Selected for the France Musique-Claude Samuel 2021 Book Prize, “History of French Opera. From the Consulate to the Beginnings of the Third Republic” by Hervé Lacombe is published by Fayard.
The book
French opera is strongly determined by its link with the State, from its institutionalization by Louis XIV, who consecrated the genre of tragedy in music, until the inauguration in 1989 of the Opéra Bastille, wanted by François Mitterrand , on the occasion of the festivities of the bicentenary of the Revolution.
The nineteenth century is in France the era of piano, virtuosos, symphonic concerts, melody and salons but, more than anything, it is the time of opera. In Paris, in the provinces and in the colonies, in its spectacular form or by its innumerable arrangements, this already more than secular genre infiltrates all musical life and remains the object of special attention of the successive powers, from the Consulate to the beginnings. of the Third Republic. It continues to evolve and branch out, with the Grand Opera, the Comedy Opera, the Operetta and the Salon Opera, enriched with foreign contributions, from Rossini to Wagner, embodied in buildings that participate in the identity of a city, as evidenced by the Palais Garnier, and touches the various strata of society. Opera is thus as much a cultural phenomenon of considerable magnitude as an artistic object, the result of an industry as the fruit of an aesthetic. Soliciting the eyes, ears and emotions, manipulating ideas as well as imaginaries, he reflects and concentrates his time.
Besides some world famous titles – Carmen, Faust, Manon, Orpheus in the Underworld… -, there are hundreds of works that this century has created.
This lyrical continent remained to be explored in the diversity of its aspects. A story was therefore needed to tell the story and describe its mechanisms, to reconstitute its values and trends, to follow its actors and discover its institutions, its rooms, its practices, its themes, its productions …
An unprecedented company in terms of its size and design, this History of French opera in three volumes brings together an international team of over one hundred and fifty authors – musicologists, literary and philosophers, historians and specialists in theater, dance and the arts. It is placed under the direction ofHerve Lacombe.
Author
Herve Lacombe professor of musicology at Rennes 2 university.
- What is the place of this work in your career?
This work is the result of more than twenty years of research and reflection on French opera. It is the realization of a musicologist’s project, built over the long term, as much as a dream of a music lover and student: a story that I would have liked to be able to read, truly multidisciplinary.
- What did you try to show with this book?
I sought first of all to show the extraordinary richness of the nineteenth-century French repertoire, which is too often still limited to a handful of composers and a few works. It was also important to me to assert its quality and inventiveness, its operation and its “rules”, and also to show its deep inscription in the society of its time and on the whole territory. French opera is then more than French: played everywhere, it is truly international.
The goal was to study, with an international and multidisciplinary team, all the aspects of this protean object, strange as much as fascinating, that is the opera: artistic and cultural, social and political, administrative and economic aspects, etc. Without forgetting the performers and all the people, all the trades who have animated with their talent and made this total art possible.
- What are your next projects ?
The production of two other volumes: the first, devoted to French opera under the Ancien Régime and the Revolution. A last, devoted to French opera during the twentieth century.
It is indeed a question of producing a fresco in three books which, I hope, should renew our vision of the lyric theater in France but also, in doing so, allow to better understand the questions, still current, which accompanied its birth and achievements, crises and reforms.