What a fine body of work came about through the initiative of M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet (who died in 2005 and to whose memory this book is dedicated) and Annegret Fauser, who co-organized a conference in September of 2004, entitled ‘The Institutions of Opera in Paris from the July Revolution to the Dreyfus Affair’. These proceedings will delight all readers, from the historian to the musicologist, and from the music lover to the aesthete. Organised in three parts, successively, ‘Institutions’, ‘Cultural Transfer’ and ‘The Midi and Spain, or autour de Carmen’Footnote 1, the book concludes with an index of no fewer than 488 entriesFootnote 2, a bibliography subdivided into three sections, a selective discography and a filmography. Concerning the bibliography, the section on archival sources includes a list of 49 periodicals from the era, contemporary sources that cite items in dossiers de presse of the time, works of music history and chronologies of events, monographs, as well as manuscript and edited scores, dictionaries, biographies, correspondence, and memoirs, many of which predate 1914. Some 241 secondary sources complete this referential panorama, whose rigour and concern for exhaustiveness are praiseworthy. Even so, it would have been useful if the opera librettos mentioned in the volume had also been included. Further, French works are often cited only in their English translation, without reference to their original French publicationFootnote 3. One of the charming aspects of this fine anthology is its high-quality reproductions of engravings, which appear in more than two thirds of its contributions.
The essays of the first part show how the institution of Parisian opera operated as a formal framework – a network of interactions among the composers, their interpreters, theatre administrators and the public. The essays ascribe a specific ‘flavour’ to each era, and bring into relief the interdependence and power relationships among these different protagonists. Far from focusing on a single institution, one of the principal advantages of the book is that it captures the individual histories of each Parisian theatre, conferring on the collective study a readily apparent multi-dimensionality. That said, the originality of this collection is in its integration of the notion of cultural transfer into the operatic microcosm. Identity and alterity merge rather than confront one another, and repertories are regarded as artistic categories. The musical score, production and costumes are all interrogated, in threads that run through the essays. After reading the volume, one better understands the lyric landscape of a city that was a music capital long before it was anointed the ‘City of Light’; as such it was a locus of numerous political jolts that had consequences on the lyric repertoire and its institutional organisation.
Three broad trends may be distinguished. First, one is able to follow closely little-known figures such as the baritone Jean-Baptiste Chollet (1798–1892). We meet Chollet in Olivier Bara's investigation of the possible impact singers at the Opéra Comique may have had on the composition of works in pre-production. In his chapter, ‘The Company at the Heart of the Operatic Institution: Chollet and the Changing Nature of Comic-Opera Role Types during the July Monarchy’, Bara describes a system of attributing to role-types corresponding archetypal names (such as the ‘Martin baritone’ named for the celebrated singer Jean-Blaise Martin). In effect, a stock of characters and profiles informs the dramaturgy in the early stages of development, encouraging creative members affiliated with the institution to appropriate these profiles. Bara also brings forth valuable documentation demonstrating the constraints of the contracts signed by the singers employed by the Opéra Comique. In the third and last portion of his essay, he returns to Chollet in order to evaluate his vocal metamorphosis and his ultimate emancipation from the ‘star-system’ in which his career had evolved.
Another personality worthy of better renown who emerges here is the composer and critic Victorin Joncières (1839–1903) – discussed by both David Grayson and Peter Lamothe. In the first of these essays, ‘Finding a Stage for French Opera’, Grayson analyses an article by Joncières published the Annales du théâtre et de la musique in 1880.Footnote 4 Joncières’ critique sketches a balance sheet on the French lyric stage and denounces the faults in a system that does not permit French composers to attain true recognition in their own country, and above all not at the Opéra and Opéra Comique. The opportunities of ‘concert’ versions appear to be more numerous and more accessible. After having evoked the rising subventions obtained by the three great theatres, as well as the practices of the competitions, Grayson then underlines the role of the Concerts du Conservatoire, the Concerts Pasdeloup, Colonne and Lamoureux, and the Grandes Auditions Musicales, noting the paradoxical situation of French operas staged abroad or introduced to Paris in their Italian versions.
