03.1 PP 153 183 Genre and Form in French Opera

PART II
National styles and genres
Cambridge
https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521873581.010 Companions
Published Online ©
online by Cambridge Cambridge
University Press University Press, 2011
Cambridge
Published Online ©
9 Genre and form in French opera
DAVID CHARLTON
Introduction
Opera in France was a function of the power of the royal court at
Versailles, for as long as the court held power. The right to perform a
drama sung all the way through, with recitative, was licensed to one single
directeur at a time. He, with any business associates, thereby ran the Paris
Opéra on behalf of the monarch and to his own material profit.1 Thus,
from 1700 to about 1755, the main strands of French opera remained
courtly, whether they were in genres of tragedy, pastoral, or comedy. As
the court waned in general influence and respect, alternative forms of
opera waxed stronger: opéra comique with new music instead of popular
tunes was developed, and in turn institutionalized. Italian opera was,
legally, kept at bay. It was forbidden to import its performance, at least
without court assent. But by the 1770s the old mold was cracking. Non-
French composers brought new styles to French-language opera with
recitative (see Tables 9.1–9.3 below). Then the Revolution broke in
1789 and the monarchy was abolished in 1792. All types of opera became
freely performable, and several new theaters showed opera and opéra
comique alongside performances in the traditional ex-royal institutions.
Yet the traditions of French genres remained intact, even an expression of
national pride, ensuring their survival and continuing international cir-
culation into the nineteenth century.
Opera was a constant topic of French intellectual life, and the list of
publications about opera is vast. Three phases of debate are especially
remembered: (1) the initial French-music / Italian-music quarrel during
the later years of Louis XIV (reigned 1643–1715); (2) the “Querelle des
Bouffons” surrounding the Paris performance of intermezzi and opera
buffa by Eustacchio Bambini’s troupe in 1752–4; (3) the “Gluck–Piccinni”
debates in the later 1770s.
1 Tragedy
Tragedy signified a genre designed, like comedy, to please and to instruct
[155] its audience – a lesson in taste, morality, behavior, and the stories of
Cambridge
Published Online ©
156 David Charlton
antiquity. Young people were taken to see both comedy and tragedy in
music. Apart from anything, professional actors were regarded as a guide
to deportment, dress, and manners.
In codifying the tragedy of ancient Athens, Aristotle described how a
protagonist was typically punished by the gods for excessive pride and
presumption. In opera, however, only in the nineteenth century did
tragedies end with raw desolation. The differences were explained by
Lacombe in 1758:
Sung tragedy [in France] differs in essence from spoken tragedy. Opera tries
to work more on the senses than the mind, and an enchanting display will
often be preferred over a plot where truth to life is exactly observed.
Librettists choose to avoid the austere laws of spoken drama – if they have
some respect for the unities of action and subject-matter, they freely break
the unities of time and place.2
The “three unities” of Time, Place and Action had been formulated by
Aristotle. In both tragedy and comedy, when spoken rather than sung, the
action was not to depict more than 24 hours, the place was not supposed to
change, and the plot had to be unified.
Heroes of operas are greater than Nature, and are on familiar terms with the
gods, sharing in their power … The librettist often describes great, sublime
themes, and the composer gives them soul and expression. Both combine to
ravish the astonished spectator … Whether the librettist takes his subject
from Fable or from History, he always makes use of the supernatural
[merveilleux], but also engages our emotions and admiration by creating
moral beings …3
The “moral beings” of French opera were rooted in the foundational works
of Lully (1632–87) and his main librettist, Quinault, between 1673 and
1686. Because these lyric tragedies were revered, loved, and restaged
during much of the following century, we should briefly define their
genre and forms. Robert Fajon has identified two tendencies within
Lully’s production:
(a) The cycle of the “triumphant hero.” The general theme of this cycle
shows the hero smitten with finding glory, and overcoming every test put in
his way by means of valor and courage. Here, love plays only a secondary
role, a recompense to spur the warrior’s virtue.
A good example is Thésée (Theseus): with the princess Eglé, his beloved, he
defeats the sorceress Médée’s jealous attempts to destroy their affection.
(b) The cycle of the “hero guilty through love.” The seventeenth century
understood love in several ways. Besides love considered as a recompense,
we find, especially after 1660, a far more pessimistic vision … also found in
Cambridge
Published Online ©
[the tragic dramas of Jean] Racine … Here, love and glory, far from being
connected, become precisely opposed.
A famous example is Armide: this enchantress loves Renaud, but must

resolve to hate him because they fight on opposite sides, Islam versus
Christianity, during the Crusades.4 Earlier eighteenth-century acting was
not at all realistic in style. Nevertheless, observers at the time easily
thought of opera characters as real people, facing moral dilemmas. The
poetry critic Rémond de Saint-Mard loved opera for its mixture of plea-
sure and instruction. In 1741 he confessed:
I assure you, whatever you might have been told, that opera purges one’s
morals, and purges them quite as well as those genres of poetry that are
considered as the most moral of all. In [Lully’s] Armide, does not Renaud,
after blushing at his own weakness, run to take up arms? Does not [Lully’s]
Roland do the same thing? Is there a finer example of conjugal love than the
example of Alceste [in Lully’s eponymous tragedy]?5
Alceste, Queen of Thessaly, had been willing to sacrifice her life to save
that of her husband, Admète.
Basic forms
It is easy to understand the principles of musical tragedy in this period.
Starting with Lully, and maintained in many respects to 1770, was a
structural division, separating “active” parts where conversation (in reci-
tative) took place and decisions were taken, from those parts where songs,
choral singing, dance, and formalized relaxation took place. All French
opera that included recitative also included dances and choruses. The
“active” parts worked through a free-flowing sequence, employing mainly
solo voices up to the 1750s. Their music involved both recitatives and airs
(see §§ 2, 4 below) which audiences heard as a heightened continuous
setting of the dramatic poetry. The “relaxation” parts worked through a
varied accumulation of songs, dances, and choruses. Songs and dances
were in simply structured forms like AB or ABA or rondo (refrain)
forms, or sometimes ground-bass structures (the chaconne). In princi-
ple, each act contained one “relaxation” sequence, denoted a divertisse-
ment. Visual aspects naturally came into balance with musical aspects.
Nevertheless, divertissements contained links with the main action,
justifying their existence sometimes loosely, sometimes tightly. Loosely
justified sequences might celebrate a happy event or a final resolution.
But a tightly conceived sequence might create tension, for example
putting an anxious main character under some stress. Lengthening the
danced sequence could thereby increase dramatic value while seeming to
reduce it. The moral strength of a main personage could be displayed,
Cambridge
Published Online ©
158 David Charlton
for example, if s/he resisted the offerings of seducers, or the horrors of

devilish supernaturals. Lully and his successors found spectacular ways
to use dance and chorus in reversing the fortunes of principal
characters:
(1) A lover is tormented by demons at someone’s instigation (Thésée, Isis, Psyché,
Amadis)
(2) A magician or a deity unleashes a natural disaster out of evil intent, such as a
storm (Thésée, Bellérophon, Proserpine, Persée)
(3) A character goes to the underworld and encounters supernatural beings
(Alceste, Isis, Proserpine)
(4) A character falls asleep on stage, and their dreams are visualized (Atys, Armide)
(5) An oracle is consulted and its pronouncement gives rise to a sequence including
the chorus (Bellérophon, Phaéton).6
New dynamics
The world of operatic tragedy changed in France when Christoph Gluck
(1714–87) was contracted to write a set of operas for Paris near the end of
his life. He produced seven serious works, three of which were revisions of
Viennese originals: these had participated crucially in a European rethink-
ing of opera seria. French tragedy was traditionally in five acts plus a
Prologue (see §9). Not until 1749 did Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764)
and his librettist Louis de Cahusac break the mold and omit the prologue,
in their Zoroastre. Gluck’s tragedies used the three-act pattern, except in
Armide where he reset Quinault’s five-act libretto, and Iphigénie en
Tauride, his last triumph, where four acts were needed. Armide kept the
broad action/relaxation duality, but the others merged these two levels,
and gave the chorus an ongoing participation role. Plot dynamics became
more concentrated, subplots were removed, and everything built a more
actively determined sequence.
Alceste uses chorus all through, representing the people of Thessaly
who express sometimes desperate emotion – their king lies mortally ill.
The oracle prophesies that Admète can be saved only by the substitution of
another life. No one chooses to help. The whole opera focuses on the
agonizing process of Alceste’s decision-making. The unified sweep of Act 1
ends with her tortured arias “No! It is not a sacrifice!” (“Non! ce n’est point
un sacrifice!”) and “Gods of Hades” (“Divinités du Styx”); the music of
each fluctuates under the pressure of her conflicting loyalties. Eleven
changes of tempo occur in “Gods of Hades.” Meanwhile there have been
short episodes where the traditional presence of dancers occurs, but their
role is set into the action: a soft processional frames the change of scene to
Apollo’s temple, where a “Pantomime” represents the altar being readied
for sacrifice.
Cambridge
Published Online ©
Table 9.1 Later eighteenth-century adaptations

of Quinault tragédies, originally set by Lully
Date Title Composer
1776 Alceste Gluck

