Repopularizing ‘popular opera’
2022; Oxford University Press; Volume: 50; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/em/caac060
ISSN1741-7260
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Literary Analyses
ResumoRecent decades have seen the continued growth of interest in 17th- and 18th-century French music by scholars and performers alike. However, where opera is concerned, the spotlight has often remained on the tragédie en musique and the principal institutions in Paris associated with this genre, namely Versailles and the Academie Royale de Musique or, as it was colloquially known, l’Opéra. David Charlton’s Popular opera in eighteenth-century France is the first monograph in approximately 100 years to focus specifically on what the author has termed ‘popular opera’; that is, comic opera with spoken dialogue which encompasses comédies en vaudevilles, comédies mêlées d’ariettes, and parodies of Italian intermezzi and French tragédies en musique. In this attractive monograph, Charlton gives a comprehensive history and historiography of French popular opera’s emergence and evolution from the 1660s to the 1760s. He takes as a starting point Michel-Jean Sedaine and Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny’s successful Le déserteur of 1769, considered a pinnacle of popular opera, explaining that from around 1660, ‘the path to Le déserteur emerges through the history of popular opera, and not that of spoken theatre’ (p.25). His scope includes vaudeville’s central role in popularizing ‘popular opera’ in general and the complex relationships between musico-dramatic and socio-political expression. Charlton also documents how institutions such as the Comédie-Française, Parisian Fair Theatres (Théâtre de la foire) and Comédie-Italienne responded to the many legislative changes enforced by l’Opéra, including the merger in 1762 of the Théâtre de la foire and Comédie-Italienne, and the impact this had on disseminating ‘popular opera’.
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