In ‘Questions of Genre: Massenet's Les érinnyes at the Théâtre-National-Lyrique’, Peter Lamothe offers a different view of Joncières. Lamothe re-examines Joncières as a composer; but the article is centred on the incidental music Massenet wrote for Leconte de Lisle's play, Les érinnyes. Albert Vizentini's image as the director of the lyric theatre emerges here. Offenbach's former chef d'orchestre at the Théâtre de la Gaîté, Vizentini opened the Théâtre-Lyrique in response to a request for a new opera theatre by the Minister of Public Instruction, in 1875.
We should recall that Berlioz had made the same request, adding the argument that young composers did not have their own theatre. The report of 21 February 1851 responded unfavourably to him, but the board of examiners posed some new questions in return: was a new lyric theatre really necessary? Should it be located in a new hall or in an already existing building? Would it be far away from the subsidized opera houses, and if so, just how farFootnote 5? Some dozen years later (in October 1863), it was R. Ventéjoul who proposed a fourth lyric theatre, while emphasizing how little consideration was accorded young composers! Let us close this parenthesis, which served to show that Vizentini pursued an effort already well under way for some decades, and return to Lamothe's article. Reviewing the different versions of Les érinnyes, the author brings to light the inherent terminological confusions surrounding the work and lingers on the notion of lyric drama as an alternate term between opera and the comic opera. It should be noted, in fact, that this third kind actually had its hour of glory when the Opéra Comique dropped its spoken dialogue requirement in 1882.
A director of theatre as well as opera (like Vizentini), Léon Carvalho remains a singular figure in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, where he worked first at the Théâtre Lyrique, then at the Opéra Comique. The years between 1851 and 1872 were exciting ones for the Théâtre Lyrique. There, Carvalho carried out two mandates: not only was he going to raise the artistic level considerably, but he was going to make the theatre a rival on the Parisian opera scene of the two established institutions, the Opéra and Opéra-Comique. He also assumed the responsibility of reorganising the theatre's charter. In her essay, ‘Carvalho and the Opéra-Comique: L'art de se hâter lentement’, Lesley Wright proposes to study the impact of Carvalho's style as a director on both composers and his collaborators. Relying on anecdotes from a rich variety of sources – including the memoirs of Albert Soubies, Charles Malherbe and Saint-Saëns, notices in the contemporary press, correspondence, and articles in the Annales du théâtre et de la musique – the author gives examples of ongoing relationships between Carvalho and his colleagues.
In her chapter, ‘Systems Failure in Operatic Paris: The Acid Test of the Théâtre Lyrique’, Katharine Ellis underscores the antinomies between expectations and reality, between French protectionism and international competition, and between state control and the free market. The Théâtre Lyrique was situated at the intersection of all of these components, in many respects in the margins of national opera. The author thus places emphasis on the different repertoires introduced by the successive directors and completes her panorama by consideration of the café-concert. The essay also includes a useful table of works most often performed at the Théâtre Lyrique between 1851 and 1870, listed according to the number of productions, and giving the name of the manager, the number of acts, and the place and dates of performance. This synoptic presentation, which is very useful, permits a complete review of the activity of the theatre. Above all, the table shows that it was Carvalho who introduced three of the most essential works of the repertoire: Lakmé (1883), Manon (1884) and, earlier, Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hofmann (1881).
It is Offenbach to whom Mark Everist devotes his three-part article, ‘Jacques Offenbach: The Music of the Past and the Image of the Present’. Drawing on the writings of Offenbach himself, Everist presents us the project of the musician who wanted to develop the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, with a mission of turning its back on that of the Folies Nouvelles, and who announced his desire of aiding young composers and positioning this theatre in the tradition of the comic opera of the eighteenth century. It was Offenbach, in fact, who brought back the major works of Age of the Enlightenment.
Life at the Opéra-National is evoked through the figures of Louis Véron, and above all Edmond Duponchel, by Diana Hallman, in ‘Fromental Halévy with the Paris Opéra: Composition and Control’. Hallman explores Halévy'sFootnote 6, duties at the Opéra, which alternated between compositional and administrative activities. The success of his La Juive, under the direction of Duponchel, contributed to the evolution of grand opera. That work serves as the object of an interesting and well-illustrated study by Arnold Jacobshagen, ‘Analyzing Mise-en-Scène: Halévy's La juive at the Salle Le Peletier,’ which examines its staging by the Paris Opera. Acknowledging his debt with regard to previous work by H. Robert Cohen and Marie-Odile Gigou, the author concludes his analysis by specifying that these livrets de mise en scène inevitably revealed scenic biases.
