Eighteenth-Century French Musical Theatre

Abstract

One of the methodological challenges for eighteenth-century French studies is the reconstruction of a literary culture which, while seemingly so familiar to a modern reader, nevertheless combined objects that our own disciplinary and institutional culture casts asunder. However overused the term ‘interdisciplinarity’ may be, the phenomenon was so much a part of the early modern cultural landscape that any narrow literary study of the canonical authors of the period risks obscuring and falsifying that landscape by excluding whatever material, according to our own criteria, looks marginal or minor, despite the influence of that material in its own period. Charles Collé spoke for many when he asked rhetorically, ‘Quelle importance peut-on attacher à des chansons?’1 Yet, as scholars have shown in recent decades, song was so integral to eighteenth-century French culture that theatre in which speech and music were mixed threatened to outstrip regular theatre and through-composed opera in terms of public approval; Bricaire de La Dixmérie famously defended the Théâtre de l'Opéra-Comique by calling on the Opéra to ‘légitimer un bâtard devenu plus riche que lui’.2 Gustave Attinger stated trenchantly in 1950 that the site of genuine theatrical experimentation in the eighteenth century was the Foires and the Comédie-Italienne.3 Although the legitimation Dixmérie called for has been slow to arrive, renewed interest has been shown in the variety of theatrical practice that developed during the eighteenth century; it seems appropriate, therefore, to take stock, not least because of the different institutional contexts in which this work continues to be carried out, and because the very diversity of forms concerned defies easy definition and generalization. My discussion will focus on the field of spoken theatre incorporating musical elements, whether sung, instrumental, or incidental. This in itself constitutes a huge range of material, from Beaumarchais's and Marivaux's comedies, which, like most of their contemporaries' works, included terminal songs (divertissements and vaudevilles), through the various types of opéra-comique that proliferated, to the late eighteenth-century mélodrame of Pixérécourt and others, which combined spoken drama and instrumental music. I shall not consider ‘through-composed’ opera with recitative, which is too broad a field and more suited to review in musicological journals; nor shall I discuss the comédie-ballet, which, though a spoken drama with moments of music and dance, does not pose the same kinds of problem of word–music integration. The question of word–music integration is itself a fascinating field that reaches far beyond theatre studies. The pioneering works of John Neubauer (1986) and Downing Thomas (1995) reveal that language was a conceptual matrix for the ways in which eighteenth-century thinkers conceived of aesthetics, anthropology, or history writing, among other disciplines.4 Rooting their discussions in a conjectural history that posited an ideal origin of human culture, Enlightenment theorists were led to the tantalizing and ultimately paradoxical relation of writing, speech, and vocality. Claude Dauphin's recent edited volume Musique et langage chez Rousseau demonstrates how central these elements were for that particular philosophe; similarly, Andrew Clark has made a case for the pervasive importance of music for Diderot.5 Neubauer's study focuses on ‘problems’ with, or tensions inherent in, the eighteenth-century theory of imitation: as is well known, until mid-century at least music was annexed to other arts of representation via ut pictura poesis, which received renewed discussion in abbé Batteux's Beaux Arts réduits à un même principe of 1746.6 Yet a debate soon emerged and intensified, involving most of the philosophes, concerning the question of music's potential to ‘signify’ independently of verbal language; it culminated in texts by Chabanon and Boyé, the former asserting the absolute autonomy of music as signifying practice, and the latter reducing musical expression to a mere chimera.7 Downing Thomas, in his Music and the Origins of Language, examines the role of music as ‘missing link’ in the ‘eighteenth-century attempt to trace semiosis to its origin, to pinpoint the semiotic moment which separates culture from nature, men from animals’.8 This is not the place for a wider discussion of the epistemic issues raised by musical semiosis, the subject of the first section of Thomas's first chapter, but the centrality of such issues to the philosophy of the period does explain why mixed theatre was such an object of fascination in eighteenth-century France, for the very use of music raised theoretical problems about dramatic unity, intelligibility, and genre.9 These theoretical problems may explain the relative