Dramaturgie de la tragédie en musique (1673-1764) (review)

When Lully and Quinault established the tragédie en musique with Cadmus et Hermione in 1673, they created a genre whose dramatic, musical, and aesthetic processes and merits have been at the heart of frequent technical and aesthetic polemic. One of the most difficult aspects of the tragédie en musique is its fundamental relationship to tragic declaimed text. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France struggled with the concept of the marriage of French tragic poetry with music, and modern scholars continue to seek the most effective means of addressing this remarkably flexible genre. Discussing the dramaturgy of the tragédie en musique requires not only a detailed examination of its constituent elements, but an effective observation of the salient relationships among them, a complex and daunting task that Laura Naudeix successfully accomplishes in a volume as well written as it is useful.

The clear organization of her study contributes to its utility. In six chapters, the choice of the libretto's subject, the decors and classical unities, the prologues, general structural considerations, the divertissements, and the technical and aesthetic aspects of the performance ('la conduite du spectacle') are examined. Each subsection is clearly indicated in the table of contents, which, along with two indexes, one for works and one for names, facilitates searching the volume. In addition, four appendices provide an overview of the terrain studied, listing the works addressed in chronological and alphabetical order (apps. 1 and 2), and summarizing both the decors and the divertissements for each work (apps. 3 and 4).

One difficulty that even such exemplary organization does not effectively overcome is the impression that topics end up being spread throughout the volume, although each section considers a concise aspect. For example, section 2 of chapter 1, 'Le merveilleux', carefully addresses machines and sets. This topic necessarily returns in chapter 2 ('Sur les décorations, l'unité de jour et l'unité de lieu'), where it is a central element, as in chapter 6 ('Sur la conduite du spectacle'). On the other hand, for subject matter to return several times, each in a different context, serves to link the sections of the work together, and, given the vast scope of the material explored, this is perhaps the most logical way of dealing with the various facets of the genre.

Naudeix examines the tragédie en musique during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV, a period that encompasses the canonical works of Lully and Rameau as well as other composers who sought to defend and perpetuate the genre. She notes that the production of new tragédies en musique nearly ceased around the time of Rameau's Zoroastre (1756), and the latest work addressed is Joliveau and Dauvergne's Polyxène (1763). In many respects, this time-frame makes good sense since it represents the period when the tragédie en musique was most actively represented in new works. In speaking of Rameau's Abaris ou Les Boréades, Naudeix posits of the work's abandonment after the composer's death that 'this disappearance marked the end of the genre's history' (p. 13). This standpoint is justified in the sense that Naudeix studies new works and their significance in the evolution of the tragédie en musique, but, although she recognizes the revivals of old works and eighteenth-century resettings of old librettos, she also posits that the libretto's independent existence apart from the score 'confuses the moment of the genre's disappearance as such' (p. 24). The implication seems to be that revivals and resettings lie outside the main development of the tragédie en musique. If this is indeed the case, it would be helpful to clarify or fully develop this point since several eighteenth-century settings of Quinault's librettos involve significant revisions to the texts and important musical alterations were made to Lully's tragédies en musique after the composer's death. One might...