Just as America was observed in French literary and political commentary, we find representations of America in French music, dance, and theatre which serve as the focus of this volume. Following the American Revolution, French authors often viewed the United States as a laboratory for the forging of new practices of liberte and egalite, in affinity with France's own Revolutionary ideals but in competition with lingering anti-American depictions of an inferior, untamed New World. The volume examines French imagining of America through musical/theatrical portrayals of the American Revolution and Republic, soundscapes of the Statue of Liberty, homages to Washington, Franklin and Lafayette and negotiations of Francophone identity in New Orleans. The subject of race features prominently in paradoxical depictions of slavery, freedom, and revolution in the United States and French Caribbean colonies of 'Amerique' and in varied interpretations of American music and gendered identity. Essays consider French constructions of the Indigenous American and Black American 'exotic' that intersect with tropes of noble, pastoral savagery, menacing barbarism and the 'civilising' potency of French culture. Such French constructions reveal both a revulsion of racial alterity and an attraction to the expressive, even subversive, freedom of Americanness. Investigations of French conceptions of America extend to critiques of American orchestral music, Gottschalk's Louisianan-Caribbean Creole works, Buffalo Bill's spectacles and the cakewalk in Paris. With scholarly contributions on music, dance, theatre and opera, the volume will be essential reading for students and scholars of these disciplines.

Marian Smith recaptures a rich period in French musical theater when ballet and opera were intimately connected. Focusing on the age of "Giselle" at the Paris Opera (from the 1830s through the 1840s), Smith offers an unprecedented look at the structural and thematic relationship between the two genres. She argues that a deeper understanding of both ballet and opera--and of nineteenth-century theater-going culture in general--may be gained by examining them within the same framework instead of following the usual practice of telling their histories separately. This handsomely illustrated book ultimately provides a new portrait of the Opera during a period long celebrated for its box-office successes in both genres.

Smith begins by showing how gestures were encoded in the musical language that composers used in ballet and in opera. She moves on to a wide range of topics, including the relationship between the gestures of the singers and the movements of the dancers, and the distinction between dance that represents dancing (entertainment staged within the story of the opera) and dance that represents action. Smith maintains that ballet-pantomime and opera continued to rely on each other well into the nineteenth century, even as they thrived independently. The "divorce" between the two arts occurred little by little, and may be traced through unlikely sources: controversies in the press about the changing nature of ballet-pantomime music, shifting ideas about originality, complaints about the ridiculousness of pantomime, and a little-known rehearsal score for "Giselle.""

In an effort to get become reacquainted with her sister after thirty years, Anna McDowell invites her older sister Helen Jenkins, to stay with her for a weeks holiday in the small Northern Irish village of Keelstown. Never, in her wildest dreams, did Anna know just how much of an effect Helen's visit was going to have on her life and the lives of her family and friends too. Was Helen even prepared for the changes that would take place in her own sheltered life as a consequence of the visit? Anna's youngest daughter Ellen tries to help out as much as possible, not only in her mother's life but in the lives of her alcoholic sister Gemma and her floundering sister Kate. It's no wonder Ellen cherishes deeply her new friendship with Rose as well as her time spent with her spiritual interests, to help keep her sane. With her own worries to think about, she visits Rose and her own spiritual tools often. When the three sister's brother and Anna's youngest son Conor, comes home from working in France for the Christmas holidays, he brings home with him more than a life long held secret. What reaction is he going to receive when he does? With so many challenges going on in each of their lives perhaps the only way to meet them is with a positive attitude and a good sense of humour.