Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera
A History

Examines the evolving practices in music, librettos, choreographed dance, and staging throughout the history of French Baroque opera.

Rebecca Harris-Warrick (Author)

9781107137899, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 October 2016

502 pages, 40 b/w illus. 56 music examples
25.4 x 18 x 2.6 cm, 1.14 kg

'Harris-Warrick, a leading scholar of the music of the French baroque, demonstrates an encyclopaedic command of the vast repertoire of the Académie Royale de Musique, drawing on the libretti and scores of well over 100 operas and related genres, including the opéra-ballet, the pastorale héroïque and the little-studied genre of 'fragments'. … Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera: A History constitutes a seminal contribution to the field of scholarship in French baroque opera and dance. More than a history, this is a handbook for scholars and performers alike in comprehending the complex thought and dynamic visions that informed seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French opera.' Natasha Roule, Cambridge Opera Journal

Since its inception, French opera has embraced dance, yet all too often operatic dancing is treated as mere decoration. Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera exposes the multiple and meaningful roles that dance has played, starting from Jean-Baptiste Lully's first opera in 1672. It counters prevailing notions in operatic historiography that dance was parenthetical and presents compelling evidence that the divertissement - present in every act of every opera - is essential to understanding the work. The book considers the operas of Lully - his lighter works as well as his tragedies - and the 46-year period between the death of Lully and the arrival of Rameau, when influences from the commedia dell'arte and other theatres began to inflect French operatic practices. It explores the intersections of musical, textual, choreographic and staging practices at a complex institution - the Académie Royale de Musique - which upheld as a fundamental aesthetic principle the integration of dance into opera.

Introduction
Part I. Lully: 1. The dramaturgy of Lully's divertissements
2. Constructing the divertissement
3. Dance foundations
4. Dance practices on stage
5. Prologues
6. The lighter side of Lully
Part II. The Rival Muses in the Age of Campra: 7. The muses take the stage
8. Thalie, muse of comedy
9. Thalie visits the fairs
10. The contested comic
11. Melpomène, muse of tragedy
12. Melpomène adapts
13. Terpsichore, muse of the dance
14. In the traces of Terpsichore
Epilogue
Appendix 1. Works performed at the Académie Royale de Musique, 1695–1732, in which the impact of the comédie italienne can be seen
Appendix 2. A partial list of performances consisting of 'fragments', 1702–32
Appendix 3. The choreographies danced at the Opéra contextualized.

Subject Areas: Opera [AVGC9], Dance [ASD], Dance & other performing arts [AS]