OP
...ende como una superación ya conseguida frente a la barbarie, pero también en tensión constante y dinamizadora de balanceo para no caer en la decadencia.” (Diz, 49) Es decir, cuando, por un lado, desde el exterior, …Montesquieu, centro sus estudios en dos casos paradigmaticos, el de Roma y el de Espana, viendo en el caso de ésta la causa fundamental en las míticas riquezas espanoles las cuales, aunque se venía hablando de ellas desde la Antiguedad (159) “Yo juzgo que se ha ido a nuestros vecinos lo que antes éramos nosotros, y a nosotros nos ha tocado lo que eran nuestros vecinos. En lo físico no lo creo, pero en lo moral casi me lo presumo.” (170) Even if, as Parakilas posits, Spain was not exoticised until the Napoleonic invasions of 1808, it had long been in the subordinate position of the “Other” to the rest of Europe. Montesquieu went so far as to compare Spain’s fall from imperial domnion to the fall of Rome. It was seen as a decrepit empire, associated more with its erstwhile exploits of the New World, with the terrors of the inquisition, with the increasingly distant memory of Muslim rule, and with the debilitating decadence into which it had subsequently fallen. Of Europe’s relationship to Spain in the latter half of the 18th century, Alejandro Diz observes, las potencias rivales o las naciones mas o menos sometidas al dominio espanol, por intereses mas o menos legitimos o espurios, pero siempre nacionales, tratan de hacer un solo paquete de situacion de decadencia Espanola en el terreno politico, cultural, artistico o de civilizacion y progreso, resultando un magma indiferenciado y alejado de la realidad. (157) Pedrillo’s Romanze simultaneously invokes the Spanish Christian chivalry with which the form came to be associated during the Spanish Reconquista, as well as Pedrillo’s own somewhat exotic—certainly different—origins. Flavored by the guitaristic pizzicato accompaniment, the nagging ambiguity between D Major and B Minor in the opening four bars, and the unusual sequence of descending fourths immediately following, the Romanze’s exoticism extends far beyond the diluted Jannisarial imitations that often typify the Alla Turca style. The chromatic turn at the end of each verse In the number, the entire opera is suspended. Pedrillo sings of a captive in a Moorish land, presumably a straightforward recap of the opera until that point. One cannot help but notice that Pedrillo too, in accordance with tradition, performs his serenade outside the windows of Belmonte and Konstanze. The completion of the Romanze is to signal to Belmonte the moment to elope. Still, strictly speaking, the subject matter of the Romanze is ambiguous, and one could not, especially in the 18th century, have expected to juxtapose Spanish and Moorish themes without invoking the eight century long rule of Spain by Muslims. Taken even slightly out of context, the number may as well describe the “rescue” of Christianity from Pedrillo’s own native Spain, bringing to mind a Spain that was at one point no more a part of Europe than the Ottoman territories he currently navigates. The exoticisation of Spain by the implicit or explicit invocation of its Muslim past is by no means confined to Pedrillo’s Romanze or even Mozart. Premiered in 1806, Etie...