(Fr.).
French opera of the Romantic period, sung throughout, generally in five acts, grandiose in conception and impressively staged.
2. Antecedents and earliest examples.
3. Meyerbeer and his contemporaries.
M. ELIZABETH C. BARTLET
A grand style was frequently considered essential for works written for the Paris Opéra. Even in Lully’s day contemporaries occasionally referred to tragédies en musique as ‘grands opéras’, although librettists and composers preferred designations underlining the literary genre in lyric setting. It was not until the early 19th century, however, that the term ‘grand opéra’ became current. Castil-Blaze, for example, defined it as sung throughout (in contrast to opéra comique, which had spoken dialogue) and performed at the Opéra: in his opinion, Gluck, Piccinni and Spontini were the masters of the genre, which required nobility of subject and of tone. The librettist Jouy concurred, but also argued for an expansion to five acts and for plots drawn from heroic historical events as well as from other more conventional sources. By the 1830s ‘grand opéra’ had entered common parlance and was applied to the repertory then dominant – no longer by Gluck and his contemporaries, but by Rossini, Auber, Halévy and, above all, Meyerbeer. Modern scholars usually follow this latter, more restrictive practice, but on the scores and librettos themselves only ‘opéra’ (or occasionally ‘opéra historique’) normally appears.
Grands opéras of the 1830s and later are sometimes in four acts but more often in five, instead of the three preferred in most works in repertory at the Opéra in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They have plots set in medieval or modern times (rather than taken from classical history and mythology) which exploit strongly melodramatic and violent situations, with sudden shifts, nearly always ending tragically; they often include major characters from the lower or otherwise disadvantaged classes, portraying them in a heroic light (hitherto a treatment reserved for gods, kings and aristocrats); and they may present controversial themes – religious intolerance or rebellion against oppression, for instance. Government bodies and agents, such as censors, saw in the genre a possible vehicle for the expression of political and social critique that required supervision and control. The reactions of contemporary audiences indicate that they also interpreted grands opéras in the light of current situations, contrary to the intentions of authors and officials.
The forces required to perform a grand opéra were enormous: there were many leading characters and secondary roles; the chorus often represented different groups in conflict; the ballet assumed a more extensive role; the orchestra grew in size and variety (with instruments like the ophicleide, triangle, cymbals and bass drum becoming standard members rather than exceptions) and special orchestral effects abounded (offstage instruments, muting and so on). The scores contain a wide range of formal types and styles. Virtuoso italianate airs, extensive in range and requiring a formidable technique, contrast with relatively simple romances. Solo music is often part of larger complexes. Choruses and long ensembles, conceived to advance the drama in as impressive a way as possible, dominate tableaux. Romantic interest in local colour and in pageantry led to a revolution in several aspects of staging – in the style of scenery and costumes, the placement and movement of soloists and chorus and in techniques of lighting. Spectacle, long a feature of French opera, achieved new heights.
Gluck’s operas were significant models. Particularly important for his successors were his handling of the chorus, his more thorough integration of spectacle into the drama and his structuring of scenes made up of discrete units (chorus, dances, airs) into a cohesive whole (by tonal relationships and repetition of key pieces). Composers built on this heritage, enriching the harmonic vocabulary, using stronger dissonance for dramatic effect, enlarging the orchestra and sometimes writing a more symphonic part for it, and increasing the role of the chorus (as in Cherubini’s Démophon, 1788, and Méhul’s Adrien, 1799). Gluckian balance and classicism began to give way to a more emphatic and dynamic conception. Plots from medieval and modern history became more common; several glorified the heroism of French republicans from the lower classes (for example Louis Jadin’s Le siège de Thionville, 1793).
During the Consulate and Empire Napoleon sought to have the Opéra serve the state: specific works were commissioned as propaganda, and more generally, the theatre was to be the showcase for serious and grandiose art. The composer who best met such aesthetic goals was Spontini. His Fernand Cortez (1809) combines an exotic setting, strong melodramatic turns in the plot, conflict between two races and religions with musical characterizations to match, especially in the choruses, and much pageantry with spectacular tableaux (such as a cavalry charge and the burning of the Aztec temple). His works were the immediate sources for grand opéra.
