Grétry’s Operas and the French Public: From the Old Regime to the Restoration. By R. J. Arnold.
2017; Oxford University Press; Volume: 98; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/ml/gcx075
ISSN1477-4631
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis
ResumoAndré-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (1741–1813) was one of the most prominent composers of eighteenth-century France, highly regarded as a cultural figure, musical thinker, and founder of the modern school of opéra comique. Although hardly a pillar of the present-day operatic canon, his lyric works formed the core repertory of the court theatres and the Comédie Italienne (later the Opéra-Comique) in the final decades of the Old Regime, and maintained a presence on Parisian stages well into the Romantic age. In a welcome and impressively researched new book, the historian R. J. Arnold attempts to account for the composer’s lifetime of spectacular success (and, implicitly, for the gulf between his once immense popularity and subsequent neglect). The author draws upon a wide-ranging body of critical writings on Grétry and his oeuvre to demonstrate how the musician cultivated a uniquely dynamic and sympathetic relationship with his listeners. This monograph is ultimately, however, ‘less a study of Grétry for his own sake than of the complex discursive culture of the late eighteenth century’ (p. 6). Arnold uses contemporary reactions to Grétry as a point of entry into broader questions of the evolution of sentimental theatre, the formation of critical judgement, and the role of the autonomous public sphere during a tumultuous period of French history, from the waning of the Bourbon regime through to the fall of Napoleon.
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