Roundtable discussion

Berta Joncus, Listening to Portraits: Music and the Eighteenth-Century Opera Celebrity

Dr Berta Joncus, Goldsmiths, University of London, Listening to Portraits: Music, Representation and the Eighteenth-Century Singer, Dr Berta Joncus (Senior Lecturer in Music, Goldsmith’s College, University of London) The following images were used by Dr Joncus, they have been blurred out in the film because of copyright reasons LIST OF FIGURES Abbrieviations Windsor Anthony Blunt and Edward Croft-Murray, Venetian Drawings of the XVII & XVIII Centuries: in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle (London: Phaidon Press, [1957])

This is one of five podcasts produced by the Open University to accompany the exhibition ‘The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons’ at the National Portrait Gallery, London 2011-2012. This show presents a vivid spectacle of femininity, fashion and theatricality in seventeenth and eighteenth-century England. It features portraits of some of the best known female performers of the period, who ranged from royal mistresses to successful writers and businesswomen, and accomplished musicians.

This specialist academic conference developed themes raised in the exhibition The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons. Speakers, including Professors Felicity Nussbaum (UCLA) and Joseph Roach (Yale), explored and problematised ideas of ‘celebrity’ culture and the symbolic, allegorical and discursive functions of portraits of women players.