Decentralisation and regeneration at the Théâtre des Arts, Rouen, 1889-1891
2008; Société française de musicologie; Volume: 94; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1958-5632
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis
ResumoA concern in certain quarters from the mid-1840s onwards, lyric decentralisation became a hotly debated topic in Paris during the mid-1880s with the Opera and Opera-Comique mounting few new works, the failure of Parisian authorities to re-establish the Theâtre-Lyrique, the resounding flop of the Opera populaire in 1884, and increasing numbers of French works being premiered at the Theâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. Thus in 1888, a commission of Parisian musical and literary figures - including the composers Edouard Lalo, Emmanuel Chabrier and Ernest Reyer - proposed to transform Rouen's municipal theatre into a Theâtre lyrique departemental francais . Consequently, the 1890 and 1891 seasons saw the ambitious and prestigious programming of a number of French premieres: Camille Saint-Saens's Samson et Dalila, Albert Cahen's Le Venitien, Gustave Canoby's La Coupe et les levres, Reyer's Salammbo, Charles Lenepveu's Velleda, but also Richard Wagner's Lohengrin (in French). This article surveys the business of opera in the provinces, and how municipal subsidy, intention and intervention, as well as Rouennais reception functioned alongside impresario-style theatre directors with high-idealed intentions of making Rouen's theatre a national forum of innovation and creation, open to the Parisian public and press. During two seasons, directed by Henry Verdhurt, formerly of La Monnaie, and Auguste Taillefer, reformer of the Grand Theâtre in Nice, these ambivalent relations and their underlying tensions are revealed. The article thus examines the ways in which different reformers envisaged lyric decentralisation, the renewal of the repertoire (to which the idea of decentralisation was intimately linked), as well as issues of market forces, entrepreneurship and the economic instability of operatic creation in the late-nineteenth century.
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