Mark Darlow asserts that ‘we understand Revolutionary culture far better than we did a decade or so ago’ (p. 9), and he is right. A dazzling number of recent publications, including his own, reflect the current scholarly interest in this period amongst English-speaking academics. The author, a senior lecturer at Cambridge, also is correct in noting that despite the many studies to have come out on specific composers, theatres, forms and genres (listed in his bibliography of secondary sources) ‘the full story of the Opéra's trajectory during the Revolution has never been told’ (p. 6).
Staging the French Revolution is a fascinating and thoroughly researched volume that contributes to the cultural, institutional and musical history of the Opéra. Its author describes it as ‘an account of theatrical institutions, linked up with politics and reception’ (p. 9). He therefore sets out to examine the political context in which important works of the period were premièred by investigating the nature and extent of state intervention in French theatres. He also examines how these works, produced for the most prestigious stage in the nation, were received by the French public, and the influence they had on the social views of the French citizenry, a phenomenon that has not been examined up until now.
The eight chapters of the book fall into two parts. The first four relate to what the author calls the ‘external dimension’ of the institution: the Opéra's relationship with state and municipal authorities, its ownership, its funding and its governance. The second part deals with the ‘internal aspect’: repertory, production process, reception and, most interestingly, revisions made in response to audience reaction, or after a change of regime. The critical apparatus includes a bibliography of manuscript sources, periodicals, printed primary and secondary sources, and an index of names, stage works and terms, with some surprising entries such as ‘bail amphytéotique’ (long lease), ‘inflation’, ‘subsidy’ and ‘taste’. A companion website offers full references to the primary musical documents and the longer original French quotations, translated into English in the text. The decision to offload to this website the author's brief chronology of the Revolution and a glossary of common terms used in the period is regrettable. These short appendices would be much more useful if included in the volume itself.
The first part of the book gives a gripping account of the relationship between the Opéra and its successive governing authorities: the Crown, the City of Paris, private entrepreneurs operating under a ‘privilège’, a self-managing collective of artists from the Opéra itself, the Assemblée Nationale, and finally the Commune. Some organs of government, such as the Comité d'instruction publique and the Comité de sureté générale, also exercised oversight and control over the theatres. What might surprise the modern reader is that in July of 1789 the Revolution did not break out as suddenly and violently on the lyric stage as it did in life in general. There had already been numerous changes in the administration of the Opéra during the 1780s and the first years of the Revolution era were a relatively stable period by comparison. In fact, during the period examined by Darlow, at least until the Terror (1793), the majority of the repertoire dated from before 1789. This is explained by the fact that new works required a relatively long gestation period; approximately 18 months lapsed between the first reading of a libretto by a committee and its final production on stage. The continued presence in the repertoire of five of Gluck's operas (Alceste, Armide, Orphée and both Iphigénies) until 1794 speaks eloquently of a strong element of continuity in the midst of the upheavals of the new order. Gluck's link with the Ancien Régime did not make him persona non grata on stage. It was only in September 1793 that things changed quite drastically. The adoption of the Revolutionary calendar was but one of the major changes imposed by the authorities to make the advent of a new order very clear. Even if the name ‘Académie Royale de Musique’ disappeared in 1793, the Opéra survived as a theatre because it was deemed to have a role in civic education and for this reason enjoyed a special status. According to Darlow, the grounds for such a status were threefold: a recognition of the fact that musical theatre is less politically incendiary than spoken theatre (p. 10); the widely held belief that the institution was an object of national pride (p. 22); and, more surprisingly, a desire to preserve an important tourist attraction that could bring much needed revenues into the city's coffers (p. 113). Consequently, the nation's lyric stage continued its activities almost without interruption during the tumultuous period of the Revolution, operating approximately 245 nights a year, as can be gathered from the tables provided in the book. (pp. 198–202)
Looking at only five years in the life of a single institution such as the Opéra is like examining it through a magnifying glass. The decision to change its name from Académie Royale de Musique to Opéra National, and to transform the Comédie Française into a Théâtre de la Nation, for example, raises the question of what the terms Nation and National mean when applied to a French theatre. Do they define French national identity? Not necessarily, notes Darlow. Rather, they seem more linked to the notion of prestige, even luxury (pp. 21–8). The conflict between liberty and privilege was an issue that provoked much debate at the time, as it still does today. The status of theatres as either communal property or private enterprise was at the centre of debate. Librettist Nicolas-Étienne Framery claimed in 1790 that ‘the burden of subsidy should not fall upon taxpayers unconcerned with the institution itself’ (p. 110) – sentence that could have been written today, could it not? This argument led to the Le Chapelier report, read before the Assemblée Constituante in 1791 and made into law a few days later. Drawing on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, the law allowed any citizen to operate a theatre, as long as the municipality was informed. However, major theatres could run at a loss, and the State, ‘for reasons of national prestige’, would cover any deficit. Moreover, since these expensive spectacles ‘created work for the urban people out of the entertainment of the rich’, the Comité du salut public continued to subsidize the Opéra for economic reasons: the livelihood of 1,200 families depended on it.
