French Opera at the Fin de Siecle

Abstract

This book explores the history of late-19th century French opera through thirteen of the most important and frequently performed works of that repertory. The main aesthetic and historical problem addressed is that of the reconciliation of Richard Wagner's influence with French operatic tradition and national identity as expressed in aesthetic terms. The choice of operas by Jules Massenet, Ernest Reyer, Camille Saint-Saëns, Édouard Lalo, Emmanuel Chabrier, Vincent d'Indy, Ernest Chausson, Alfred Bruneau, and Gustave Charpentier is conditioned by Wagner's death in 1883: all were either first performed or initially conceived in the decade after this. This book argues that Wagner's impact was highly variegated as it passed through different professional, aesthetic, and temperamental filters. But his influence rarely resulted in a musical style where enough features coincided to produce a texture that an informed listener might identify as stylistic pastiche. Moreover, because French composers and critics generally did not understand Wagner's oeuvre as forming a unified corpus, they responded in different ways to the discrete phases of his development. In the pressure-cooker of aesthetic debates tinged by modernism and nationalism at the turn of the century, works perceived in very close orbit to Wagner faced an especially steep uphill struggle for acceptance. Whereas certain operas by Massenet achieved success in the marketplace without aspiring to modernist ideals of artistic progress, composers such as Vincent d'Indy and Alfred Bruneau thought of themselves as working on the post-Wagnerian cusp, and were cast by their supporters in this light. In the master narrative of music history, however, both were trumped in this respect by Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, a work that this book touches upon in its epilogue.