Charlotte Bentley has written a thoughtful monograph about French Opera in New Orleans.Footnote ¹ Her focus is on opera at the Théâtre d’Orléans, from the erection of the building in 1819 until the company moved into its new quarters, the French Opera House, in 1859. Arguably, New Orleans was the most important venue for opera performance in the United States during this period. Rather than a chronological history, however, Bentley focuses on various topics that pertain to the administration of French Opera in New Orleans and to its reception by audiences in the city.Footnote ² Of special concern, from the beginning of the book to its end, is her perception that opera in the city was intertwined with its parallels in Paris and elsewhere in Europe. Throughout, she describes a transatlantic movement of the art form ‘opera” both in the production of specific operas and in audience reactions, especially from Paris to New Orleans and back again.

The book is divided into five chapters, with an Introduction (including an in-depth study of the cultures of francophone and anglophone communities in New Orleans) and an Epilogue (which explores the differences between French opera in pre- and post-Civil War New Orleans). The city’s audiences enjoyed not only French repertory in the 40 years under microscopic view here, but also operas in English, German and Italian. John Davis (1773–1839) and his son Pierre Davis (b. 1807) built and ran the Théâtre d’Orléans, while their most significant rival was the Englishman James H. Caldwell (1793–1863), who managed several English-language opera houses in town (for example, the Saint Philip Street Theatre in 1824 and the Camp Street Theatre after November, 1835).Footnote ³ All the operas performed in both the French and English theatres were European or based on European models, but New Orleans audiences differed from those in Paris, for they were much more complicated by race, gender and national origins.

Chapter 1 deals with the economic situation of French opera in the city. The opera troupes, recruited primarily in France, made the arduous voyage for stays of at least one year at a time. Bentley discusses salaries, contracts and obligations of the singers, orchestral players, dancers and stage personnel. Disputes were common and Bentley describes the issues and their ramifications. In Chapter 2 she considers repertory and, especially, the introduction of grand opera in 1835. This came by way of Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, which had been premiered in Paris (November 1831) and London (February 1832). In New Orleans, Caldwell mounted an English version in March 1835, a few months before John Davis could give the original French version in May. In general (throughout the book), Bentley analyses the data mostly given in Henry Kmen’s classic study and considers at length the four different versions of the Meyerbeer work, as presented in Paris, London, and twice in New Orleans.

In Chapter 3, Bentley deals with what she calls ‘audience and public’. Initially she describes what we know about the habits, character and attitudes of audience members – the people who went to opera performances in various cities and countries around the world. She cites Kmen for some description of the audiences in New Orleans. For example, Kmen compares the somewhat wild behaviour of the audience at the English opera to the better behaviour of audiences at the French opera. Furthermore, he describes several occasions of raucous, even murderous, behaviour in both the American and the French theatres.Footnote ⁴ He also mentions a city ordinance early in the century that forbade throwing oranges in the opera hall.Footnote ⁵

Midway through the chapter Bentley changes focus to the contrast between the French opera audience, as it experienced any actual performance, and the public’s abstract understanding of what opera is and should be. For this examination she relies on two periodicals that briefly appeared in New Orleans: L’Impartial (October 1839 to April 1840) and La Lorgnette (December 1841 to April 1843), both of which ran erudite essays on music, theatre and opera. The same author – Louis Placide Canonge (1822–1893), a New Orleans native and an eminent theatre, music and opera critic in the city – published essays in both journals. Canonge wrote for the former journal and edited and contributed to the latter. The two publications dealt largely with the ‘social and aesthetic aspects of engaging with opera in New Orleans’, and stirred up a large debate among ‘theater administration, performers, these journals, and their readers’. The aim was to ‘provoke’ all those persons involved in opera production and performance and challenge them to improve the quality of ‘operatic life in the city’ (pp. 92–3). Kmen does not mention Canonge; instead he relies on Canonge’s predecessor Guillaume Montmain for music criticism slightly earlier in the century. Apparently, Bentley’s is the first major discussion of Canonge’s critical writings. She illustrates how the critic and editor helped to take opera in New Orleans to a high performative level in the mid-century and beyond.

