Ways to Possess a Singer in 1830s London

Abstract

AbstractItalian singer Giulia Grisi was imagined and ‘possessed’ in various ways by members of diverse social groups in London during the 1830s. Audience members could bring different versions of the diva home: through reports (or experiences with her) as a guest or entertainer at parties, through gossip about her personal life reported in newspapers and through pieces arranged ‘as sung by’ her. The fluid and constantly negotiated relationship between the diva and her audience offered a locus for expressing social relations in London during a period of changing class and national definitions. It is neither possible nor desirable to recover a singular idea of Grisi as a celebrity or as a woman; instead, the multiple images of Grisi must be read as negotiations of identity on the part of the consumers as they participated in the nascent celebrity culture of the 1830s.