neglect, even recently, of dialogue opera, because of the all too rarely questioned teleology of ‘absolute’ or ‘instrumental’ music (as is implicit, for example, in Neubauer's title, The Emancipation of Music from Language). Opéra-comique, however, resists such systematization, just as it troubles musicological models of opera, which remain based on an unquestioned assumption of unity of medium; indeed, no less a figure than the musicologist Carl Dahlhaus has confidently asserted that ‘a libretto is not a drama until music makes it one’.10 One of the difficulties of studying this type of material is that, like so much that was regarded as ‘low’ by contemporary critics, relatively little systematic theoretical or critical discussion exists from the period itself. Opéra-comique's mixture of media ran against the aesthetic ideals of many critics and theorists: Rousseau, for instance, objected on grounds of dramatic intelligibility, claiming in his Fragments d'observations sur l'Alceste italien de M. le chevalier Gluck that ‘parler et chanter alternativement, comme on fait ici dans les opéras-comiques, c'est s’énoncer successivement dans deux langues différentes, ce qui rend toujours choquant et ridicule le passage de l'une à l'autre'.11 Moreover, Nougaret, whose De l'art du théâtre is a rare mine of information on this genre but whose ironic tone makes it a complex critical object, spoke for many when he said: ‘Il est certain que la musique est peu naturelle […] Mais si le chant choque la vraisemblance, que sera-ce, donc, lorsqu'il est précédé et suivi du discours simplement récité? Il doit paraître alors tout à fait extravagant.’12 But rather than annex opéra-comique to opera, which in any case was often seen as the ‘extravagant art’,13 modern commentators have sought to insert the genre into its multiple cultural contexts and to use the methodologies of cognate disciplines such as art history, cultural history, or anthropology. David Charlton, in a pathbreaking discussion, has considered the difficulties in encompassing the ‘aesthetic world of opéra-comique’ and has surveyed a vast field of aesthetic-analytic essays that appeared between 1980 and 2000.14 As he shows, eighteenth-century critics systematically employed integrative criteria when discussing the music of opéra-comique, that is, they were interested in continuity and musico-dramatic values rather than seeing mixed genre as plays that happened to contain music.15 Emergent concepts of dramatic unity were important here, as was the ideal of mutual cooperation and shared artistic vision between librettist and composer, without which no genuine musico-dramatic synthesis was conceivable. But no less troublesome are those ‘continuing polarities’, as Charlton calls them, where we would do well to heed the theoretical reflections of the eighteenth century rather than impose our own anachronistic or speculative impulses, speech-song being just one such polarity. It is important here to note the roots of eighteenth-century musical theatre in the Parisian Fairs, whose progressive adoption and integration of sung elements was a complex and multifaceted process in which various factors played their part, including the precedent of the disgraced Italian theatre (expelled in 1697), legal and material constraints on the form and medium the forains were allowed to employ, and the counter-cultural use of music from outside the playhouse (vaudevilles) in order to parody the productions of the monopoly theatres under royal protection.16 As recent research has shown, the insertion of music into spoken drama as an autonomous element of signification, independent of words, has implications for theatricality and for our approach to the genre today.17 Because the same songs were reused over several decades, and sometimes for much longer, they acquired a complex set of connotations that could be employed to dramatic effect; conversely, these meanings were, of necessity, ephemeral and are difficult to reconstruct today, whether in study or performance. Similar observations have been applied to the closing movements of spoken plays. For instance, were those divertissements included in nine of Marivaux's comedies for the Italiens and in two for the Comédie-Française dramatically linked to the subject of the comedies, or were they simply an entertaining adjunct? What is the nature of the illusion and attention they imply: the late Baroque principle of papillotage, which distracted attention and broke illusion, or, rather, a dramatically integrated movement?18 The place of music in mixed theatre is therefore multiple: at once an autonomous dramatic medium, a mechanism for the rupturing of illusion and attention, and a link with the world outside the playhouse. In tandem with these developments, studies of the mixed genre also appeared from the 1980s onwards. Pioneering assessments, primarily