Just before the downfall of Charles X two key works had their premières in Paris: Auber’s La muette de Portici (1828) and Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (1829). La muette de Portici combines two historical events, the Naples 1647 Revolution and the 1631 eruption of Vesuvius, as the backdrop for a fictional account. The lowly-born heroine, seduced by the viceroy’s son, is mute and expresses herself through pantomime (a technique of the boulevard theatres and the ballet d’action). The crowd scenes, the integration of dance into the drama, the construction of huge finales and impressive scenery and stage effects contributed to its success. Like Spontini, Rossini combined italianate lyricism with elements from the French tradition. Guillaume Tell exploits local colour in a musical depiction of nature, the grandeur of the Swiss Alps and the piety and patriotism of its inhabitants. The second-act finale, in which each of the three cantons is given its own character, builds to a climax at the end: a powerful, unifying oath. The chorus often takes centre stage; the title character has no independent air but is presented in dramatically charged ensembles in which he seeks to persuade, to provide leadership, to oppose tyranny. The length of these two operas and the degree to which the people in action are prominent in crowd scenes of dramatic importance set them apart from the works of the Empire. Their plots, combining fiction and historical events, also conform to grand opéra.
What also struck contemporaries as new was their staging. In 1827, recognizing the need for change, the Opéra established a ‘comité de mise en scène’ to judge costume and set designs and other aspects of staging from the technical and artistic point of view. Ciceri, in charge of the sets, went to Switzerland and Italy (partly at government expense) to acquire first-hand experience to create an aura of authenticity (and to see how La Scala handled a volcanic eruption in Pacini’s L’ultimo giorno di Pompei). Further, La muette and Tell were among the first major productions to benefit from the supervision of Solomé, formerly of the Comédie-Française: his mise-en-scène booklets show that, among several innovations, he forced the chorus to act, to use gesture, to adopt unusual positions (such as kneeling) for dramatic effect and to move in asymmetrical patterns.
Robert le diable (1831) was the work in which Meyerbeer made his successful début in grand opéra at the Opéra. It was followed by three more operas on Scribe librettos that were to dominate the Paris stage for much of the rest of the century: Les Huguenots (1836), Le prophète (1849) and L’Africaine (1865). Other composers working with Scribe include Halévy (La Juive, 1835) and Auber (Gustave III, 1833).
An eminent man of the theatre, Scribe chose themes of great power. Robert le diable is somewhat apart in its mixture of medieval legend, superstition, the supernatural and passionate love (due in part to its origins as an opéra-comique). Thereafter, he selected historical subjects, often with a possible contemporary application as a background for a story of tragic passion. In La Juive religions (Jewish and Christian) clash, and fatherly love (Eléazar and Brogni) cannot save Rachel. Examples of religious strife among Christians in France and in Germany, among other themes, are featured in Les Huguenots and Le prophète. Opposition to political reform and betrayal of friendship are intertwined in Gustave III. In L’Africaine the inability of Europeans to understand exotic culture leads to tragedy. Scribe was not a crusading reformer but a practical playwright presenting his audience with material he knew would interest them. His librettos provided no easy solutions to the problems of fanaticism, corruption and hatred. Except in Robert le diable, most of the sympathetic characters are crushed by forces beyond their control. But Scribe’s texts, in which strong dramatic situations are starkly presented without extended development, gave his musicians ample scope for intensely emotional settings. Concealment, coincidence and misunderstandings allow for sudden shifts in direction and melodramatic scenes. The final catastrophe is striking theatre – whether Rachel’s immolation in La Juive (fig.3) or the fate of John and the Anabaptists in Le prophète.
Meyerbeer’s eclectic style was ideally suited to Scribe’s librettos. With a Germanic approach to harmony and tonal structures, experience in Italian lyricism and a commitment to French traditions of declamation and dramatic stage presentation, he produced rich scores of vast scope. He created huge tableaux so that the music could give support to the text’s broad gestures. In L’Africaine, for example, most of the first act is one long morceau d’ensemble and finale, which comprehends the piety of the Spaniards, Vasco’s leadership, their bravery in rescuing African slaves and the consequences. The opposing groups, Europeans and Africans, as well as the leading characters, have individual musical characterizations; and Meyerbeer made excellent use of the orchestra, developing for the Africans traditional ‘exotic’ gestures in motif and instrumentation more fully than had been done before.