The second unifying axis of Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer is, in effect, critical reception. It is regrettable, here, that some contributors are satisfied with English translations of French writings, without giving the text in its original language in a footnote. One might take the opportunity here to add another point: a certain number orthographic errors slipped into the transcriptions of the original textsFootnote 7, and close re-readings of those original texts might have avoided this. Nevertheless, this does not detract from the undeniably scholarly quality of the whole.
Unfortunately, not all of the studies of the fortunes of individual works apply historical or developmental approaches to their inquiries. It is thus welcome, in Sarah Hibberd's chapter, ‘Auber's Gustave III: History as Opera’, to find all of the details surrounding the production of Auber's Gustave III, which had its première in February of 1833. The author also penetrates the mysteries of its literary evolution, showing us the initial documentation of the librettist, Scribe. Politics – often questioned in the first portion of the book – move here, in the second part, to centre stage, and become an indispensable aid to the comprehension of the aesthetic phenomenon.
The famous Paris 1861 production of Tannhäuser was embedded in a tissue of polemics and pamphlets. Annegret Fauser clarifies the political and diplomatic issues of the era in ‘Cette musique sans tradition: Wagner's Tannhäuser and Its French Critics’, re-reading for us the historical antecedents of these stormy productions, and justifying, ipso facto, the poor welcome that Wagner received in Paris.
The three versions of Donizetti's Lucia de Lammermoor, over nine years, demonstrate the perenniality of the novel by Walter Scott (1819) and pose multiple questions pertaining to dramaturgy, genre, linguistics, and music. Rebecca Harris-Warrick offers us a passionate reflection in her essay, ‘Lucia Goes to Paris: A Tale of Three Theaters’. Having gone through a large amount of press coverage large between 1835 and 1945, the author sketches a very enlightening reception study of the work, demonstrating, most notably, French scepticism vis-à-vis the French libretto of Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz.
The volume's sole contribution on ballet, by Marian Smith, explores the different versions of Les Sylphides (from 1832 to 1909), from Taglioni to Fokine and then Diaghilev, and from Schneitzhoeffer to Chopin/Glazounov or Chopin/Stravinsky. The reader thus becomes aware of the principal trends in twentieth-century ballet, which set in sometimes rather factitious opposition the partisans of Romantic ballet (the ‘ballets blancs’) and those defending virtuosity.
The three last articles focus on Carmen, the last unifying theme of the anthology. In Ralph Locke's chapter, ‘Spanish Local Color in Bizet's Carmen’, we learn of some probable borrowings by Bizet from Manuel Garcia and Sebastan Iradier. The author analyses the French composer's appropriation, justifying his demonstration by formal schemas and convincing musical examples. We are thus again in the realm of cultural transfer, and so too with the contribution by Kerry Murphy, whose essay ‘Carmen: Couleur locale or the Real Thing?’ looks at Bizet's work from the perspective of the French fascination with Spain during that era. Recalling the significance of the Iberian Peninsula in culture and history, the author interprets the critical reception of Carmen, show how much of the inevitable local colour was nevertheless little-appreciated; Murphy initiates a thoughtful reflection on the notion of authenticity. It appears that this one only exists as social myth.
Opening and closing with discussion of Gustav Kobbé's novel Signora Footnote 8, Steven Huebner's essay ‘La princesse paysanne du Midi’ sensitises us to the relationship between the actress Eleonora Duse and the singer Emma Calvé, who shared a number of roles, from Santuzza to Carmen, and including Marguerite and Ophélie. We become aware of the almost ethnological work that the singer undertook to inhabit her rôle of gypsy. The serious care for authenticity is therefore equally evident here – even if Calvé did not hesitate to modify the scores! The author returns at the end of the article to Signora, underlining the Latin character of the heroines described, and thus closes this anthology. Essential to those who wish to understand nineteenth-century French lyrical art, Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer: Paris, 1830–1914 was recently justly awarded the American Musicological Society's Ruth A. Solie Award for best collection of essays in 2010.
