La Révolution des Bouffons: L’opéra italien au Théâtre de Monsieur 1789–1792. By Alessandro Di Profio. pp. 561. Sciences de la musique. (CNRS Éditions, Paris, 2003, €45. ISBN 2-271-06017-6.)

Abstract

The Théâtre Feydeau, known as the Théâtre de Monsieur for the first three years of its existence under the protection of the Comte de Provence (the future Louis XVIII), opened in 1789 and prospered for the next twelve years, staging an extraordinary mixture of genres: drama, vaudeville, opéra comique, and Italian opera buffa. It was the latter that was the most important genre during the theatre’s early life: thirty-four Italian operas were produced between 1789 and 1792, and their selection and adaptation for Parisian audiences sheds light on our understanding of contemporary taste, and of perceptions of Italian and French music and drama of the period. Alessandro Di Profio’s book is a study of this hybrid genre, and contributes to the growing body of explorations of operatic institutions in post-1789 Paris—Mark Everist’s study of the Odéon; John Drysdale’s volume on the Opéra, Olivier Barra’s work on the Opéra-Comique, and a forthcoming volume of articles on the institutions of opera in France during the nineteenth century, evolving from a conference at the University of North Carolina in September 2004 organized by Annegret Fauser and M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet. Like these other scholars, Di Profio aims to provide a ‘thick’ contextual setting for the Italian operas produced at the Monsieur/Feydeau; he sets out specifically to ‘put into perspective the creation of the Théâtre de Monsieur on the one hand, and the production of Italian opera on the other, highlighting at each step what was at stake politically and culturally’ (p. 8). Like Everist, he is dealing with adaptations rather than new works, which gives him an effective way of establishing how the expectations and tastes of French audiences translated into aesthetic decisions taken by the patrons, directors, musicians, and writers at the Monsieur.