime under the Aurora Borealis: The Winter Season of the Gautier Troupe in Trondheim, Norway, 1839/40Ellen Karoline Gjervan13. ‘Not for Pleasure Alone’: The Dramatic Societies and the Theatre Craze, 1770–1850: Their Background in the Age of Enlightenment and Their Importance for the Emergence of Private Theatres in DenmarkAlette Scavenius14. On the Wire: Scenographing Affect at Sillgateteatern in Gothenburg around 1800Astrid von Rosen

"What struck me as the real common denominator – at least of what I thought were the most interesting contributions – is a reliance on approaches drawn from Cultural Studies, which has led to investigations of amateur practices and itinerant performers, often drawing on original archival research. This marks a refreshing departure from the traditional writing of music and theatre history in the Nordic countries, which for a long time was focused exclusively on national repertoires and artists, often structured around simplistic labels such as ‘classicism’, ‘enlightenment’, ‘pre-romanticism’, ‘realism’, etc. Though the present volume is not entirely free from the old periodizing, the latter has become laudably secondary."Swedish Journal of Music Research, Volume 103, 2021