National Awakenings Through Musical Theatre: A Comparative Perspective Between the Catalan and Lithuanian Revivals

The spread of a repertoire of musical theater in regional languages and the establishment of a genre of national opera were key issues in the awakening of nationalisms in the early twentieth century. Such was the case in Catalonia and Lithuania, where substate nationalist movements promoted activist initiatives to revive national culture. In a context of language diglossia, in which most theater billboards featured foreign names and titles, amateur choirs and theater groups became the main vehicles for mobilizing society toward the promotion of a new national culture. Using the methodologies of transnational history, this paper presents a comparative study of both national awakenings: the movement for a Catalan lyric theater (1898–1922) under Catalan Modernism, and the Lithuanian national revival from the legalization of the Lithuanian language in 1904 until the reestablishment of the independent state in 1918. As two regions without a mutual influence and belonging to different geopolitical contexts, the aim is to compare whether, under the same ideological process of a substate nationalist awakening, the role of musical theater was similar or not. Different genres and forms of musical theater were used to channel the spread of the new national culture and to mobilize society. The symbols and references introduced in the dramaturgy of musical theater to “nationalize” the genres also show similarities. This suggests, therefore, the need to study nationalist repertoires through common parameters rather than treating them as individual movements