The isolated air has a less important role. Many solo pieces are embedded in larger structures. Raimbaut’s ballad, for example, forms part of the introduction of Robert le diable, and also exemplifies Meyerbeer’s use of a simple, varied strophic form and largely syllabic vocal style, contrasting with the more fully scored choral sections. Long, virtuoso italianate airs are generally reserved for the heroine. The chorus becomes a personage in its own right and a vital participant. The variety of the choral writing is always closely matched to the dramatic situation. The divertissements also provided the opportunity for contrast, from relatively simple dances to more complicated pantomime, airs, choruses and ensembles, linked to form a larger whole. To achieve the grand gestures and the temporal length to correspond to the action on stage, Meyerbeer relied on several devices, including sequence and the repetition of long blocks.
In their stage sets designers often sought to represent specific sites rather than generic locations. Les Huguenots has the chateau of Chenonceaux in the background. The fourth act of Le prophète is set in the public square and cathedral of Münster. So elaborate did sets become that, from Gustave III onwards, it became common to have a different atelier prepare each act (and sometimes separate scenes within acts) rather than assigning overall responsibility to a single person.
Innovation in mise-en-scène was an admired feature. The scene in Robert le diable that most impressed the audience was the finale of Act 3, where, in Ciceri’s set – a cloister modelled on a 16th-century monument in Montfort-l’Amaury, bathed in moonlight (an atmosphere of mystery achieved with gas lighting, introduced a few years earlier) – the ghosts of debauched nuns appear as if by magic to dance a bacchanale (fig.4). Scribe strove for the unusual in his use of spectacle, and his Opéra collaborators contributed their imaginative realization by employing the advances of the industrial revolution. Le prophète, for example, was the first work to use electric lighting, which, according to contemporaries, re-created for the skating scene the impression of a winter dawn with startling realism. The darkening of the house during performance and the lowering of the curtain for changes of scenery helped reinforce theatrical illusion.
Grand opéra had a significant effect on the culture of 19th-century France. For the aristocracy and the upper bourgeoisie, the Opéra was above all the place to see works of theatrical art and to be seen as leading members of society. Journalists, both left- and right-wing, through their reviews of grands opéras, sought to make political statements and social critiques. Numerous writers found in the genre aesthetic inspiration or at least stimulation, Stendhal, Balzac, Sand, Gautier and Flaubert among them. The models of French grand opéra were crucial for Wagner and Verdi (quite apart from their own works for Paris within the grand opéra tradition, Wagner’s revised Tannhäuser, 1861, and Verdi’s Les vêpres siciliennes, 1855, and Don Carlos, 1867), as well as for Gounod and Saint-Saëns and many of their contemporaries. Wagner’s Rienzi and Verdi’s Aida are obvious examples: both profited from the tableau approach to dramatic and musical organization, and in both the chorus has an important role. Berlioz adopted and moulded in a highly original way the grand opéra form for his greatest opera, Les Troyens.
But the influence of grand opéra goes beyond derivative elements. The genre had provided a laboratory for the development of the Romantic orchestra and orchestral textures and effects. Berlioz learnt from this, as did Wagner and Verdi even in their later operas. The integration in more continuous musical units of disparate elements is fundamental to Gounod, Massenet and Saint-Saëns. The strong reactions against certain elements in grand opéra, whether by Wagner (who in Oper und Drama termed it ‘effects without causes’) or the drame lyrique composers, are further evidence of the genre’s vitality and dominance on the European lyric stage.
The legacy of grand opéra goes beyond musical and dramatic features. Its aesthetics, which valued visual display as well as aural satisfaction, resulted in a new importance in the theatrical hierarchy for three people: the set designer, the costumer and the metteur-en-scène. They, and the machiniste (responsible for the realization of special effects), were consulted in the realization of works and were often cited in the librettos after the author of the text and composer. Huge sums were spent for premières: it was no longer acceptable to use stock costumes and sets with minor adjustments; innovation was expected. In reviews, critics often dwelt on their contribution. The modern view, which allows, indeed expects, creativity from the equivalent today of the metteur-en-scène, the director, is a heritage, however unwitting, of grand opéra.
Grand opéra dominated the Parisian stage for over half a century. Guillaume Tell and Les Huguenots (among others) remained part of the standard repertory there until World War II, and both achieved more than 800 performances at the Opéra. In the 19th century grand opéra was exported elsewhere – from New Orleans to Prague, from Havana to St Petersburg. For most of Europe, French opera and opera singers were as important as Italian and far ahead of German and other national traditions. Critical editions of Meyerbeer and other grand opéra composers and further research into historical performance aspects, such as staging, would surely encourage a better understanding and appreciation of what for many Romantics was at the summit of the theatrical and music arts.
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