1778 Roland Piccinni
1779 Amadis de Gaule J. C. Bach
1780 Persée Philidor
1780 Atys Piccinni
1782 Thésée Gossec
Table 9.2 French adaptations of Metastasio opera seria libretti a
Date Title/source Composer
1783 Didon / Didone abbandonata Piccinni

1783 Alexandre aux Indes / Alessandro nell’ Indie Méreaux
1784 Les Danaïdes / Ipermestra Salieri
1785 Thémistocle / Temistocle Philidor
1788 Démophöon / Demofoonte Cherubini
1789 Démophon / Demofoonte Vogel
1799 Adrien / Adriano in Siria Méhul
a
Adapted from Alison A. Stonehouse, “The Attitude of the French Towards Metastasio as
Poet and Dramatist in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., University of
Western Ontario, 1997), 164.
Shortly after, Niccolò Piccinni (1728–1800) was invited from Italy to

create Parisian serious operas, working there between 1777 and 1791.
His important works have a richness of melody and orchestration quite
unlike Gluck’s music. Piccinni’s and Gluck’s influence persisted for two
generations. Prior to 1789, an extraordinary decade of activity extended
serious opera into new exotic and historical subjects. These reflected the
rapid expansion of its audience’s world-view, exploring issues of power,
politics, and philosophy. One showed the heroism of working-class people
(Dezède’s Péronne sauvée), others the dubious achievements of European
colonialism (Candeille’s Pizarre, ou la Conquête du Pérou), or the struggles of
early France (Gaul) against colonizing Roman forces (Gossec’s Sabinus and
Sacchini’s Arvire et Evélina). When Classical – especially Roman – subjects
came into special new favor under the Revolution of 1789, they were
intended to lend authority to the new Republic, and disparage monarchy
and tyranny. Méhul (1763–1817) became Gluck’s closest successor here.
A different kind of updating was manifest in new versions of libretti by
Quinault and Metastasio, as shown in Tables 9.1 and 9.2. However, it
transpires that the most successful tragédies of this interesting period fall
into neither of the camps represented above, except for Didon and Atys
(see Table 9.3): a strong reason for this is the popularity of operas by the
Cambridge
Published Online ©
160 David Charlton
Table 9.3 Most successful tragédies lyriques after Glucka
Date Title Composer Evidence
1780 Atys Piccinni 78 performances, to 1792

1782 Ariane dans l’île de Edelmann 46 performances, to 1800
Naxos
1783 Renaud Sacchini 156 performances, to 1799
1783 Didon Piccinni 250 performances, to 1819
1786 Phèdre Lemoyne 57 performances, to 1792
1786 Œdipe à Colone Sacchini 576 performances, to 1830
1787 Tarare Salieri 131 performances, to 1802
1788 Arvire et Evélina Sacchini, completed by 87 performances, to 1811;
J.-B. Rey rev. 1819
a
Figures from Théodore de Lajarte, Bibliothèque musicale du Théâtre de l’Opéra: Catalogue historique,
chronologique, anecdotique (Paris: Librairie des bibliophiles, 1878).
Table 9.4 Nine renowned tragedies and their revivalsa
Title Composer Dates (premiere and revivals)
Omphale Destouches 1701, 1721, 1733, 1752

Tancrède Campra 1702, 1707, 1717, 1729, 1738, 1750, 1764
Hippolyte et Aricie Rameau 1733, 1742, 1757, 1767
Castor et Pollux Rameau 1737, 1754–5, 1764–5, 1772–3, 1778–85, 1791
Orphée et Euridice Gluck 1774–8, 1781, 1783, 1789–90
Iphigénie en Aulide Gluck 1774–9, 1781–90
Alceste Gluck 1776–8, 1780, 1786–92
Iphigénie en Tauride Gluck 1779–92
Médée Cherubini 1797–99 (for the Théâtre Feydeau, not the
Opéra)
a
Some figures drawn from Chronopera database on http://chronopera.free.fr.
mellifluous Antonio Sacchini, resident in the French capital from 1781

until his death in 1786.
Repertory and canonic value

Musical canons did not originate in the Romantic period. Lully’s tragic
operas were canonic from the start, and were followed by other canonic
tragic operas. These were revived regularly, printed, and discussed as
objects worthy of emulation and reference. Nevertheless, general public
opinion of the genre of tragedy (spoken and sung) underwent changes in
estimation after c.1750. Gluck’s tragedies retained canonic status into the
nineteenth century, however, as revivals attest (for example by Wagner
and Berlioz).
Key tragic operas were also composed by Destouches, Campra,
Rameau, and Cherubini. Table 9.4 contains a sample of noteworthy titles,
and also illustrates the principle of reviving such favorites in Paris. The
importance of Rameau’s numerous operas cannot be perceived just from
Table 9.4: the preceding tables mean to suggest a fundamental continuity
Cambridge
Published Online ©
within lyric tragedy, across the century. This continuity existed partly
because it was a monopoly, vested in one company in Paris. France was
an absolute monarchy until 1792, and opera was a prestigious, costly form
whose origins lay in Louis XIV’s court; therefore, all official opera was
ultimately controlled by courtiers, though the opera house was in Paris,
not Versailles. It served to entertain and instruct, but also symbolized
French cultural leadership. French was the international language at this
period, and French exports, fashions, drama, literature, art, and philoso-
phy were acknowledged as maintaining central world roles. National pride
in French opera was powerful, and kept it different. The sounds and styles
of French singing were nothing like those in Italian opera; they provoked
debate at home and abroad. Visual splendor, dance, and choral singing
adorned tragedy and pastoral, supported by a substantial orchestral
presence.
Testimony to the Paris Opéra’s function as a showpiece for French
values is the fact that it survived the Revolution without a break, merely
with funding cuts and changes in repertory. One can say therefore that
serious opera had both an “internal” and an “external” canonic value.
“Internal” canonic value meant a set of dramatic conventions, stories, and
practices that were respected by any aspiring librettist and composer.
“External” canonic value meant a nexus of cultural and social factors
inherent in the concept of tragédie en musique, specifically within the
institution of the Paris Opéra. This nexus also stood for a wider set of
values, somehow symbolizing aspects of French national identity itself,
whether in a time of monarchy, or in a time of revolution.
2 Constituent elements (1): recitative