concerning individual creators, were made by Karin Pendle, David Charlton, Elizabeth Bartlet, Kent Smith, James Kopp, and Corinne Pré;19 this was the first wave of studies since the turn-of-the-century works by Arthur Pougin and Georges Cucuel.20 Studies by Klaus Hortschansky, Thomas Bauman, and Bruce Alan Brown have placed the genre in a cosmopolitan perspective, notably by investigating the cultural transfers between Paris and Francophile German-speaking centres such as Vienna before the term ‘cultural transfer’ had become fashionable;21 indeed, such was the explosion of books of this kind that by 1992 two volumes had been published in order to take stock of the field.22 Author-centred studies have continued to appear,23 alongside works in which the genre has been integrated into the wider patterns of literary and musical culture.24 One of the first issues to be considered was the question of whether the mixed genre was, sociologically speaking, a popular one. Since opéra-comique was a form of theatrical entertainment that grew out of the marketplaces (the Foires Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent) and stayed attuned to the tastes of their patrons, it was regarded as a low form, at least until the closure of Fair theatres in 1745; yet it cannot simply be described as ‘popular’, given the range of people it attracted, which, as Robert Isherwood has shown, extended throughout all social strata.25 The genre did, however, present itself as a counter-cultural entertainment, if we mean by that expression a theatre that mirrored the ‘official’ theatres sanctioned by the crown (to adopt the terminology of David Trott).26 As Nathalie Rizzoni has shown in her study of Pannard, opéra-comique partakes of the ‘esthétique du petit’, that is, a rococo type of theatre suited to brief forms, parody with respect to the serious genres, and a ludic tone.27 The Foire was central to this dimension of the genre in its participatory aspect (the audience was encouraged to sing the material of the so-called écriteaux plays, for instance, introduced in the second decade of the century after institutional constraints forbade the actors of the Foire from speaking or singing on stage);28 and the Théâtre de la Foire's links to urban street culture, via its adoption of the vaudeville, have likewise been recognized. Yet, in the context of the various strands of cultural history elaborated in the 1980s and 1990s, whether the cultural history of Natalie Zemon Davis, the book history and cultural anthropology of Robert Darnton, or the microhistory of Carlo Ginzburg, a pervasive interest for low and popular culture began to be developed, with a concomitant attention to the actual audiences of such material. As a consequence, and perhaps paradoxically, scholars such as Robert Isherwood suggested a rethink of this category and have encouraged historians in particular to ask whether there really was a growing gulf throughout the eighteenth century between popular and elite culture; and to consider whether entertainment helped to widen social and cultural stratification, or, conversely, helped to break it down.29 The place of the Revolution in this question is crucial, since, for the historian of cultural forms, it dramatizes the difficulty of avoiding a teleological approach. Hence Isherwood deliberately concluded his study with the late 1780s, ‘to view the cultural world of pre-1789 as its people did’, and to privilege ‘sociological layers’ and ‘patterns of culture’: in such an approach, the weight of tradition was foregrounded.30 If the question of popular culture has been problematized, opéra-comique's place in the sociocultural hierarchy of the ancien régime has nevertheless been explored. Thomas Crow has shown how the paintings of Watteau grew largely out of the same Fair culture as the plays of Thomas-Simon Gueulette, the first chronicler of the Théâtres de la Foire and a close colleague of Marivaux;31 his study demonstrates more widely how the Foires trouble any convenient fit between an ‘articulated cultural hierarchy and a corresponding social one’.32 For instance, Gueulette's parades and Watteau's paintings emerge as observations of aristocratic leisure and can tell us much about the ways in which the ‘low’ penetrates into elite sociability. By contrast, when theatrical monopolies were relaxed in the 1760s under Choiseul, the effect was to increase the distinction between the high and the low. Opéra-comique was able to occupy a middle cultural ground when, mid-century, the cultural and social planes slid apart, so to speak. Thereafter, aristocracy in taste no longer mapped neatly on to aristocracy in social class, since a new bourgeois financier clan gravitating around Pompadour and the Le Tournehem dynasty was able to establish itself as patron not of elite culture but of the kind of intermediate material