10 - Archaeologies
from Part Three - Rameau
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
Summary
“It is beyond hope that we shall ever hear Castor et Pollux, Dardanus, or Zoroastre at the Opéra,” Félix Clément lamented in his 1885 Histoire de la musique. Not without good reason he believed that despite the unquestionable musical quality of Rameau's operas, they were too antiquated for modern audiences. After all, for most of the nineteenth century, Rameau had routinely been “cited as an archetype of musicians judged too antiquated to ever again be played.” The tragédie lyrique (before Gluck, at least) was entirely disconnected from fin-de-siècle expectations of opera, shaped by nineteenth-century French musical styles such as grand opéra to (post-)Wagnerian music dramas. The years between 1885 and 1908, however, convinced many critics, producers, and audiences that such a revival might be possible. For one thing, the Opéra-Comique (and occasionally the Opéra) had successfully produced Gluck's works since 1896—a feat that critics had initially thought impossible. And, of course, the theaters had more or less run out of Gluck operas to stage—the 1907 Iphigénie en Aulide had exhausted the supply of his French “masterwork” operas. By that time, the groundwork—most prominently concert performances and the Œuvres complètes—had been laid for a Rameau revival.
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- Building the Operatic MuseumEighteenth-Century Opera in Fin-de-Siècle Paris, pp. 177 - 196Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013