Recitatives in French opera were at the heart of the “active mode” sections,
until the formal balance with Gluck swung over to a series of arias,
ensembles, and choruses, separated by recitative. During Rameau’s period
we still perceive the older principle: conversational stretches articulated by
subtly entwined recitatives and airs, giving way to episodes of formalized
yet integrated relaxation.
Whether in Lully or his followers Destouches and Campra, or Rameau
and his contemporaries, the recitative is in essence a highly expressive
declamation. The poetry is translated into music, and the music expresses
the thoughts from moment to moment. As in Italy, serious opera was
perceived in performance as “the music-dramatic recitation of poetry”;7
the French notated the rhythms, as well as the intervals, and included
expressive harmonies; they made the bass line respond by making it more
Cambridge
Published Online ©
162 David Charlton
Example 9.1 Jean Joseph Cassanea de Mondonville, Titon et l’Aurore (Paris: Chez l’Auteur,
[1753]), Act 3, scene 1, p. 153, mm. 32–41
active. The vocal part was given as many leaps (intervals of a third or
greater) as scalewise movement. These leaps helped determine its expres-
sive way of functioning. So too did the constant presence of ornaments,
mainly appoggiaturas and mordents (see Example 9.1).
Mondonville’s characters plot at the start of Act 3. The god Æolus, who
loves Aurore (the Dawn), is asking the goddess Palès whether she has
managed (as requested) to displace Aurore’s affections for the shepherd
Titon. Æolus’s question, asked without accompaniment, rises to the word
“triumphed”; the final rhyme “abhore” receives two matching (“rhym-
ing”) A♮s, so that the poetry is emphasized. In Palès’s reply, the music
paints the “kind deeds” (bienfaits) and “love” (amour) she bestowed, with
four ornaments on key words. The line droops in falling thirds, and D
minor turns to a soft F major. But when Palès recalls how “Ungrateful
[Titon] never stopped uttering Aurore’s name,” melodic intervals widen
to a dissonant diminished fifth. Ending with “Aurore,” repeated A♮s
“rhyme” correctly with “abhore” earlier. Tonality has shifted to the
mediant-related key of A major, which expresses the obvious (to Palès)
difference in Titon’s mind between Aurore and the intrusive Palès
herself.
One sees that three lines of poetry have been set here, in long twelve-
syllable lines; called “Alexandrines,” these always divided into four units
(feet) of three syllables each. The normal break at the halfway point is
always marked in music by placing the sixth syllable on a strong beat of the
measure.8 Alexandrines had long been the meter of choice for all poets, in
comedy and tragedy.
Cambridge
Published Online ©
A-vez-vous | tri-om-phé | du Ri-val | que j’ab-hore?

1 2 3 | 4 5 6 | 7 8 9 | 10 11 12
Mes bien-faits, | mon a-mour, | rien n’a pû | l’at-ten-drir;
L’in-grat n’a | pro-non-cé | que le nom | de l’Au-rore.
In opera, Alexandrines often alternate with other meters, in particular

eight- and ten-syllable lines. Later in the scene, a furious Æolus orders
Titon’s death: it is usual in this period for anything physical or mundane to
be referred to in graceful language, as it happens here. Nonetheless, the
violence is meant to be conveyed by the way the Alexandrines break into
impulsive eight- and ten-syllable lines:
Je veux qu’à son réveil, les (I hope, when he wakes, that death
ombres de la mort (12)
Ne lui laissent que l’intervale (8) Gives him only the time needed
De déplorer les horreurs de son To bewail the horror of his fate)
sort (10)
at which point a couple of rushing figures in the bass help convey the
passion of anger.
Writing recitatives all in triple meter was not, however, the norm.
Mondonville doubtless wanted notational logic, because he could anyway
rely on an expressive, varied performance style. By tradition, French
singers declaimed entirely personally. Their delivery was followed in its
expressive vagaries by the continuo group of harpsichord and cello (basse
continue; earlier, theorbos and bass viol). Orthodox notation, still used by
Rameau and others when Mondonville was rationalizing his method, was
to adopt freely changing meters, even from measure to measure, unlike
Italian recitative where the meter is consistent. Music obeys text from
word to word. In Example 9.2 from Zoroastre (1749, Act 1, sc. 2) a
tormented Erinice persuades the head of an evil cult (Abramane) that
she may join him in overthrowing Zoroastre (the chosen man of light):
“All-powerful, terrible gods, strike my head with thunder if I break
these pledges.” Rameau conceives the passage as halfway between unstruc-
tured (non-repeating) recitative, and something slightly more formal.
Although some words repeat, the music does not. The musical pulse
breaks up: common time is followed by changing 3 / 2 / 3 / 2. The verse
metrics probably inspired Rameau, because Alexandrines have vanished
in favor of lines of 8 + 8 + 7 syllables. The passage (accompanied by
orchestral strings) demands vivid acting, a performance capable of making
us remember this oath – for Erinice will finally fail, and be destroyed.
Rameau writes dissonant sevenths again and again, while prolonging
the long-range movement from F major to D minor. His harmonies and
Cambridge
Published Online ©
164 David Charlton
Example 9.2 Jean-Philippe Rameau, Zoroastre, tragédie mise en musique (Paris: Veuve Boivin;
Le Castagniere; L’Auteur, n.d. [c.1749]), Act I, scene 2, pp. 13–14, mm. 97–106
rushing violins bring Lully’s methods up to date. In a related manner,

contemporary (speaking) actors were rejecting their older, stylized deliv-
ery of Alexandrines in favor of a more naturalistic freedom.
Example 9.2 is in steady tempo, exemplifying récitatif mesuré (mea-
sured recitative), an occasional type that composers wanted sung in
Cambridge
Published Online ©
Example 9.3 Christoph Willibald Gluck, Alceste: opéra en trois actes (Paris: Bureau
d’Abonnement Musical, n.d. [1776]), Act 2, scene 2, p. 117, mm. 21–7
stricter meter. Where the basse continue alone accompanied, this was
suggested either by a consistent time-signature, or by the word mesuré
as an instruction. It was useful for emphasizing forms of rhetoric such as
morals, pronouncements, and prayers.
Changes after 1770

With Gluck’s operas came a shift on the micro- as well as macro-levels
of formal structure. He abandoned the basse continue in recitative, in
favor of strings. It is easy to see the total change wrought by this, into two
main figures: one used prolonged chords plus slow harmonic rhythm,
and the other used chopped chords, and quicker harmonic rhythm
(Example 9.3). In both, the vocal line uses more repeated notes than in
the older style, fewer expressive leaps, and almost no ornaments. In other
words, French recitative officially became more Italianate. This style lasted
well beyond 1800.
Obbligato recitative (récitatif obligé)

Invented in Italy, this technique reached France in mid-century. The
orchestra took an independent role, playing briefly in between recitatives,
which were unaccompanied. Orchestra music reflected images called up
by the singer, who was free to perform mimetic acting or expressive
movements. Gesture, poetry, and musical mimesis were brought together
in a controlled sequence, especially monologues during stressful situa-
tions. Thus in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide, Agamemnon imagines his
daughter’s sacrifice: “… I would see her blood flow!–Inhuman father! Do
you not hear the cries of the Furies? The air resounds with the frightful
Cambridge
Published Online ©
166 David Charlton
hissing of their murderous serpents …”. Analyzing this admired opera in

1810, E. T. A. Hoffmann praised Gluck’s obbligato recitative in a situation
dangerous to less subtle talents: “How gaudy and overladen the treatment of
these words would be in the style of many composers today! … It would all
be painted … Not so Gluck, who captures and depicts in music not
the words, but Agamemnon’s state of mind, his struggle against the will of
the gods.”9
3 Pastorals
The pastoral mode employed the convention of shepherds and shepher-
desses, but also mythological creatures, set in an ideal landscape. It is not
to be equated with “simple.” What looks at first sight to be innocuous often
turns out to be potentially violent, dangerous, challenging, and ironic.
Pastorals date back to Classical antiquity and entered theater via the later
Renaissance, using music. Shakespeare’s As You Like It shows a sophisti-
cated English pastoral mix just at the moment when, in Italy, pastoral was
used in the first operas.
The tradition soon carried over into France. Lully’s Acis and Galatea
(1686) went on being given in Paris up to 1752. Its specified genre is
Heroic Pastoral (pastorale héroïque), a label which indicated the presence
of deities (not the presence of “heroes”). In fact, though, the pastoral
mode in this context needs to be understood as a type of allegory. As
in Star Wars, Star Trek, or Lord of the Rings the other-worldly characters
are designed to be cousins of human types that the audience knows
already. In French pastoral opera anyone with the status of a god may be
understood as a noble, and anyone with a lesser measure of supernatural
ancestry may be understood as a minor aristocrat. That leaves shepherds
like Acis as mere commoners (by allegory). He loves the higher-born
Galatea (a water-nymph, but daughter of the sea-deity, Nereus), who is
punished by the yet more noble Polyphemus, who is a son of the major
god, Neptune.
The actions and language of such pastorals respond to a courtly
etiquette, but still echoed pains and trials of their audiences. By the same
token, music and poetry focused on a favorite pastime of innumerable
leisured listeners – romantic dallying, expressed in graceful languages of
love, not excluding sexual innuendoes.
The genre often portrays love-trials involving such status-differences as
those bemoaned by Acis: “Je suis mortel, j’adore une déesse” (“I, a mortal,
adore a goddess”); interesting characters and situations stemmed from con-
ventional materials. Class, social and gender conflicts could be treated, but in
Cambridge
Published Online ©
Table 9.5 Generic production at the Paris Opéra from

