‘Le théâtre ne change qu'à la troisième scène’: the hand of the author and unity of place in Act V of Hippolyte et Aricie

Abstract

In the original version of the libretto of Hippolyte et Aricie, the librettist Simon-Joseph Pellegrin prefaced Act V with the rubric ‘le théatre ne change qu'à la troisiéme scéne’ [‘the stage changes only at the third scene’]. This is one of the few acts in the entire repertoire of tragédies en musique where the conventional formula ‘le théatre représente …’ [‘the stage represents … ’], followed by a description of what the stage was intended to depict, was not used. The annotation in Hippolyte warned audiences that, instead of the change of scenery that would normally occur during the entr'acte, the first two scenes of Act V retained the setting of Act IV (‘a wood by the sea, consecrated to Diana’), and the new décor (‘a delightful garden comprising the avenues of the Forest of Aricie’) was revealed only in the third scene. The sense of discontinuity at this ‘internal’ scenery change was also heightened by a break of liaison de presence (that is, none of the actors in scene 2 remained on stage for scene 3). A dispute arose over this breach of convention, and resulted in the first two scenes being omitted from performances sometime during the opera's first season in 1733, ostensibly to avoid the breach of unity of place caused by the change of scenery. This was not the only revision made to the opera in that season, but it was arguably the most significant.

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