Bentley cites several of Canonge’s criticisms of local operatic performances. Early in his career, the critic lamented the shoddiness of productions. He wrote that the Théâtre d’Orléans had ‘died’, which was an attack on the quality of all productions and panicked the administration of the theatre (pp. 92–3). Canonge satirically took it upon himself to announce that he personally would offer a funeral oration. He decried the lack of communication between critics and the management. As if to bribe Canonge, the administration gave him complimentary admission, which was revoked when his criticism became too harsh. One of his objections to the local productions of opera was that the theatre’s leading lady, Julia Calvé (1815–1898), wore the same costume when she sang different roles in many different opera productions (p. 95). Since singers were responsible for their own costumes, it was not easy for them to wear completely different costumes for each performance, but this critique in the journal led Calvé subsequently to change her habit.

According to local critics, opera audiences were more refined in New Orleans than in any other American city of the time (p. 98). The audiences were in a good position to encourage new operas in New Orleans as well as to help recreate transatlantic ones. The audiences reacted to known operas, and with the aid of the journals could reflect on new as well as old operas. Bentley quotes Canonge, who wrote that ‘only the works of local citizens … could truly satisfy the needs of local audiences’ (p. 100). On the other hand, there was some feeling by the opera administration that the highly developed transatlantic European opera was too well defined at the Théâtre d’Orléans and would stifle an indigenous local New Orleans opera style. Kmen sides with the opera administration and thinks that local opera would never be able to replace European opera in the basic repertoire.Footnote ⁶ But despite the riches of the European opera, audiences and the public regularly visited the opera house, read the journalists’ criticisms, supported transatlantic opera and apparently were amenable to the development of indigenous opera in New Orleans, although there was very little of the latter (p. 102).Footnote ⁷

In Chapter 4 Bentley considers two kinds of operatic souvenirs that were available in New Orleans: 1) piano arrangements of arias and other music from operas, published as sheet music imprints and collected by young women in New Orleans, who had them bound into albums (known today as binders volumes) and 2) opera librettos published in New Orleans at the time. In this chapter Bentley focuses on one musician, Herman Edward Lehmann (1805–1866), a local trumpeter, band leader and composer, who arranged numerous opera morceaux into piano arrangements published in New Orleans and elsewhere. Young women in New Orleans went regularly to the opera, and afterwards they relived the experience by dancing to opera excerpts at the numerous and frequent public and private balls. The operas and balls were moving social experiences shared publicly with other young adults. The young women could relive their pleasant experiences at home by playing these sheet-music arrangements on their parlour pianos. Many opera excerpts were converted into dances such as mazurkas, schottisches, marches, waltzes and galops, and they were sold as sheet music by publishers in Paris, Mainz, Leipzig, London, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati, Rochester, Milwaukee, New Orleans and elsewhere in a truly transatlantic market. They could be purchased at the many music stores in New Orleans, where they were gobbled up by the young ladies. Occasionally individual portraits of opera singers were printed on the covers of such sheet music, and Bentley reprints two images of one such prima donna, soprano Pauline Colson (1828–1904) – one an image of her as costumed for the creation of a particular role in Paris in 1853, the other an image in the same role (and wearing the same costume) at the American premier in New Orleans in 1856 (pp. 112–33). Individual copies of such sheet music were the private possessions of young women, and souvenirs of both the operas and balls functioned as intimate, emotional possessions.

For operatic librettos as souvenirs, Bentley chose to examine the 30 librettos published by Louis Fiot (c.1801–1857), whose profession was regisseur of the Théâtre d’Orléans.Footnote ⁸ She lists these 30 publications in a table, and includes the French name of the opera, Fiot’s English translation, the original librettist and the composer. Most are major operas that were in the New Orleans repertory, and many are still performed today. Fiot’s librettos were sold not only in New Orleans but also in New York where, according to Bentley, they were meant to encourage the introduction of French operas to that city’s operatic repertory (p. 135). In both cities opera was not only a spectacle but also a text that surmounted local performance – an ideal cultural monument not bound by the moment of performance. The sheet music of Lehmann and the librettos of Fiot represented to the individual collector a touch of the universal, global and transatlantic aesthetic of each opera.