1720 to 1750a
New lyric New New

Date tragedies pastorals opéras-ballets
1721–30 7 0 9
1731–40 7 1 13
1741–50 4 5 14
a
Fajon, L’Opéra, 71. Opéra-ballet is defined in § 5, below.
a non-specific way. When Galatea’s friend Scylla rids herself of her aspir-
ing Telemus because she wants no part of love, her independent stand is
not approved by the main couple; their Alexandrine is followed by an
abrupt seven-syllable line: “Quelle erreur loin de nous précipite ses pas!”
(12), “Dieux! qu’un vain orgueil l’abuse!” (7) (She rushes away in error!
Gods! how misled by vain pride!) But this proves an ironic judgment.
Although Galatea’s family now approves her marriage to Acis, their
happiness is brief: Polyphemus murders Acis out of jealousy. All that
Acis receives in the end is a mystic transformation by Neptune into an
eternal river. Certainly his status has been bettered; Galatea must be
consoled. What we remember mostly, however, are her agonized appeals
to the gods to restore her lover, a great lamenting solo forming the climax
of the opera.
Musical forms in the pastoral went well with its use of allegory. The
characters and events are not realistic; music disguises their distance from
reality while humanizing emotion’s ebb and flow.
In statistical terms, operatic pastoral burgeoned between 1720 and
1750, with more new pastorals than new tragedies created at the Opéra
between 1741 and 1750 (see Table 9.5).
In 1758, Lacombe considered the pastoral as follows:
Rural subjects please by reason of their naïve pictures; and are most
susceptible of graceful music … yet since the genre is unvarying; its musical
expression also falls into monotonous repetition … One might say that the
pastoral genre is now worn out in France … [However, ] one might allow
dramatic pastorals with libretto and music divided up as described earlier,
i.e. with arias separated from recitatives in both text and music. The genre
deserves to be saved, and will always provide welcome contrast to other
librettos.10
Indeed pastoral characters went on appearing up to the Revolution, and

arias did become “separated” from recitative, in the Italian mold. A good
example is Piccinni’s Atys (1780), from Lully’s old libretto; it had always
Cambridge
Published Online ©
168 David Charlton
been denoted a tragedy because of Atys’s awful fate. He is descended from

a river god but his father was only a shepherd. The great nature-goddess
Cybèle falls in love with him and (since Atys loves Sangaride) causes Atys
to run mad and murder Sangaride. Aware at last of the truth, Atys ends his
own life.
Piccinni’s style appears very modern by comparison with Lully.
Soloists receive arias in full sonata form; recitatives are sometimes accom-
panied by tremolando strings; the chorus is released from divertissements
and mourns the destruction of Sangaride. The harmony includes
augmented-sixth chords. Whereas Lully did not show Atys’s suicide – he
is brought forward, wounded – Piccinni and his librettist, Marmontel,
showed both deaths on stage. But this was changed in 1783 and a happier
ending substituted. Neither full tragedy nor pastoral distancing was found
to be a suitable ending. In myth, Atys was transformed into a pine tree;
violets sprang from the blood-stained ground.
Modern pastorals
What Lacombe called “dramatic pastorals” probably referred to develop-
ments that began to dramatize certain relationships in less allegorical,
more socially grounded ways. Daphnis et Chloé by Boismortier (1747)
included the guilt felt by Chloé’s father, who had given her away as a baby
for misguided reasons. And her adoptive father is also criticized, since he
accepts Daphnis as a son-in-law only after Daphnis is revealed as well-
born, not a gardener’s son.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s famous opera Le devin du village (The Village
Soothsayer, 1752), modernized the pastoral mode and its music alike, and
was successful both at the court premiere and in the wider world. This
time, the leading lovers are contemporary villagers, not classical allegories.
Colin has been having a serious flirtation with the lady of the manor.
Colette is advised by the Soothsayer on how to get him back. Essentially,
Colin is made to prefer the moral superiority of country life. Its divertisse-
ment is also reformist, showing a courtier attempting to secure favors from
a female villager by offering her money. The opera preaches virtue and
sincerity, and both the medium and its message were found to be irresis-
tible. Le devin was never far from performance in France and was rapidly
exported abroad. Some of the music is reminiscent of Italian styles, which
Rousseau knew at first hand from Venice, and as a music-copyist himself.
(Notably, the work was completed before the Parisian advent of the
Bouffons.) The score offers an individual synthesis, almost unique in the
fact that Rousseau wrote his own libretto; the text has a refined diction,
with less-common meters: seven- and ten-syllable lines, and (in Colin’s
climactic romance) six-syllable lines:
Cambridge
Published Online ©
Dans ma cabane obscure / Toujours soucis nouveaux.

Vent, soleil ou froidure, / Toujours peine et travaux.
[In my obscure hut, always new worries.
Wind, sun or cold, always difficulty and work]
This kind of language broke convention through its picture of laboring

life, while the easily remembered melodies were quickly adapted for use
in popular comedies (see §6). Although his reformed recitative stayed
broadly French in style, Rousseau’s Italian bias is apparent in the styles of
the overture and some solos (see below). His conclusion, in the form of a
vaudeville-finale, links solo verses, sung in turn by principals, with a
shared refrain. This technique came straight from popular Parisian thea-
tre, and was an extremely radical way of suggesting that courtly pastoral
required reforming.
4 Constituent elements (2): solo vocal forms

Air
Solo forms inherited from Lully presented the composer with an array of
possibilities. The music thereby became closely modeled on the poetry,
whether dialogue or monologue. Audiences knew some speeches by heart,
as they did in spoken theater. No single form was predominant, certainly
not the da capo form, as happened in Italy. The French preferred not to
repeat textual phrases or lines of verse unless there was a logical dramatic
reason for it. So when they did use da capo form or a rondo, it tended to
occur either in a monologue scene (equivalent to a character ruminating),
or a divertissement, where it was imagined to be “diegetic,” i.e., a “perfor-
mance” understood to be objectively heard by other characters on stage.
During “action” sections, audiences heard either non-repeating recitative,
or sequences of short airs which preserved something of the realistic sense
of a conversation.
Binary structures
Eighteenth-century binary airs are found up to the end of the Rameau
period. James Anthony detected five different varieties, as follows:11
Binary I, where the text has two lines of verse, the third repeating (ABB)
but where the music of the second text line, coming to an imperfect
cadence at B, is then simply varied to reach a final tonic cadence (indicated
analytically as B′) so the music forms ABB′; Binary II: this is same as
the foregoing, but with a repetition of B′; Binary III is simply AB (the
music changes as the text changes) or AABB, also with exact repetitions of
text and music; Binary IV is where “any fragment of part A [returns] after
Cambridge
Published Online ©
170 David Charlton
the conclusion of part B. Because this is only a fragment and not a

