Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Regime, 1647-1785 (review)

The range of Downing A. Thomas's book is as wide as its title suggests: tragédies en musique by Lully, Charpentier, and Rameau, of course, but also an Italian opera by Luigi Rossi, opéras comiques by Philidor and Grétry, representation of the king, theatre architecture, and theoretical treatises by Terrasson, Diderot, Lacépède, and others. And if, following a hardly justifiable tradition, I identify operas by the name of their composer, this is hardly to suggest that Thomas's analyses neglect the work of their librettists—Buti, Quinault, Thomas Corneille, Pellegrin, Poinsinet, Marmontel. Indeed, this is less a book about music than it is about writing, since close readings of specific operas—both words and music—are combined with analysis of theoretical works on theatre and opera, 'together with a measure of reception history' (p. 6). Thomas makes it clear in his introduction that he has not undertaken a comprehensive survey of his vast topic, but chosen to focus on 'specific flashpoints' (loc. cit.). He argues that individual operas both display traces of and contribute to their aesthetic and ideological circumstances, and in particular that opera in the eighteenth century is a touchstone 'for understanding the mechanisms behind human feeling and for reflecting upon how emotion affects social relations' (p. 4).

The book is divided into two parts, with the 'fault line or epicenter' lying in Terrasson's claim in 1715 that 'the dramatic elements of opera functioned as backdrop for the presentation of music' (p. 5). The first deals with 'French Opera in the Shadow of Tragedy', the second with a trend away from private sensation and towards public feeling during the Enlightenment. The Introduction situates early opera within a thematic of loss and recovery, a theme that will return in several chapters, notably in the final pages of the last one.

The first chapter begins not with French opera but with one of the first Italian operas performed in France, Buti and Rossi's Orfeo, created for Mazarin in 1647. By looking at the focus on song as performance ('explicitly or implicitly identified as such by the operatic characters', p. 21), Thomas introduces issues that will be key throughout the ancien régime, including the role of music in the theatre, the morality of opera, and the relations between performer and spectator. The three are closely related, since, as Thomas argues, opera breaks down the opposition between music as part of or external to the plot as it creates 'song acts' that reach out to the audience. The chapter continues with a review of the negative opinions about opera, especially its sensual side, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and concludes with a discussion of Terrasson, who 'came surprisingly close to asserting that the tragedy in opera was a supplement to the music' (p. 48). The point is well taken, but one should remember that the music of Lully and especially the librettos of Quinault—to mention only the best-known operas—had more than their share of defenders alongside these critics.

Chapter 2 continues the exploration of the precarious position of early French opera through its political dimension. After a look at the larger issues involved in allegorical representations of Louis XIV and at the principal modes of representation that were used, Thomas turns to the representation of the king in the prologues to the Quinault–Lully operas (1673–86), in particular Atys (1676). While these clearly fit into the politics of glorification of Louis XIV, even if the king is no longer on stage, they do not match the representation of the hero that one finds in the five acts that follow. In short, 'opera simultaneously elaborated, complicated, and problematized the representation of the king' (p. 98).

The next three chapters are devoted to three works at the heart of the French Baroque repertory: Quinault and Lully's Armide (1686), Thomas Corneille and Charpentier...