Registered Tribunale di Lucca – RG n. 1323/2017 | ISSN 2532-9995 | © Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini. All rights reserved.

Perspectives on the French Musical Press in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Mark Everist

  • Introduction. Trading in the Unthinkable

Mark Everist (University of Southampton) | M.Everist@southampton.ac.uk

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  • Marmontel/[Piccinni] on Neapolitan Opera

Beverly Jerold (Princeton Research Forum) | bvjerold@gmail.com

Abstract
As the new year of 1777 broke upon Paris, the writer and librettist Jean-François Marmontel unexpectedly and repeatedly found himself the target of anonymous ridicule and sarcasm in the brand new Journal de Paris, the first daily newspaper to be established in France (and held a monopoly).  This incited the querellebetween the Gluckists and the Piccinnists, an unusual episode to be treated in a future publication. Its events inspired Mar­montel’s epic poem Polymnie, most of which he de­clined to pub­lish until after his death because it involved recognizable personalities. However, the first four cantos, which concern historical figures and aesthetic princi­ples of opera, were published in 1787. While modern reference works have labeled Polymniea “satire,” it is instead an accurate rendering of events that can be documented. As the librettist for Niccolò Piccinni’s first Paris opera Roland, Marmontel gained from him the details about Italian opera and its leading figures that he conveyed inPolymnie. On the one hand, it is oblique criticism of the French vocal style; on the other, it cites Italian opera’s chief defect — the emphasis on extravagant embellishment by its star singers. The work is named for Polyhymnia, one of the nine muses, whose efforts on behalf of a natural, unaffected style of song and singing are related. In a charming fashion, Polymnieoutlines the primary figures of Neapolitan opera and its charac­teristics, which include the pre-eminence of beautiful melody.

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  • Altruism and the Artiste: Jules Janin, Nicolò Paganini, and the Ethics of Artistry

Kristen Strandberg (University of Evansville, IN) | ks532@evansville.edu

Abstract
Throughout the 1830s critics including Jules Janin attacked Niccolò Paganini for his lack of generosity, claiming that the violinist refused to play concerts benefitting the poor (even though archival letters confirm that Paganini did participate). Numerous critics discussed charity as a necessary component of artistry, and Janin cited Paganini’s selfishness as proof that the violinist was not an artiste. In December 1838, however, following Paganini’s monetary gift to Hector Berlioz, Janin retracted his words, claiming that Paganini’s generosity proved his place in the “glorious brotherhood of artists.” I argue that the trajectory of Janin’s criticism demonstrates the connection between altruism and artistry in nineteenth-century France, as well as critical hesitation to designate a foreign performer as an artiste. Janin’s criticism further shows the journal’s affinity for sensationalism, due to both its readership and to contemporary literary trends with which Janin himself was directly involved.

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  • Adolphe Adam, porte-parole de «l’école française» de l’opéra-comique.
    Inventaire et étude synthétique de ses critiques musicales (1833-1856)

Matthieu Cailliez (Université Grenoble Alpes) | matthieu.cailliez@yahoo.fr

Abstract
Between 1833 and 1856, the composer Adolphe Adam published more than 360 articles devoted to music in about fifteen Parisian journals and periodicals: L’Impartial, La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, La France musicale, Le Constitutionnel, L’Assemblée nationale, etc. Consequently, this number brings the author of the operas-comiques Le Chalet and Le Postillon de Lonjumeau and the ballet Giselle, close to his colleagues and contemporaries Castil-Blaze and Hector Berlioz, authors of, according to the musicologist Séverine Féron, around eight and nine hundred articles (respectively) of musical criticism. Adam’s activity in this area is primarily concentrated in the Second Republic and the Second Empire. The composer thus counts 99 articles published between 1833 and 1847, with an average of six articles per year, against 267 articles published between 1848 and 1856, with an average of twenty-nine articles per year. Our inventory of Adam’s musical criticism has already been the subject of two presentations in November 2015 in Lucca and Bologna. We thus propose to study the role that Adam played in the “French school” of opéra-comique: a genre often described in the nineteenth century as “eminently national.” While Boieldieu, Hérold, and Auber only rarely expressed their ideas in the Parisian press, Adam’s articles of musical criticism represent, in our view, an important complement to Berlioz and Castil-Blaze’s articles. They allow us to compare the aesthetics of the principal spokesperson of the “French school” of opéra-comique with that of the great Romantic French composer and that of the important translator of Italian operas.

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  • «Les Grands oratorios à l’église Saint-Eustache» and the Parisian Press

Jennifer Walker (West Virginia University) | jennifer.walker2@mail.wvu.edu

Abstract
In 1900, “Les Grands oratorios à l’église Saint-Eustache” garnered significant and controversial critical press coverage. While the series’ reception was generally supportive, opposition from high-ranking government and church officials recalled timeworn debates surrounding “appropriate” utilizations of sacred space, arguments which masked an underlying fear that the so-called “theater of Saint-Eustache” marked the Catholic church’s defeat to the “secularizing” influence of the Third Republic.At first glance, this dichotomy seems to support the often-claimed incompatibility between Catholic traditionalists and “secular” Republicans. A closer examination, however, reveals that the Parisian press configured music to act as a mediator between conflicting cultural, political, and religious networks. By analyzing the narratives created by the programming choices and their critical reception, I demonstrate how these concerts functioned simultaneously as a model of religious devotion through sacred music and as a symbol of Republican ideology, thus creating a Republican identity that was simultaneously sacred and secular.

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  • The Parisian Press on Werther in Vienna

Lesley Wright (The University of Hawai’i at Manoa) | wright@hawaii.edu

Abstract
While the Austrian reaction to the world premiere of Werther in Vienna (February 1892) and the French reaction to its Parisian premiere (January 1893) have received attention from scholars and biographers, the response of the Parisian press to Massenet’s 1892 success in the home of Mozart and Beethoven has been largely omitted from Werther’s story. By the beginning of the 1890s Massenet was a truly notable figure in French music—a professor at the Conservatoire, member of the Institut, and author of several much admired operas from the 1880s, notably Manonand Esclarmondeat the Opéra-Comique andLe Cid at the Opéra. Léon Carvalho’s refusal in 1887 to accept the somber Wertherfor the Opéra-Comique was widely known. Unjustly blamed for the disastrous fire of 1887, he was able to return to the helm of this theater in 1891, and a wish to exploit this turn of events may partially explain the amount of attention focused on Massenet’s successful premiere abroad. Vienna was, in any case, recognized as a sophisticated capital of the German-speaking world, and what happened there mattered in Paris. Looking at the articles generated by the Parisian press in 1891-1892 and placing them in the proper contexts gives insight into issues of cultural transfer and “pre-reception”. This study examines articles about Wertherin the daily papers and various theatrical and/or musical publications (the insertions, background pieces, telegrams, reviews, translations of the foreign press, and so on). These texts may relay information from the theater, publisher, authors and/or performers, but they also mirror French pride in the success of a native son, chagrin at having been trumped by a foreign capital for the premiere of an important new work, and fair amount of curiosity. Together these articles increased pressure for performance of the work in a Parisian theater. Going back as far as 1879, these varied texts also tell us about the relationship of two musical worlds, the functions and tools of the press in a “pre-reception,” and/or the networks used by Massenet and his skilled, well-placed collaborators.

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