complete statement of part A, it does not constitute a tripartite form.”
Binary V is “a large, often irregular bipartite form which fits into none of
the categories above, but which may be still considered a two-part struc-
ture.” An example is “Sommeil que chaque nuit,” in Campra’s L’Europe
galante, third entrée (see §5), where a chaconne bass dominates the first
half.
Next, airs with dance: the relaxed divertissement sections paired airs
up with dances. The orchestra might play a whole (binary) dance, and then
a singer would perform a vocal version of the same music (or vice versa).
French terminology in fact drew no sharp distinction between a vocal and
an instrumental air of this sort. So, in the 1737 Castor et Pollux, Rameau
writes airs in Act 1 as characteristic dance music for Spartan warriors; and
in Act 3 an Air des démons whose costumed dancers attempt to frighten
Pollux. Neither is sung.
Ternary structures
Some use was made of the short ABA air, even in Lully’s time. In Campra,
Anthony also identified two examples of a “more progressive, miniature
sonata form in which part A modulates to the dominant key, but, in its
return after part B, the tonality is adjusted in order to terminate the air in
the tonic key.”12 He labels this Rondeau II because in French usage the
term rondeau could refer to ABA, as well as refrain structures. Early in our
period one also finds da capo forms. As we said, these are typically found
in monologue scenes, often at or near the start of an act, and in divertisse-
ments; as in Italy, they begin with an instrumental ritornello.
Rondo structures
French opera regularly used rondo (ABACA) airs. They particularly suited
exposition scenes, where an atmosphere needed to be established by
musical repetition. But they also suited divertissements and could be
preceded or followed by dance music using the same material, as in
“L’Amour qui vole sur vos traces” in Campra’s Les fêtes vénitiennes within
the first entrée, “Les Devins de la Place Saint-Marc.” Rousseau includes
them in Le devin du village, as in Colin’s “Quand on sait aimer et plaire.” In
Gluck’s Alceste the Queen’s “Non! ce n’est point un sacrifice” forms a
rondo, whose contrasting episodes emotionally defy her confident
opening.
Sonata structures
The impact of Italian intermezzo and opera buffa in mid-century Paris
stimulated use of the sonata principle. Even before Pergolesi’s La serva
padrona was heard in 1752,13 Rousseau had used this jovial sonata style in
Cambridge
Published Online ©
the air “L’amour croît, s’il s’inquiète” (Devin du village, sc. 2). Contrasting
material duly appears in the dominant key, to be reprised in the tonic
recapitulation. By 1769, Philidor had placed a full-scale 170-measure
sonata aria in the second version of Ernelinde, Ricimer’s “Transports,
tourments jaloux.”14 All types of sonata variants could be found thereafter,
in all genres.
Free structures
Their respect for verbal and theatrical flow always tempted French com-
posers to free up available musical forms when it came to setting a libretto.
Campra’s enormous formal variety makes exact classification of his aria
forms almost impossible. Perhaps chief among those who were heirs to
this tradition was André Grétry. For example, although he might employ a
I–V–I substructure, the surface-level materials and word-setting often
seem to evolve through a natural continuum. And the declamatory irre-
gularity of Gluck’s forms put his followers at odds with those who pre-
ferred the rounded Italianate and sonata-form certainties of composers
like Sacchini.
Ariette/1
‘Ariette’ in French opera has two different definitions (see §8). Originally,
“ariette” attached to style rather than form. For example, as noted a
moment ago, Campra’s “L’amour qui vole” is a rondo structure, yet it is
labelled ariette. If we turn, however, to “Rassurez votre cœur timide” in the
fifth entrée of Les fêtes vénitiennes, also labeled ariette, we find that it is a da
capo form, complete with contrasting material in the B section. The reason
is that ariette signaled a use of Italian styles in the music itself. Indeed,
arias in comédies-ballets sometimes employed Italian (or Spanish) texts,
where they “refer to” the alternative styles, used as local color. Such
Italianate figures, ritornellos, obbligato instruments, virtuoso passage-
work, etc. were long enjoyed on the Paris stage.
By the time of Rameau’s Castor et Pollux the highly original F-sharp
minor ariette near the end (“Brillez, brillez,” for “A Planet”) involved the
following proportions: Ritornello: 14 measures; section A: 32 measures;
section B: 10 measures; section A: 33 measures; total: 89 measures. In this
case, it adorns the final divertissement. By the middle of the century,
composers echoed Italian structural functions too, by giving da capo
ariettes to principal characters outside traditional monologue situations.
In 1753 Mondonville gave the title-character Aurore an ariette, “Venez,
venez,” in the Act 1 divertissement of Titon et L’Aurore; in 1756 Rameau
gave Amélite “Non, non, une flamme volage” in Act 1, sc. 3 of the revised
Zoroastre, as an expression of her own character. When Philidor
Cambridge
Published Online ©
172 David Charlton
published Ricimer’s “Transports, tourments jaloux” thirteen years later he

labeled it “Aria,” not ariette, formalizing the shift towards aesthetic accep-
tance of what had originally been something exotic.
Strophic forms
The French had a number of terms for those vocal forms in which the
same music was used for a number of verses (strophes). The term couplets
was generic, and was the most neutral of them.
We have already alluded to the romance. From the 1730s, the term
was associated with literary pastiches of medieval narratives – the stir-
rings of the English Gothic Revival, and French genre troubadour. At the
same time, another romance style became fashionable, akin to a pastoral
dialogue on love themes. The romance expanded in popularity but
retained its aura of (a) a story told, or (b) a perennial description of
love. Faced with a static form, librettists turned strophes to their advan-
tage. Some made the narrated story into an ironic analogy of the main
action. In Mouret’s comedy Les amours de Ragonde (revised version,
Opéra, 1742) the title-role is a larger-than-life, toothless female peasant
who ensnares the luckless Colin. In Act 1 Ragonde and Colin sing ironic
tales to the same music, exposing their hostile feelings regarding each
other. These tales clearly derive from the main plot, and so become ironic
(sometimes called “reflexive”) strophes, if not romances. Librettists initi-
ally maintained strict plausibility in placing strophic romances within
the action. A good solution was to make them convey background
information, for example what happens before the opera begins.
Mozart and Stephanie used a functional romance at the start of Act 3
of Die Entführung.
The genre that made the romance its own was opéra comique (see §7).
An enormous number and variety of romances were composed, continu-
ing up to 1850 and beyond. There are strophic numbers in Bizet’s
Carmen of course (1875), not to mention Wagner’s Der fliegende
Holländer (1843), namely Senta’s ballad. Other strophic forms included
the chanson.
With composers like Monsigny and Dalayrac, romances could even
adapt folk tunes or turn into popular songs themselves. Some included
musical local color, suggesting a distant or exotic time or place. An
excellent example is Michel’s dialect song “D’zaneto montant à l’ouspice”
from Cherubini’s Eliza (1794).15 Other techniques included the alterna-
tion of major and minor modes; use of up to four strophic numbers in a
given opera; “differential orchestration” (changing orchestration from one
verse to the next); special lighting effects; and even two vocalists in one
romance.16
Cambridge
Published Online ©
5 Comedy with dance: opéra-ballet and similar genres

Opéra-ballet was invented for the Paris Opéra, using recitative in styles
already seen above. It employed solo singers, chorus and dancers in a
chain of three, four, or five separate acts, called entrées (signaling the
importance of ballet), plus a prologue. Each entrée had a different story
and different characters, often just three. However, the acts were linked as
variations on a single dramatic theme, which in turn provided the title. In
each entrée the plot was treated as a miniature comedy, but in a widely
variable dramatic tone; and a divertissement was always included. The
archetype was Le ballet des saisons (1695), music by Pascal Colasse, with
some numbers by his former master, Lully: entrée I: Spring (subtitled
“coquettish love”); II: Summer (“constant love”); III: Autumn (“peaceful
love”); IV: Winter (“unvarnished love”). Colasse’s classical characters then
went out of fashion for a time, in the heyday of Campra:
The innovation of Campra and [his librettist] Danchet was to take the
formal structure of the Ballet des saisons but to dethrone the deities and
shopworn mythological characters. In their place were substituted
recognizable contemporary types and, eventually, a genuine, romantic,
comic intrigue.17
So inventive and amusing were the best opéras-ballets that they were
revived for decades (see Table 9.6). Such opéras-ballets gave pleasure
even to Italians unaccustomed to French traditions. Here is an account
by Giacomo Casanova (a native of Venice) of Les fêtes vénitiennes in 1750,
when he was fresh to Parisian impressions. Typically, he did not warm to
the musical styles, noting:
Table 9.6 Famous opéras-balletsa
Date Composer Title
1697 Campra L’Europe galante

