Historical Dictionary of Opera by Balthazar Scott L

Author:Balthazar, Scott L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Scarecrow Press Inc.
Published: 2012-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

OPÉRA COMIQUE

Term applied by the late 19th century to French opera combining spoken dialogue and vocal and instrumental music, in contrast to opéra, which is set to music throughout (as is Italian opera buffa). It is reserved for works of greater artistic merit than the popular entertainments (including operettas) of the so-called boulevard theaters. And it encompasses an array of designations that were employed as the genre developed during the 18th and 19th centuries. At various points, “Opéra-Comique” (distinguished by the hyphen) was also the name of companies or theaters that performed such works (see PARIS).

French opera with spoken dialogue originated in the theaters of the Parisian spring and summer trade fairs (the St. Germain and the St. Laurent), termed the Opéra-Comique after 1715, and the rival Comédie-Italienne or Nouveau Théâtre Italien (after 1716). Before 1750, their comédies en vaudevilles and opéras comiques en vaudevilles—spoken plays that incorporate songs adapting preexisting, often popular melodies to new texts (vaudevilles)—traded in unsophisticated humor, social satire, and parody of the operas and plays of the official theaters (the Académie Royale de Musique, or Opéra, and the Comédie-Française). The first work to be designated “opéra comique” was Alain-René Lesage’s (1668–1747) parody (1715) of André Destouches’s (1672–1749) Télémaque et Calypso (1714).

Influenced by imported Italian intermezzos and opere buffe like those produced in Paris during the War of the Comedians (1752–54), and particularly by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Le devin du village, a French approximation of the Italian intermezzo that contained no spoken words, composers provided newly composed songs in the comédie mêlée d’ariettes (play interspersed with little arias) or a combination of new and adapted songs in the comédie en ariettes et en vaudevilles. While most of these set pieces were simple songs resembling vaudevilles, by the 1760s others embraced a richer Italianate lyricism and even incorporated vocal display (for the female leads), and duets and larger ensembles sometimes occurred. Subject matter also became more varied, well mannered, and sophisticated, leading librettists to qualify comédie with descriptive modifiers: féerie (magical/fairy), chevaleresque (medieval knightly/chivalric), larmoyant (sentimental/tearful), and villageois (rustic). Leaders in this style of opéra comique were Egidio Duni; chess player and composer François-André Danican Philidor (famous for his Tom Jones, 1765, based on Henry Fielding’s novel); André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry; and Nicolas-Marie Dalayrac (1753–1809, whose Nina, ou La folle par amour, 1786, was the source of Giovanni Paisiello’s Nina, 1789).

During the 1780s, serious subject matter appeared frequently, notably in Grétry’s Richard Coeur-de-lion (1784), as the lighthearted comédie mêlée d’ariettes declined. This trend climaxed following the Revolution in the works of Luigi Cherubini and Étienne-Nicolas Méhul, in which imperiled protagonists confront violent situations in settings that range from Gothic to classical (e.g., Cherubini’s Lodoïska, 1791, and Médée, 1797). They were designated as comédie héroïque, drame lyrique, drame mêlé de chants (drama interspersed with songs), fait historique (historical event, a recreation of a recent occurrence depicting the heroism of everyday people), or simply opéra. At this point the exception, truly comic operas often received the title opéra bouffon, particularly if they mimicked Italian opera buffa.

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