French Baroque Opera: A Reader (review)

French Baroque Opera: A Reader. Edited by Caroline Wood and Graham Sadler. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2000. [ix, 160 p. ISBN 1-84014-241-3. $69.95.]

"Every sea monster, for example, should be at least 18 feet long by 6 feet wide with an aperture in its head that could gobble up a twenty-year-old; how ridiculous a monster seems if it is reduced to snapping like a common guard dog. That is truly ignoble" (p. 125). So opined a Burgundian noblewoman in response to a court performance of Jean-Baptiste Lully's opera Persée in 1747. This delightfully evocative and historically telling statement joins a remarkably varied and revealing collection of source readings now easily accessible in English, thanks to Carolyn Wood and Graham Sadler's French Baroque Opera: A Reader. Because interest in this repertory is burgeoning and little of the diverse literature generated by French opera is readily available in English, the book's aim is "to present a coherent sequence of translations which, between them, provide a wide-ranging and informative survey of the organization and evolution of French baroque opera, its aims and aspirations, its strengths and weaknesses" (p. viii). One can happily add "and its reception" to this list.

Avoiding materials easily available elsewhere, Wood and Sadler have wisely chosen from a wide variety of sources, including official documents, theoretical and polemical writings, letters, newspaper reports, diaries, dictionary entries, reviews, and commentaries. Almost without exception, their selections and fluent translations easily convey to the general reader the multifaceted aspects of the French baroque operatic world. Indeed, even the French baroque scholar may find some surprises, such as the commentary on operatic monsters cited above.

In lieu of the more traditional chronological design, the editors have usefully organized the selections by six main topics, each of which forms a chapter: "The Paris Opéra (1672-1770): Management and Mismanagement," "The Experience of Opera-Going," "Dramatic and Musical Ingredients," "Literary Theory and Aesthetics," "Critical Reaction and Debate," and "Performances and Personalities." Within chapters, the readings are further organized by subtopic, with brief introductions to provide context. Thus chapter 3, "Dramatic and Musical Ingredients"--which one could easily assign in its entirety to students in an opera survey course--includes more than thirty selections and such subtopics as "The Libretto," "Music and Drama: French and Italian Opera Compared," and "Musico-dramatic Units." This organization often allows for contrasting views on a particular topic, and sometimes a comparison of opinion across time. For example, under "Revivals of the Old Repertoire," selections that date from the 1730s to 1756 reveal first positive and then negative responses to such revivals (pp. 114-17).

A glossary, which includes genre-specific terms such as "divertissement," "quinte," and "le merveilleux," provides a useful aid to the general reader. Other aspects of the introductory and organizational apparatus, however, may leave that same reader somewhat perplexed. Although a whole chapter is devoted to "management and mismanagement," the editors have chosen neither to translate job-related designations like "auditeur ordinaire en sa chambre des comptes" (king's commissioner of the audit, an important and expensive position purchased by Lully's librettist, Philippe Quinault) nor to supply in the glossary or a footnote some explanation of what such positions entailed. Most problematic in this regard are the posts of inspecteur général and directeur, whose respective duties cannot easily be deduced from their English cognates or from the readings; to oversimplify --because these duties changed over time --the former made the musical decisions and the latter oversaw administrative details such as the rehearsal and performance schedules. (For a discussion of this complicated topic, see Lois Rosow, "From Destouches to Berton: Editorial Responsibility at the Paris Opéra," Journal of the American Musicological Society 40 [1987]: 285-309.)

The brief introductions to each subsection usually serve the general reader well. Too often, however, the editors assume the reader's familiarity with particular authors. For example, one needs to look beyond this monograph...