1710 Campra Les fêtes vénitiennes
1714 Mouret Les fêtes de Thalie
1723 Colin de Blamont Les fêtes grecques et romaines
1725 Destouches Les éléments
1732 Mouret Le triomphe des sens
1735 Rameau Les Indes galantes
1739 Rameau Les fêtes d’Hébé
1757 Rameau Les surprises de l’Amour
1773 Floquet L’union de l’Amour et des arts
a
Based on “The Opéra-Ballets,” James Anthony, French Baroque Music from
Beaujoyeulx to Rameau, rev. edn (London: B. T. Batsford, 1978), 130–46; and
Marcelle Benoit (ed.), Dictionnaire de la musique en France aux XVIIeet XVIIIe
siècles ([Paris]: Fayard, 1992), 508.
Cambridge
Published Online ©
174 David Charlton
We take places in the parterre [stalls area], paying forty sous; one stands
there, and one finds good company … The music, though beautiful in the
old style, entertains me for a time because of its richness, then bores me, and
the recitative distresses me because of its monotony and its senseless
shrieks … The action took place on a day during the Carnival, when the
Venetians walk about masked … and the scene represented gallants,
procuresses, and women entering into and carrying on intrigues; everything
in the way of costumes was false but amusing. But what really made me
laugh was seeing the Doge and twelve Councilors come out of the wings in
bizarre robes and fall to dancing a passacaglia.18
Casanova’s account continues with observations of the dancers’ styles,

these memories being more extensive than those of the comic intrigue; this
imbalance accurately reflects the aims of the opéra-ballet genre. But he
concluded with useful observations that apply to all genres:
A thing which pleased me at the French opera was [that] the scene changes
at the command of the whistle. Likewise the orchestra attacking at the stroke
of the bow; but the [conductor’s] violent movements to right and left, as if he
had to make all the instruments work by strings, offended me. What pleased
me too was the silence of all the spectators. In Italy one is rightly scandalized
by the insolent noise made during the singing …19
It is important to note the overall attention that audiences paid in 1750,

inasmuch as other accounts can stress elements of disruptiveness. Casanova
observed the same attention some years later at the Concert Spirituel.
The developing importance of comedy is measured in three works
where a unified plot was developed over three acts: Mouret, Les Amours
de Ragonde (1742, rev. 1752); Boismortier, Don Quichotte chez la duchesse
(1743); and Rameau, Platée (1745, rev. 1749, 1754). They have varied
sources and styles (Mouret’s work dates back to 1714), but all require
actors with comic ability, and use motives from popular theatre. The lusty
Ragonde and the marsh-nymph Platée were acted by male singers, for
example. Supernatural allusions were treated ironically and (in Platée)
even in burlesque: Jupiter appears as a donkey, then an owl, in Act 2.
Ragonde is generally carnivalesque; Platée has an ariette for Folly in Act 2
in which the “reflexive” tale of Apollo and Daphne appears. Don Quichotte
was the least successful, if the most “literary,” retaining Cervantes’s mel-
ancholic, erratic anti-hero.
At this juncture, French lyric comedy was invaded by some of the
intermezzi and opere buffe that had grabbed Europe’s attention in
recent years. Eustacchio Bambini’s traveling troupe gave fourteen works
in eighteen months (August 1752 to February 1754). As it hoped, the
Opéra’s patronage of Bambini galvanized public interest, and eventually
Cambridge
Published Online ©
prompted the much-remembered “Querelle des Bouffons” with its polem-

ical articles and essays. Main composers represented were Pergolesi,
Orlandini, Ciampi and Jommelli (not Galuppi). Their impact was
immediate. In order to advertise their emulation, some enthusiastic libret-
tists adopted the generic title intermède; indeed Rousseau’s Devin du
village was labeled Intermède when printed in 1753.
6 Comedy in popular-song (vaudeville) form

In the winter, Parisians attended an enclosed fairground with permanent
stalls, which had a small theater in its precinct. This was the Opéra-
Comique, situated within the Foire Saint-Germain. In summer, they
went to an open fairground north of the city, the Foire Saint-Laurent,
where the same company entertained mixed audiences: locals, profes-
sionals, discreet aristocrats.
The writer Anne-Marie DuBocage issued a disdainful critique of the
Opéra-Comique in 1745. Public behavior struck her as too free in the
foyer: she was stared at, as were other women. She left a description of
the musical comedies which, by convention, occupied a single act each:
These kinds of plays are collections of fashionable vaudevilles, fairly ill
stitched together, and connected by a love-intrigue. Upon some indecent
plot-line the author works in tired allusions, crude double-meanings, and
puerile puns.20
She feared the power of parodist ridicule as applied to Lully’s Thésée:

“Yes – I am certain – the nasty images that have assaulted me today shall
replay in my memory at the mere name of Thésée.” The actresses made
obscene allusions by the way they pronounced their words. And the
character representing Theseus was obliged to sing a popular song with
a dubious refrain about chimney sweeping.
What Mme DuBocage saw were called comédies en vaudeville or
opéras-comiques en vaudeville: the term vaudeville did not refer to what
we described in §3 as a strophic finale structure, but to any song in popular
circulation, performed one syllable to a note, frequently with satirical or
political content. As the French habitually invented new, topical texts to
existing vaudeville tunes, they soon constructed musical comedies in
which the vaudevilles were sung like recitatives in dialogue scenes. As in
certain television commercials today, audiences were meant to remember
the original words of the tunes they knew, alongside fresh ones for which
ingenious authors like Charles-Simon Favart exploited double layers of
meaning, adding to the humor.
Cambridge
Published Online ©
176 David Charlton
Vaudevilles originated often enough in “art music,” not just folk music or
carols. About a hundred airs by Lully were in circulation, as vaudevilles,
including dance tunes. Traveling players took these comedies outside
France, including to London. Here, the best-known results of this influence
were The Beggar’s Opera (1728) by John Gay, and subsequent ballad-operas.
7 Opera with spoken dialogue (after 1752)

Although vaudevilles lived happily into the nineteenth century, they were
gradually pushed out of opéra comique by new music after 1752. As a
genre, opéra comique does not mean “comic opera” so much as “opera
with spoken dialogue”; indeed it may contain serious and sentimental
material. It was confined to smaller theaters, and was originally required
by law to limit itself to small orchestras, as well as forgo recitative. Opéra
comique did comprise dance and vocal music, but only when separated by
spoken dialogue. All this changed in 1791 when the Revolution decreed
the end of restrictive practices. Yet by this date, opéra comique had
become a major international export, involving chorus parts when needed.
When the Bambini company gave its latest Italian comedies (at the
Opéra no less) the smaller theaters realized they could create French-
language versions of them, using the same Italian music separated by
spoken dialogue. Yet for a time, permission was obtainable for exceptions
to include recitative, like intermezzi. One of these became a prototype,
using original (French) music: Les troqueurs (The Exchangers) by Antoine
Dauvergne, text by J.-J.Vadé. The story was taken from La Fontaine’s
humorous tales. Two villagers attempt to exchange their fiancées, but
rapidly discover (thanks partly to a female connivance) that the novelty
would be outweighed by irreconcilable differences of character.
(Obviously this matrix is related to Così fan tutte.) Dauvergne’s singers
used a realistic style, as witness numerous acting-instructions in the
libretto. Les troqueurs is an extraordinary achievement, not least because
it held the stage from 1753 to 1783. Like tragedy and opéra-ballet, opéras
comiques were staged so long as they had an audience, thus forming a
universally known repertory against which fresh works would be judged.
There are many interesting elements within Les troqueurs, all points of
definition for future opéra comique. Above all the story is founded on a
realistic depiction of character and human weakness. It has a one-act
format (the rule for the next decade) and displays radical freedom of
choice in poetic line-lengths and meters. For example, Lubin’s second
aria begins as follows:
Cambridge
Published Online ©
Margot morbleu [4] / Est par trop joyeuse [5] / Elle est jaseuse [4] /
Gausseuse [2] / Pour peu [2] / Qu’on la mette au jeu [5] / Elle prend feu. [4]
[Zounds! Margot is much too merry! She’s a gossip and a joker. She gets
worked up over the smallest thing].
Its solo arias are often in da capo form and never in older binary air forms.
The internal musical design of their main sections has the effect of a short
sonata form, by virtue of a steady drive to key-area V, followed by a short
ritornello. In fact the musical style subtly borrows a range of devices from
Italian comedy, using mainly strings, but never produces a mere copy of
Italian music. Following Pergolesi and others, Dauvergne adopts Italianate
“gestures of mimesis” in the accompaniment in order to enliven comic
effects and to suggest action and movement. Its title-page actually defines
its genre as Intermède, but the first page after the overture calls it opéra
bouffon. Such looseness of terminology is normal in opéra comique. The
libretto of Les troqueurs also contains many acting-instructions, perhaps
emulating Bambini’s intermezzo players.
Although there are two vaudevilles near the beginning of the printed
libretto, the full score omits the vaudevilles completely. A clash of musical
ideologies as between precomposed and newly composed music is clearly
expressed thereby. Vaudevilles would disappear after a few years.
In Les troqueurs, duets and ensembles play an essential role in the
dramaturgy: they articulate the stage comedy itself. The work contains two
duets and three quartets, each with matching stage instructions (libretto)
and lively musical realizations of these actions. Furthermore, these ensem-
bles make use of Italianate “dialogue” forms (see below).
Such successes, from 1753, caused the authorities in 1762 to make the
seasonal Opéra-Comique company permanent via a merger with the
Comédie-Italienne, a royal mixed-repertory theater playing all year
except for Lent and Easter. Henceforth, the new operas with dialogue
entertained a mostly professional and aristocratic clientele on a daily
basis.
Literary sources of opéras comiques soon widened to embrace short
stories, novels, plays, travel literature, and history. Its resultant diversity
encouraged an enhanced range of generic labels, such as comédie lyrique,
drame lyrique, opéra bouffon. A “play” in French is a “comédie,” so another
label was comédie mêlée d’ariettes, where “ariette” takes on a new meaning
(see §8). One can think of this repertory like a forerunner of film. In both,
we see a constant turnover of short-lived successes, a large failure rate, a
steady search for novelty and the exotic, keen awareness of star perfor-
mers, and even a few remakes, plus a couple of serial operas (new works
using favorite characters from a previous one).
Cambridge
Published Online ©
178 David Charlton
Table 9.7 A selection of internationally performed

