| An obsession with vampires pervades today's popular culture; we encounter vampires at every turn in such media as television, film, and literature. A similar vampire craze emanated from the melodramatic theaters of Paris and London in 1820. The release of John Polidori's seminal vampire novel, The Vampyre, in 1819 ignited a flourishing of melodramas adapting and responding to that text. Contemporary critics wrote that no theater in either Paris or London was without its vampire. This thesis focuses on the two melodramas that inaugurated this vampire mania: Le Vampire by Charles Nodier, Achille de Jouffroy, and Pierre-Frederic-Adolphe Carmouche, premiered on 13 June 1820, and The Vampire; or, the Bride of the Isles by James Robinson Planche, premiered on 9 August 1820. Firmly rooted in the genre of melodrama, which espouses a dualistic, black-and-white worldview, these theater pieces are obliged to put forth a clearly identifiable villain. This is problematic when the vampire is certainly dangerous but not physically identifiable by any abnormalities. Analysis of the incidental music and textual allusions in the melodramas reveals various methods of musically enhancing suspense and emotional drama, grounding these specific vampires in a tradition of evil villains, and, perhaps most important, identifying the monster and reminding audience members whom they should fear. Considerations of these interactions between music and text inform an understanding of how the vampire might have been experienced in these two cities in 1820 and cast light upon what the audiences might have feared. Because any modern adaptations of the vampire must in some way confront the foundation laid by John Polidori and these melodramas, popular culture's first vampire craze, this thesis resurrects these vampire plays from their burial places beyond the earshot of music history. We can better understand our current notions of vampires (and their melodramatic natures) if we understand their past. |
