An inauthentic term of convenience applied to those French operas of the Revolution period (and before) in which, as a climax, a leading character is delivered by another, or by several others, from moral and/or physical danger.
The term arose in late 19th- or early 20th-century German criticism, probably through interest in the close connection between Beethoven’s Fidelio (1805) and Gaveaux’s Parisian opéra comique Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal (1798). Modern criticism ought to seek more detailed alternatives (see §3 below), at a time when it is desirable to draw finer distinctions between operatic genres in general, and to understand the qualities intended by authentic genre designations (i.e. those of the late 18th century).
The unsatisfactory nature of the term is clear from the fact that no two published definitions in English will be found to agree (see Charlton, 1989). Furthermore, no single definition will satisfactorily cover the range of operas that are called as evidence of a ‘rescue’ tendency in the later 18th century. This is because to take the concept of ‘rescue’ as a main criterion does little more than relate such operas to that other familiar technique of 18th-century opera, the deus ex machina, or rescue through divine intervention. (Significantly, no-one has proposed a category of deus ex machina operas.)
Other factors regularly called as evidence of a distinct class of works are: ‘devotion to the ideals of “humanity”’ (D.J. Grout: A Short History of Opera, 1947); ‘the closer involvement of opera with real-life situations’ (H. Rosenthal and J. Warrack: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera, 2/1979); and the assurance that ‘freedom would always triumph over tyranny’ (C. Headington, R. Westbrook and T. Barfoot: Opera: a History, 1987).
One particular librettist was responsible for developing opéra comique stressing the dimension of ‘freedom’: Michel-Jean Sedaine (1719–97). In Le roi et le fermier (1762) Jenny has escaped from her place of abduction; in Le déserteur (1769) Alexis is freed from the death cell through the exertions of his betrothed; in Richard Coeur-de-lion (1784) the king is rescued by force of arms from detention in an Austrian castle. In these and other cases Sedaine set up a moral dilemma in which the theme of ‘unjust detention’ provides the dramatic mainspring. The reasons for the detention are different in each opera, and there is no uniformity concerning those responsible for instigating the detention. The unjust detention remains a dramatic means, not an end in itself. Popular theatre (for example in melodrama) exploited similar themes, especially in the 1780s, but emphasized scenic effects, danger and the act of physical rescue. Thus ‘rescue opera’ of the 1790s took over these spectacular elements from popular theatre, but without making the physical rescue the purpose of the whole.
Three types of opera can be discerned (this division has no bearing on the style of music composed for them). ‘Tyrant’ operas personified injustice by portraying an evil character. Examples are Méhul’s Euphrosine and H.-M. Berton’s Les rigueurs du cloître (both 1790); the Lodoïska operas by Cherubini and Rodolphe Kreutzer (both 1791); Dalayrac’s Camille (also 1791) and Le Sueur’s La caverne (1793). ‘Humanitarian’ operas did not portray any tyrant, even if one was supposed to exist, but stressed the individual sacrifices necessary in righting a wrong and obtaining freedom. Examples are Dalayrac’s Raoul sire de Créqui (1789) and Cherubini’s Les deux journées (1800). In the third type there is no connection with a place of detention, but a natural catastrophe (at some level equating with divine justice) suggests the existence of moral transgression. Examples are the Paul et Virginie operas by Kreutzer (1791) and Le Sueur (1794), Méhul’s Mélidore et Phrosine (1794) and Cherubini’s Elisa (also 1794).
R.M. Longyear: ‘Notes on the Rescue Opera’, MQ, xlv (1959), 49–66
M.E.C. Bartlet: Etienne Nicolas Méhul and Opera during the French Revolution, Consulate and Empire (diss., U. of Chicago, 1982)
W. Dean: ‘French Opera’, The Age of Beethoven, 1790–1830, NOHM, viii (1982) 26–119, esp. 70
M.M. Root-Bernstein: Boulevard Theatre and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Ann Arbor, 1984)
J. Mongrédien: Introduction to J.-F. Le Sueur: La caverne, FO, lxxiv (1985)
D. Charlton: Grétry and the Growth of Opéra-Comique (Cambridge, 1986)
J. Mongrédien: La musique en France des Lumières au Romantisme, 1780–1830 (Paris, 1986; Eng. trans., 1996)
Y. Ferraton: ‘“Léonore” de Gaveaux ou l’incertitude d’un genre’, Esotismo e spaesamento nella drammaturgia musicale: Venice 1988
D. Charlton: ‘On Redefinitions of “Rescue Opera”’, Music and the French Revolution: Cardiff 1989, 169–88
S. Döhring: ‘Die Rettungsoper: Musiktheater im Wechselspiel politischer und ästhetischer Prozesse’, Beethoven: zwischen Revolution und Restauration, ed. H. Lühning and S. Brandenburg (Bonn, 1989) 109–36
R. Legrand: ‘L’information politique par l’opéra: l’exemple de la prise de Toulon’, Le tambour et la harpe: oeuvres … musicales sous la Révolution: Lyons 1989, 111–21
H. Lühning: ‘Florestans Kerker im Rampenlicht: zur Tradition des Sotterraneo’, Beethoven: zwischen Revolution und Restauration, ed. H. Lühning and S. Brandenburg (Bonn, 1989), 137–204
M.E.C. Bartlet: Introduction to E.-N. Méhul: Mélidore et Phrosine, FO, lxxiii (1990)
M. Fend: ‘Literary Motifs, Musical Form and the Quest for the “Sublime”: Cherubini’s Eliza ou le voyage aux glaciers du Mont St Bernard’, COJ, v (1993), 17–38
M.E. McClellan: Battling over the Lyric Muse: Expressions of Revolution and Counterrevolution at the Théâtre Feydeau, 1789–1801 (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1994)
D. Charlton: French Opera, 1730–1830: Meaning and Media (Aldershot, 2000)
DAVID CHARLTON