opéras comiques
Composer Titles
Duni Les sabots; Les deux chasseurs et la laitière

Philidor Le sorcier; Blaise le savetier
Monsigny Le roi et le fermier; Le déserteur
Grétry Zémire et Azor; Richard Cœur-de-lion
Dalayrac Les deux petits Savoyards; Le prisonnier
Dezède Blaise et Babet
Méhul Une folie; L’Irato
Cherubini Lodoïska; Les deux journées
Another similarity with today’s film industry is that opéra comique

explored social issues in a thoughtful way, for example reflecting the Seven
Years’ War of 1756–63 (Favart’s Le mariage par escalade), the deserting
soldier condemned (Monsigny’s Le déserteur, 1769), or the farmer and his
tenant workers (Dezède’s Les trois fermiers, 1777). Starting in 1786, actual
events were occasionally dramatized, such as the fire at Le Havre
(L’incendie du Havre, with vaudevilles and borrowed music) and after
1789 such operas could be put at the service of propaganda, as when
dramatizing the deaths of the young “martyrs” Bara and Viala (e.g.,
Porta’s Agricole Viala): one thinks of films about Vietnam, etc. Yet another
parallel lies in the exporting of opéra comique: its idioms were attractive
outside France, the solo parts less difficult to sing than tragic roles, and the
linking texts, being spoken, could be more easily translated into other
languages (see Table 9.7).21 Beethoven’s experience of the genre in Bonn
and, later, Vienna was typical of German and Austrian audiences.22
The scale, ambition and skill of opéra comique performers eventually
became equivalent to those at the Opéra. Cherubini’s Médée (1797) is a true
operatic tragedy, indeed conceived for the Opéra before the Revolution. But
Cherubini’s team at the Théâtre Feydeau (formerly the Théâtre de Monsieur)
made possible its creation as, technically, opéra comique: the dialogues are
spoken, and in traditional Alexandrine meter. Claudine-Angélique Scio was
the star of this theater, and for her Cherubini completed a masterpiece
containing one of the most difficult roles in operatic history.
8 More constituent elements: Ariette/2; “dialogue

duets”; larger ensembles
The second meaning of this term is special to opéra comique from 1753,
when Les troqueurs showed that it could succeed in France using
Cambridge
Published Online ©
Table 9.8 “Ariettes” as ensembles in Les troqueurs
Score page Score label Libretto label No. of singers
20 Duo Ensemble 2
29 [none] Ariette en quatuor 4
64 [none] Ariette 2
ensembles as much as arias. Vadé had to improvise (semantically) when

labeling his two “action” duets and three “action” quartets. So he applied
the term ariette to these, as shown in Table 9.8.
Here, ariette denotes “ensemble in Italian style, incorporating action.”
Vadé’s usage was adopted by others, but eventually superseded by terms
like “Duo dialogué” and “Quatuor.” He avoided the term ariette for solos,
whether for clarity, or to indicate a break with tradition; but his ariette/2
usage lived on within the common genre designation “comédie mêlée
d’ariettes,” which thus means “dramatic (spoken) text mixed with newly
composed arias, duets, and ensembles containing action.” This label
served logically to distinguish newer opéras comiques from vaudeville-
style ones, described in §6.
In her fine account of vocal ensembles in French opera, Elisabeth Cook
has shown that many duets are found in opéra comique even before 1750.
It seems, however, to be the case that Les troqueurs’s quartets were
inspired by Bambini’s repertory; unfortunately the presumed models in
La donna superba and La scaltra governatrice (seen in winter 1752–3) are
lost.23
“Dialogue duets”
Absolutely vital to the growth of opera repertory was the principle of the
dialogue duet. This principle was readily applied to larger ensembles as
well – one sees Mozart incorporating it, for example, within the sectional
ensemble “Hm! hm! hm!” in Act 1 of Die Zauberflöte. The French bor-
rowed it from the comic intermezzo and debated it in print, starting with
Rousseau’s polemical Lettre sur la musique française in late 1753. The
excerpt concerning dialogue duets notes,
The best way of avoiding this absurdity [when singers declaim similar words
exactly together] is to treat the duo as far as possible as a dialogue, and this
primary concern implicates the librettist. The musician’s task is to find an
appropriate theme and distribute it so that each character speaks [sic] in
turn, while the whole dialogue forms a single melody … When the singers
Cambridge
Published Online ©
180 David Charlton
Table 9.9 Opéra comique ensembles, 1756–8a
Date Title Composer Ensembles
1756 Le charlatan Sodi 4 duets, 1 trio, 2 quartets

1757 La capricieuse Talon 3 duets, 1 trio
1757 La fausse aventurière Laruette 1 duet, 1 quartet
1757 Le peintre amoureux Duni 2 quartets
1758 Le Docteur Sangrado Laruette, Duni 1 trio
1758 Gilles garçon-peintre La Borde 1 duet, 2 quartets
1758 La fille mal gardée Duni 1 duet/trio, 1 trio, 1 quartet
1758 L’heureux déguisement Laruette 1 trio, 2 quintets
1758 Nine et Lindor Duni 2 duets, 1 quartet
1758 Le médecin de l’amour Laruette 1 duet, 1 trio
a
Adapted from Cook, Duet and Ensemble, 76–7.
join together (which should occur rarely and briefly) the lines should be
designed to go in sixths and thirds.24
The “classical” Italian dialogue form was cast in two halves, I→V and V→I.
Each half starts with the soloists in “conversation,” imitating each other’s
material; but as they continue in alternation, their phrases grow progres-
sively shorter, until they eventually join together à2, and the music
cadences. This form well resolves the problem of reconciling musical
and dramatic needs.
Larger ensembles
Opéra comique composers were writing sometimes larger ensembles
when Mozart was still a child (see Table 9.9). Soon after this, they wrote
not only sextets and septets, but also introduced larger ensembles into all
manner of dramatic situations; these were sometimes labeled “chœur.”
Cook distinguishes the following types: (i) expository ensembles; (ii)
tableau ensembles; (iii) progressive ensembles; (iv) climactic ensembles;
(v) denouement ensembles. By the time of Grétry’s Richard Cœur-de-lion
in 1784, no solo item whatsoever was included in the third and final act,
only ensembles. This extreme situation is occasionally found elsewhere, as
in Cherubini’s Les deux journées, but the ensemble presence is everywhere.
The French knew about the Italian “chain” finale principle, but had
different priorities regarding ensembles. The initial French appearance
of a “chain” finale, in Grétry’s Le Magnifique (1773: labeled “Finale”), was
in an opera set in Florence, Italy, with literary origins in Boccaccio’s
Decameron. As in many other aspects, French opera maintained a sturdy
independence from Italy, borrowing from her traditions only when
necessary.
Cambridge
Published Online ©
9 Framing and other devices

