Thank you for joining us for our Spring 2025 series,
Music & the Regency!

Look below to see our upcoming and recorded events.

In her surviving letters, Jane Austen mentions music occasionally among news of friends, neighbours and family. We know that she played the piano and sang, apparently practising regularly when she could. The memories of relations who were still young when she died – especially her niece Caroline – give us an idea of the place of music in her daily life. There is also rich evidence in the surviving music books from the collection of Austen and her family circle, much of which is copied in her own handwriting. Austen sometimes implies her dislike of public concerts and her appreciation of people who are honest about their lack of musical taste. At other times she expresses genuine enjoyment of a superior performance. Some of these attitudes are also displayed in the novels, but there are subtleties and ambiguities in the way she uses music and musicianship in her writing to illuminate her characters and sometimes to advance her plots. In this talk, I will discuss various aspects of music in Austen’s life and work and give some idea of the music that she played and sang. Gillian Dooley is an Honorary Associate Professor in English at Flinders University, South Australia. She has published and presented internationally on various topics, including Jane Austen, often with an emphasis on music. She was co-convenor of the ‘Immortal Austen’ conference in Adelaide, July 2017, and as a singer she has been curating and presenting programs of music from Austen’s personal collection since 2007. In 2021 she completed a detailed index of each of the 500-600 items in the Austen music collections digitized by University of Southampton, and her book She Played and Sang: Jane Austen and Music was published by Manchester University Press in 2024.

Italian opera in the 18th century, whether in Italy or London, was dominated by the castrati, male-identified singers who had been castrated before puberty to preserve their treble voices. With their haunting timbres and spectacular vocal techniques, the castrati were the superstars of their time. Among their most devoted admirers were women; it was well known, or salaciously assumed, that women were attracted to castrati because they were "safe" lovers, still capable of sexual activity but without the consequences of unwanted pregnancies. But the writings and experiences of these female fans reveal a more sophisticated appreciation of the artistry of their favorite singers, a blend of connoisseurship and enthusiasm that allowed for intellectual and emotional outlets that were not always available to women at the time. By the later 18th century the castrato phenomenon was beginning to wain, due to a number of factors: the rise of Enlightenment rationality that found the practice "barbaric"; the shift towards a more binary notion of gender; and changing operatic tastes. Yet at a time when castrati were increasingly viewed as "freaks", their female fans continued to admire and respect their artistry. This presentation will focus on the relationships between two late-18th century castrati and the women who admired them: that of Gaspare Pacchierotti with the novelist Frances Burney and her sister, the diarist Susan Burney Phillips; and that of Luigi Marchesi with the visual artist Maria Hadfield Cosway. By studying these relationships, we have an opportunity to treat fandom, and especially women's fandom, with the respect it deserves. Jeffrey Nigro has had a professional relationship with the Art Institute of Chicago for over 30 years, including serving as Director of Adult Programs in the Department of Museum Education from 2003 to 2010. Jeff is currently a Research Associate in the Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium and an Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Interpretation at the Art Institute. He also teaches Adult Education Seminars at the Newberry Library, and he is a former Regional Coordinator of the Greater Chicago region of JASNA. His essay, "Georgian Fangirls: Women and Castrati in 18th-Century London" appears in Women and Music in the Age of Austen, edited by Linda Zionkowski and Miriam Hart (Bucknell University Press, 2023).