Turning the plebs into a people: Theater and music in Naples in 1799, from the proclamation of the Neapolitan Republic to the First Restoration

For long neglected by historians, the episode of the Neapolitan Republic (23 January - 19 June 1799) reveals political and ideological issues which outlived the brevity of the event. Our aim here is to assess them as reflected in the musical and theatrical practices of Naples where was very much a cultural capital. Private papers, republican news-sheets, records of the Bourbon repression form the archival backbone of this study. At Naples, as elsewhere, the revolutionaries used the theater as a means of regenerating public opinion and promoting truly popular republica culture. In parallel with the institutional study of political control of the stage, an attempt is made to see how a social group - actors - and also a repertory reacted to political events. Beyond direct instrumentalization ("a republic of hymns"), the historian is faced with manifold individual and collective strategies aimed at appropriating cultural loci and forms. The Bourbon restoration, which also involved purging the world of the stage, confirms the close and polysemic link between the theater and polity, a link forged in the 18th century by the Neapolitan monarchy and which the Republic simply reinforced.