SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
the enormous stage at the Opera
Without doubt, the enormous stage at the Opera does not lend itself well to modern musical dramas, which are intimate and concentrated, and would be lost in its immense space, which is more adapted for formal processions like the marches in the Prophète and Aïda. Besides this, there is the conventional acting of the majority of the singers, the dull lifelessness of the choruses, the defective acoustics, and the exaggerated utterance and gestures of the actors, demanded by the great dimensions of the place–all of which is a serious obstacle to the conception of a living and simple art. But the chief obstacle will always lie in the very nature of such a theatre–a theatre of luxury and vanity, created for a set of snobs, whose least interest is the music, who have not enough intellect to create a fashion, but who servilely follow every fashion after it is thirty years old. Such a theatre no longer counts in the history of French music; and its next directors will need a vast amount of ingenuity and energy to get a semblance of life into such a dead colossus.
But it is quite another affair with the Opéra-Comique. This theatre has taken a very active part in the development of modern music. Without renouncing its classic traditions, or its delightful repertory of the old opéra-comiques, it has had understanding enough, under the judicious management of M. Albert Carré, to hold itself open for any interesting productions in dramatic music. It takes no side among the different schools; and the representatives of the old-fashioned light opera with their songs elbow the leaders of the advanced school. No association has done more important work, among musical dramas as well as musical comedies, during the last twenty years. In this theatre, which produced Carmen in 1875, Manon in 1884, and the Roi d’Ys in 1888, were played the principal dramas of M. Bruneau, as well as M. Charpentier’s Louise, M. Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, and M. Dukas’s Ariane et Barbebleue. It may seem astonishing that such works should have found a place at the Opéra-Comique and not at the Opera. But if two musical theatres of different kinds exist, one of which pretends to have the monopoly of great art, while the other with a simpler and more intimate character seeks only to please, it is always the latter that has a better chance of development and of making new discoveries; for the first is oppressed by traditions that become ever stiffer and more pedantic, while the other with its simplicity and lack of pretension is able to accommodate itself to any manner of life. How many artists have revolutionised their times while they were merely looked upon as people who amused! Frescobaldi and Philipp Emanuel Bach brought fresh life to art, but were scorned by the so-called representatives of fine art; Mozart’s opere buffe have more of truth and life in them than his opere serie; and there is as much dramatic power in an opéra-comique like Carmen as in all the repertory of grand Opera to-day. And so the Opéra-Comique theatre has become the home of the boldest experiments in musical drama. The most daring or the most violent ventures into musical realism, after the manner of Charpentier or Bruneau, and the subtle fantasies of a delicate art of dreams, like that of Debussy, have found a welcome there. It has also been open to various kinds of foreign art: Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, Verdi’s Falstaff, the works of Puccini, Mascagni, and the young Italian school, Richard Strauss’s Feuersnot, Rimsky-Korsakow’s Snégourotchka, have all been played. And they have even given the classic masterpieces of opera there: Fidelio, Orfeo, Alceste, the two Iphigénies; and taken more pains with them and mounted them with more pious zeal than they do at the Opera. The operas themselves are more at home there, too, for the size of the theatre is more like that of the eighteenth-century theatres. It is true that the stage rather lacks depth; but the ingenuity of the director and the admirable scenic artists he employs has succeeded in making one forget this defect, and accomplished marvels. No theatre in Paris has more artistic staging, and some of the scenery that has been designed lately is a masterpiece of its kind. The Opéra-Comique has also the advantage of excellent conductors, and one of them, M. Messager, who is now Director, has, by his clever interpretations, greatly contributed to the success of the works of the new school.
this was: The Enormous Stage At The Opera
go to next chapter: French music had already in the Opera