The second part of the book deals mainly with repertory, being concerned above all with ‘the relationship of the institution with the state and the reasons governing the choice of works’ (p. 185). Statistical analysis of the repertory includes tables of monthly receipts, numbers of performances, gate receipts by month and year, revivals, new productions and gross receipts for each of these. Again, some information provided is surprising: as late as 19 September 1791, Marie-Antoinette was at the Opéra, attending a performance of Rameau's Castor et Pollux. Darlow explains how the libretto was adapted so as not to sound too ‘Ancien Régime’. He quotes a passage in which, for example, the phrase ‘Ô divine amitié!’ was changed to ‘Ô céleste Raison’, a revision that was imposed by the Commune and later condemned by the Comité d'instruction publique (pp. 229–30). This is one of the many examples of the findings in the author's extensive analysis of the files in the Archives Nationales, not only those in the section AJ/13 concerning the Opéra, but also those from the Comité d'instruction publique, and the meetings of the Comité available at the Bibliothèque de l'Opéra.Footnote 1
Amongst the new works staged between 1789 and 1794 were those of Jean-Baptiste Moyne dit Lemoyne, a pupil of Gluck, whose Nephté (39 performances) was very well received. His Louis IX en Égypte (10 performances) was novel in its provocative use of royal personages as actual on-stage characters, ‘an unspoken taboo of the Ancient Régime’ (p. 255). After the king's flight to Varennes it might seem awkward, at best, and reactionary, at worst, to deal with such a topic; but the historical Saint Louis who cared for his subjects was an exception. Moreover, the exotic setting of the work would have made this breach of protocol more acceptable. However, the timing was all wrong, as the Assembly was just then pursuing a policy of secularization and Lemoyne's opera was set in the Crusades. Nepthé, Louis IX en Égypte and other works using visual splendour to celebrate the power of Reason over Passion anticipate the lavish productions of Grand Opera in the early nineteenth century.
Darlow also provides insights into the reason behind the success or failure of new works. Among the more successful lighter works from this period was Salieri's Tarare, with a libretto by Beaumarchais. Using exoticism to satirize a society in decline, it had a tedious first run in 1787 but was elaborately restaged in 1790 to great success. By the time a revision of the work was presented in 1792, however, Beaumarchais's reputation had suffered considerably. Consequently, the Marriage of Figaro was a stunning failure the following year. Figaro was ‘too revised, too long, played too slowly’ according to the press, and the Parisian public was incapable of appreciating Mozart's genius, none of his lyrical works having been presented before (p. 322).
From the 25 new productions examined by Darlow, some common characteristics emerge clearly. The subjects of tragic and serious works are often borrowed from ancient Roman and Greek history (e.g., Démophon, Oedipe à Thèbes) but adapted to reflect the new political outlook of the time. Voltaire, whose ashes were transported to the Panthéon in 1791, provided inspiration for characters such as Oedipe, Brutus and Corisandre. As for love stories, passion replaced ‘le sentiment’ and endings were not necessarily tragic, but tailored to the contemporary political situation, especially during the Terror. For comic and mixed-genre works, the influence of opéra-comique was obvious. Not that the works included spoken dialogue but because the favourite setting was often a village and the characters simple peasants. The music in these works is popular and tuneful, even borrowing from Revolutionary songs like Ça ira! and La Marseillaise, with which the audience would sing along.
In his Introduction, the author makes clear that one of the misconceptions he plans to correct is the notion that the French authorities used the arts in general, and the prestige of the Opéra in particular, as propaganda tools (pp. 30–31). Propaganda, however, requires mass media, and Darlow argues that ‘early-modern theatre reaches too small a public to qualify for this and the reception of works is too various’ (p. 31). He agrees with Jann Pasler, who states in her remarkable Composing the Citizen that the French Revolution's faith in music was a force that helped form French citizens.Footnote 2 Judging that the Terror was more a political than cultural phenomenon, Darlow concludes that while ‘selective subsidy remains a form of coercion [but] it is not the same thing as propaganda’ (p. 386).
Subsequent revolutionary movements in France further transformed French cultural life in the nineteenth century. The July Revolution of 1830, for example, while not provoking major social upheaval, radically transformed the French cultural scene with Victor Hugo's Hernani, Berlioz ‘s Symphonie fantastique, and Delacroix's La Liberté guidant le peuple emerging as iconic works of French Romanticism. Mark Darlow suggests that the works staged at the Opéra during the Revolution exerted an influence on French lyric productions of the early nineteenth century (pp. 355–6), a proposition beyond the scope of his book, but one that deserves to be examined. For the period under study, however, he does make a convincing argument that the artists writing for the Opéra invested the institution ‘with a set of cultural ideals that were actually far more radical than the state required in 1793’ (p. 390). His book is a ‘must read’ for all scholars interested in the period, historians, sociologists and musicologists alike.
