La dramaturgie de Gustave Charpentier by Michela Niccolai (review)

Musicologists have long viewed Gustave Charpentier as a relatively marginal figure of the fin-de-siècle, dwarfed by Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Claude Debussy. The present volume challenges this view. While this book does little to overturn Charpentier's status as a "one-hit wonder," best known for his opera Louise, it demonstrates the deep connections between Charpentier's aesthetic, his political and social context, and his interest in educational and social programs. Niccolai portrays a composer fully in touch with modernity, who created fluid works repeatedly adapted for new performance venues and media, including radio and film. Thus the book, a revision of Niccolai's dissertation, will be of interest to all scholars interested in the intersections of drama and modernity in a social context.

The first part of the book, "Histoire de dix ans d'activité créatrice (1890-1900)," contains four unnumbered chapters, focusing chiefly on Charpentier's early activities in the Montmartre district of Paris, and culminating in an analysis of La couronnement de la muse (1897). The first chapter of this section, which surveys the surviving archival sources, would perhaps fit better as part of the book's introduction. Next, an exhaustive chapter places Charpentier and his work in context. Montmartre, where Charpen tier lived most of his life, was known both for its bohemians and its political radicals; Montmartre's centrality to Charpentier's aesthetic becomes a secondary thesis for the book. Consequently, Niccolai describes the cafés and cabarets (Charpentier briefly worked at the arts journal Chat noir), the rise of syndicalism and musicians' unions, and "universités populaires" for the working classes. Niccolai then analyzes the rise of naturalist theater as championed by Émile Zola and practiced by André Antoine's Théâtre-Libre, and discusses the influence of chansons and cabaret performance on Louise.

The following two chapters describe Charpentier's La couronnement de la muse de Montmartre, which served as part of a bohemian festival called the Vachalcade in 1897. Here Niccolai argues convincingly for the significance of the Couronnement—a public theater piece in which a working woman was elected as the Muse of Montmartre—as an independent artwork in its own right. This analysis stands in contrast to Steven Huebner's discussion of the Couronnement as a kind of elaborate promotion for Louise (French Opera at the Fin de Siècle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999], 455-58). For while the Couronnement was derived from Charpentier's as-yet-unperformed opera and generated great publicity, the composer altered the material significantly (p. 117) and continued to work on the piece after Louise's premiere (p. 123). Further, Niccolai notes the Couronnement's connection to Charpentier's Chant d'apothéose, written for Victor Hugo's centenary, and the occasional use of the "La Marseillaise" as a conclusion to the Couronnement, hinting at its ability to assume political and social significance beyond its original venue. Finally, Niccolai lists fifty-four known productions of the Couronnement from 1897 to 1951 (pp. 144-45), demonstrating the work's continuing popularity throughout France.

The second part of the book, "Présentation de Louise à l'Opéra-Comique de Paris," is divided into three chapters which center, in turn, on Charpentier's creative process, the aesthetic behind Albert Carré's staging of Louise at the Opéra-Comique, and the staging itself. In these chapters, the focus is on the staging rather than the music or the text, with reproductions of sets and costumes playing a major role (pp. 242-69); Niccolai argues that staging is an intrinsic part of Charpentier's text (p. 231). While the author claims that "The three moments of creation—libretto, music, and staging—are always bound together in the composer's imagination" (p. 231; all translations of quotations from the text are my own), her analysis focuses on the visual to the detriment of the other two elements. Charpentier's...