The overture to an opera up to the 1740s was often modeled on Lully’s
archetype: a slow section, common time, with dotted rhythms and
bunched figures in rapid notes would be followed by an allegro beginning
with a fugue or imitative entries, played twice. Sometimes the first section
is then repeated. Radical formal variety began in the middle part of the
century, partly under pressure from Rameau, who became increasingly
individual in his overture designs. Some Rameau overtures quote from
choral or orchestral music in the parent opera (Naïs, Platée) and others
present modernistic tone-pictures of the events supposed to take place
prior to the raising of the curtain (Zaïs, Zoroastre). By the 1750s certain of
his overtures take account of the new symphonic sonata-allegro, especially
Daphnis et Eglé.25 Enlightened opinion now demanded an understandable
connection between overture and parent opera.26 Opéra comique proved
well able to achieve this, and soon introduced narrative overture elements
with quotations from the parent opera, even in the 1760s, as in Philidor’s
Le Bûcheron and Monsigny’s Le Déserteur. Grétry’s Zémire et Azor over-
ture ends with storm music heard in Act 1, close to the method Gluck
adopted in his later Iphigénie en Tauride. But sonata principles also
remained a staple, and plenty of overtures remained as separable, single-
movement sinfonias. Indeed it was the separable nature of the best of these
overtures that encouraged their inclusion in concert programs and led to
the “concert overture” as a Parisian phenomenon in the 1790s.27 The
prologue – derived from seventeenth-century Italian opera – was ubiqui-
tous in tragedy, pastoral, and opéra-ballet until the 1750s. Comprised of a
sequence of recitatives, choruses and divertissements, it was originally
meant to honor the monarch and perhaps refer allegorically to current
political events. Classical and allegorical characters were normally
employed, and any dramatic event limited to the gentlest terms of refer-
ence. The subject of the main opera may come into focus as the Prologue
ends, after which the opera’s overture is always repeated. Certain opéra-
ballet Prologues were more like separate entrées, while that to Rameau’s
Platée is a real prelude to the main action. One resonant example explored
the myth of Prometheus: Mondonville’s in Titon et l’Aurore.
At the other end of the opera, final divertissements could employ a
chaconne structure that built into a lengthy celebration, involving united
musical forces and invariably in triple meter. Lully’s chaconne in Roland
amounts to 896 measures.28 They rapidly diversified in organization,
while retaining the essential large-scale, forward cumulative impulse.
Some adopted refrain form (Rondeau), others treated the recurring
bass loosely, with increasing variation as the movement progressed.
Cambridge
Published Online ©
182 David Charlton
Rameau’s chaconnes offer a strong element of textural variety and origin-

ality in regard to the orchestration; and Gluck maintained the tradition
(309 measures in Alceste’s chaconne) in the same spirit. In his Iphigénie
en Aulide the chaconne additionally refers to sonata form in its tonal
plan, and the High Priest, Calchas, interrupts it with a vocal exhortation,
inaugurating the coda.
Conclusion
France and Italy are neighbors, but divided by mountains. Their lan-
guages, religions, and arts are very different, but are also deeply inter-
related. French opera was in a sense founded by an Italian (Lully) who
came across the Alps at the age of thirteen. In the eighteenth century
each tradition learned from the other, though at different rates and in
different ways. In 1700 their most differing aspects were seen in recita-
tive style, singing style, aria forms, subject-matter, and the articulation of
the drama. By 1800 a process of osmosis and reciprocal fertilization
had occurred: French styles of drama (including use of the chorus)
affected parts of Italian opera, while Italian styles of aria and ensemble
affected all French opera. These conventions were subject to much
discussion, for wealthier opera-lovers and patrons knew both traditions
at first hand.
“Les goûts réunis” is the title of Couperin’s second collection of cham-
ber suites (1724) and the composer’s introduction is instructive:
The Italian and French tastes have long shared the Republic of Music in
France … the first Italian sonatas that appeared over thirty years ago in Paris
caused harm neither to my sensibility, nor to Lully’s works [i.e., their
continuing popularity] nor to those of my ancestors.
We have seen above how such reconciliation informed the work of

Gluck, who wrote opera with understanding and benefit of three major
styles in three different traditions: Italian opera seria, French opéra
comique and French lyric tragedy. But he was not alone and his achieve-
ments could never have been made without the intense international
debates about opera, or the profoundly skilful responses of his reforming
librettists.
Finally, an important sign of the changing times was the establishment
in Paris of an Italian-based opera company, the same year as the
Revolution began: the Théâtre de Monsieur (later Théâtre Feydeau)
opened its doors on January 1, 1789. This was the forerunner of the
nineteenth-century Théâtre Italien that welcomed Rossini and so many
Cambridge
Published Online ©
others. Reciprocally, Italian opera audiences south of the Alps were seeing
adaptations of French opéras comiques. And makers of opera in both
countries came jointly under the sway of new stories and myths that had
nothing to do with courtly tradition, such as the Incas of Peru and the
trials of Cora, their Virgin of the Sun (e.g., Bianchi’s Alonso e Cora, Venice,
1786; Méhul’s Cora, Paris, 1791).
Cambridge
Published Online ©

03.1 PP 153 183 Genre and Form in French Opera

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

03.1 PP 153 183 Genre and Form in French Opera

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

PART II

National styles and genres

A famous example is Armide: this enchantress loves Renaud, but must

for example, if s/he resisted the oﬀerings of seducers, or the horrors of

Table 9.1 Later eighteenth-century adaptations

Date Title Composer

1776 Alceste Gluck

Table 9.2 French adaptations of Metastasio opera seria libretti a

Date Title/source Composer

1783 Didon / Didone abbandonata Piccinni

Shortly after, Niccolò Piccinni (1728–1800) was invited from Italy to

Table 9.3 Most successful tragédies lyriques after Glucka

Date Title Composer Evidence

1780 Atys Piccinni 78 performances, to 1792

Table 9.4 Nine renowned tragedies and their revivalsa

Title Composer Dates (premiere and revivals)

Omphale Destouches 1701, 1721, 1733, 1752

melliﬂuous Antonio Sacchini, resident in the French capital from 1781

Repertory and canonic value

2 Constituent elements (1): recitative

A-vez-vous | tri-om-phé | du Ri-val | que j’ab-hore?

In opera, Alexandrines often alternate with other meters, in particular

rushing violins bring Lully’s methods up to date. In a related manner,

Changes after 1770

Obbligato recitative (récitatif obligé)

hissing of their murderous serpents …”. Analyzing this admired opera in

Table 9.5 Generic production at the Paris Opéra from

New lyric New New

Indeed pastoral characters went on appearing up to the Revolution, and

been denoted a tragedy because of Atys’s awful fate. He is descended from

Dans ma cabane obscure / Toujours soucis nouveaux.

This kind of language broke convention through its picture of laboring

4 Constituent elements (2): solo vocal forms

the conclusion of part B. Because this is only a fragment and not a

published Ricimer’s “Transports, tourments jaloux” thirteen years later he

5 Comedy with dance: opéra-ballet and similar genres

Table 9.6 Famous opéras-balletsa

Date Composer Title

1697 Campra L’Europe galante

Casanova’s account continues with observations of the dancers’ styles,

It is important to note the overall attention that audiences paid in 1750,

prompted the much-remembered “Querelle des Bouﬀons” with its polem-

6 Comedy in popular-song (vaudeville) form

She feared the power of parodist ridicule as applied to Lully’s Thésée:

7 Opera with spoken dialogue (after 1752)

Table 9.7 A selection of internationally performed

Duni Les sabots; Les deux chasseurs et la laitière

Another similarity with today’s ﬁlm industry is that opéra comique

8 More constituent elements: Ariette/2; “dialogue

Table 9.8 “Ariettes” as ensembles in Les troqueurs

Score page Score label Libretto label No. of singers

ensembles as much as arias. Vadé had to improvise (semantically) when

Table 9.9 Opéra comique ensembles, 1756–8a

Date Title Composer Ensembles

1756 Le charlatan Sodi 4 duets, 1 trio, 2 quartets

9 Framing and other devices

Rameau’s chaconnes oﬀer a strong element of textural variety and origin-

We have seen above how such reconciliation informed the work of

You might also like