In Chapter 5 Bentley examines three travelogues or recollections of visits to New Orleans by two outsiders who mention opera culture in the city: Charles Jobey, in his novel L’Amour d’un nègre, and his short story ‘Le lac Cathahoula’ in L’Amour d’une blanche, and Edward H. Durell, in New Orleans as I Found It.Footnote ⁹ In this chapter, instead of dealing with how people in New Orleans looked outward, Bentley discusses how several outsiders looked inward at the city. Jobey was a Frenchman who played bassoon in the Théâtre d’Orléans orchestra from 1834 to 1840; after returning to Paris, he wrote about his New Orleans experiences. Durell was a native of New Hampshire who visited New Orleans in the years 1835 to 1836 and loved the experience so much that he later relocated to the city. Both authors published their works outside New Orleans (in Paris and New York, respectively) after spending considerable time in the city, and both were enamoured of opera there.

Bentley goes into great detail in her discussion of the three works. She draws a parallel between, on the one hand, factual knowledge about opera in New Orleans, and, on the other, an imaginative narrative of an exotic New Orleans by a visitor who pretends to write from the point of view of someone who had never been to the city. Part of Jobey’s novel actually takes place in the New Orleans theatre – a conceit similar to some nineteenth-century French novels in which actions are situated in French theatres. By so doing, Jobey provides to readers in France some insight into the social customs of opera audiences in New Orleans. The short story ‘Le lac Cathahoula’, in contrast, takes place in what is portrayed as the exotic countryside of Louisiana, but includes performers from the Théâtre d’Orléans who are on tour in this rustic area. The short story was originally published in Paris but quickly thereafter was republished in New Orleans and elsewhere in Louisiana before the final, definitive version was released, again in Paris. The juxtaposition of old world with the new is fascinating: the setting in the Louisiana wilderness suggests a contrast between the unsophisticated nature of Louisiana country-life in the early nineteenth century and the sophisticated art of opera and, conversely, the art of the theatre tempered by nature. As a result, according to Bentley, French opera as a high art crossed the Atlantic to be invigorated by the aura of nature in Louisiana, and returned to France to reinvigorate the Paris opera.

Durell’s approach differs from Jobey’s in many ways. In describing the opera audience, for example, he does not discuss Black New Orleans. Furthermore, he is not a music lover and does not combine European opera and exotic Louisiana nature. Rather, Durell describes a visit to the Théâtre d’Orléans on a Sunday evening in the company of a fictional lawyer and doctor, and is transported to Paris by what he sees and hears in the theatre. He reacts to the spectacle of the lavish dresses worn by francophone women, the particular dress of moustachioed francophone men in the audience, as well as the language on stage and in the audience, all of which have more of an impact on him than the music. The audience’s total absorption in the opera fascinates Durell, but not the opera itself. Durell’s portrayal of the audience’s ‘silent listening’ reveals much about the audience’s behaviour that contrasts with the description of raucous behaviour discussed in Bentley’s Chapter 2. By the end of Durell’s story, when he and his friends leave the opera and go to a local home to discuss the arts philosophically, Durell expresses only abstract understanding of the role of music in the arts. He recognizes that local New Orleans amateurs have an appreciation for this music that he himself does not have. Durell is aware that, with his inexact knowledge of the science of music, opera in New Orleans is more complicated than he can describe.

Bentley’s epilogue emphasizes the change in the operatic situation with the building of the new French Opera House in 1859. The company’s second season opened in December of 1860 with Lucie di Lammermoor starring Adelina Patti, age 17. People were attracted more by Patti than the famous opera, which suggests that the repertory system that had been favoured in New Orleans until then was being replaced by the star system. Patti, for her part, sang in Italian, while most of the rest of the cast sang in French. The hiatus in opera productions during the occupation of the city (1862–1865) by Union Army forces made this break in modus operandi even more conclusive.

In sum, Bentley has written a fascinating study of the aesthetics of New Orleans opera and the social aspects of the audiences in the Théâtre d’Orléans during its heyday from 1819 to 1859. Her book New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera, 1819–1859 adds new dimensions to the factual history that we know from Henry Kmen’s study and is an important complement to our understanding of the period.