Paper short abstract:

This paper responds to the call to engage with cultural tourism (including music and art productions) embodiment and the senses, by discussing a theme of enduring human interest and, as such, one with is of central importance to the nature and efficacy of cultural tourism.

Paper long abstract:

Rubens' (1636) painting, The Judgement of Paris and Monteverdi's (1645) opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea are taken as starting points in a discussion of the ways visual and musical representations of male and female bodies have classically been used to provoke debates about relations between beauty, power, and morality. As judge in the competition to decide who should be recognized as the most beautiful goddess, the god Paris chose Aphrodite, thus seeming to equate her qualities (freedom, spontaneity, sexual availability) above those of her rival Hera, goddess of marriage and fidelity. In a rather comparable way the opera tells the story of the time in his life when the emperor Nero clearly considered his concubine, Poppea, to be more beautiful than his faithful wife Ottavia. In both painting and opera, feelings of injustice are manifest in the expressions of those rejected by their male counterparts and viewers/audiences are drawn to sympathise with them. Such narratives, and the enduring hold they have over contemporary audiences and viewers, are fruitful subjects for anthropologists concerned with the underlying structures of cultural tourism.