performed at the Opéra-Comique; this movement, which was almost contemporaneous with the merger between the Opéra-Comique and the Comédie-Italienne into one single institution in 1762, encouraged the progression of such material towards ‘high’ culture. Opéra-comique's role in the of genre has also been because of its use of forms such as parody and Since early of eighteenth-century in which opéra-comique was a of studies has appeared the range of between and that the term whether a form, or a but not critical or even a that it could be considered a of for a serious or to be in this as it a of since the of a parody on an of the role in the of dramatic models has also been after the des the mixed genre was the of Italian musical and the of of Italian works for a Parisian via dramatic or cultural have to be explored. Opéra-comique was also more to and other influence than was spoken was first at the Opéra-Comique and the Comédie-Italienne in the opéra-comique has emerged as a more cosmopolitan genre than and one that the various of its including The role of has been not just as a librettist and in his own but as the of many of the of works, since his were one of several for has this placed the genre the of but the between it and the has been given the or nature of the opéra-comique the of those the question of is to the As in in a more discussion of various of opera, opera is to that its libretto it is also a which independently of verbal on the her book has had important throughout by as but rather a of certain and rare in whether or that may be as of As her part of the of the work was to to music a for the of an developed in her more recent work distinction between and for not just to the of musical but also to its and and to the one have of to semiosis, and to recently, studies of in the mixed genre have also to the importance of elements in the of and the between and whether in integrative or It is in this context that we can place the recent of studies of the genre of The much to how the early Parisian as a of or other literary forms of Studies with a more musical focus more than their to beyond the rather definition of the genre that sometimes with its its and its and David Charlton has shown the pervasive importance of the in opera from ‘a type of extended not speech at but which combined through-composed music with dramatic including element of towards moment that was itself and As from the late the expression was as a in France, the such as being and mélodrame simply musical drama and being employed with The ideal of was at first in and aesthetic as in Fragments d'observations sur it would of genre de dans les et la de successivement et la est et la has made the that the late eighteenth-century of mélodrame is being a a dramatic and an the range of issues that this definition studies to have to with the or of and the problems of which the genre different problems of to those of opéra-comique because to it as a form whose musical moments on the spoken This on the of the of language and that the genre had an in its use of between the musical and the Moreover, as eighteenth-century mélodrame grew out of theory of as set in the sur le it a form of theatre by a has for the genre to be considered via in the that it the of the of an or an For of institutional to those in with the écriteaux plays, mélodrame also developed as an and and its aesthetic was For instance, and are in these works, in which speech and dialogue were sometimes and and had to through and have been seen as of the of the period and its and As edited volume mélodrame is seen by most recent research as being by a certain it is aesthetic of music ways in which meanings and can be in of high and through the of music and speech, and whose music also or the of us through or between and and us how to to the actual we By of a I shall that as have studies of the of eighteenth-century to and from these dialogue opera has much to the opéra-comique to la et de la tout comme des on a la than to the of spoken opéra-comique of its to of its recent of and other a approach to this material, which the genre at the of aesthetic in its period. are far from the cultural of early eighteenth-century whether or whose complex to urban culture far beyond the for all theatres in Paris throughout his French studies has since narrow of the but it is also that has on the of a range of familiar and less familiar material from all of French cultural history, which of the material to a wider and The importance of mixed genre for musical is a important of work over the which has been able to the implications of and the of other signifying such as to beyond the of theory to a musical theatre that the widely at this moment of over the of modern as a there is much of to be in a cosmopolitan genre so concerned with and and with

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