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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2008
The policies of centralisation pursued by Louis XIV and his ministers affected most aspects of French life and culture. From 1645 opera had been imported from Italy by Louis' minister Cardinal Mazarin, originally out of political motives. When it had become ‘naturalised’, assuming its characteristic French guise under the despotic direction of Lully's Académie Royale de Musique, it continued to serve political purposes. In return for a monopoly on theatre music, Lully saw to it that opera served not only as entertainment for the nobility and bourgeoisie, but also as propaganda for the state and for the divine right of the King. An incidental effect of these policies was that the number of French operas produced was small compared to the number in Italy. This was due to the monopoly; to the centralisation, which meant that with few exceptions ‘French’ opera really meant ‘Parisian’ opera; and to the lavishness of the productions, which made frequent changes of repertory impractical even with subsidies. Each première was an event of note, chronicled in official and unofficial sources – the archival documents, mémoires, correspondence, periodicals, pamphlets and books of the day. This profusion of documentation frequently makes possible a degree of precision about the history of early French opera that can rarely be attained for other national schools.
1 Isherwood, Robert M., ‘The Centralization of Music in the Reign of Louis XIV’, French Historical Studies, 6 (1969–1970), 156–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prunières, Henry, L'opéra italien en France avant Lulli (Paris, 1913), especially chaps. 2–4Google Scholar; Zaslaw, Neal, ‘The First Opera in Paris: A Study in the Politics of Art’, in Jean–Baptiste Lully and the Music of the French Baroque, ed. Heyer, John Hajdu (Cambridge, 1989), 7–23.Google Scholar I wish to thank Lois Rosow and Rebecca Harris-Warrick, who read this essay and made a number of helpful suggestions.
2 Isherwood, Robert M., Music in the Service of the King (Ithaca, 1973), especially chaps. 3–4Google Scholar; Schmitz, Petra, Die weltliche Musik am Hof Ludwigs XIV in der Zeit von 1660 bis 1680 als Mittel politischer Selbstdarstellung, Ph.D. diss. (Cologne, 1984).Google Scholar
3 Under Lully's direction the Académie Royale de Musique made a great deal of money, while under all subsequent administrations it lost money. See Grave, Henri La, Le théâtre et le public à Paris de 1715 à 1750 (Paris, 1972), 37–9.Google Scholar
4 See Lajarte, Théodore-Edouard Dufaure de, Bibliothèque musicale du Théâtre de l'Opéra, I (Paris, 1876).Google Scholar
5 Lapone, Joseph de, Anecdotes dramatiques, 2nd edn (Paris, 1776), III, 504Google Scholar; Laurencie, Lionel de la, L'école française de violon de Lully à Viotti (Paris, 1922–1924), I, 292 n. 5.Google Scholar
6 Fréron, Elie-Catherine, ed., Lettres sur quelques écrits de ce temps (1753), Lettre III, 56–7.Google Scholar Lapone also listed D'Albaret as still living in 1776.
7 Beffara, Louis-François, Dictionnaire de l'Académie royale de musique, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale (Rés. 602Google Scholar; autograph manuscript copied 1783–4), 567.
8 Girdlestone, Cuthbert, La tragédie en musique (1673–1750) considérée comme genre littéraire (Geneva, 1972), 293.Google Scholar The terms ‘tragédie en musique’, ‘tragédie lyrique’ and ‘opéra–tragédie’ are synonymous. All translations are my own.
9 See my ‘Leclair's “Scylla et Glaucus”’, The Musical Times, 120 (11 1979), 900–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 A concert version, performed at St John's Smith Square, London, on 14 November 1979 by the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists under John Eliot Gardiner, was subsequently taped by the BBC and transmitted via the European Broadcasting Union in January 1981. The same forces mounted a fully staged version at the Opera, Lyons (01 1986)Google Scholar and the Aix–en–Provence Festival (summer 1986), then recorded it for Erato (ECD 75339).
11 Girdlestone, , La tragédie en musique, 328.Google Scholar
12 The prologues of most of Lully's operas take place in an ill–defined mixture of mythological past and Louis XIV present.
13 This perhaps explains why, in the Prologue, 3, ‘un roi charmant’ has been replaced with ‘un roi puissant’; and in the Prologue, 1, Venus was originally apostrophised as ‘Vous par qui l'Univers se reproduit sans cesse’, which, perhaps because it was too graphic, was replaced by the more euphemistic ‘Vous par qui l'Univers est embelli sans cesse’.
14 Laurencie, La, L'école française (n. 5), I, 269–340Google Scholar; Pincherle, Marc, Jean–Marie Leclair l'aîné (Paris, 1952)Google Scholar; Zaslaw, Neal, ‘Leclair’, The New Grove (London, 1980), X, 589–92.Google Scholar
15 Leclair's only known previous vocal work was a now–lost cantata, the anonymous poem of which was published in the Mercure de France (01 1736), 46–9.Google Scholar This may have been the ‘cantatille’ that Madame Leclair announced for posthumous publication: Affiches, annonces et avis divers (10 03 1766), 194.Google Scholar See Sadler, Graham and Zaslaw, Neal, ‘Notes on Leclair's Theatre Music’, Music & Letters, 61 (1980), 147–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 There are 11,662 titles, or an average of roughly 130 a year, in Brenner, Clarence D., A Bibliographic List of Plays in the French Language 1700–1789 (1957; rpt. New York, 1980Google Scholar, with a composer index by Neal Zaslaw and Michael A. Keller). Brenner remarks that his List is far from complete. These 11,622 titles were the work of approximately 2200 writers and 365 composers.
17 Besterman, Theodore, ed., Voltaire: Correspondance (Geneva, 1956), XIX, 8.Google Scholar
18 Articles V and XX of the ‘Règlements’ of 1714, published in Noinville, Durey de, Histoire du théâtre de l'Opéra en France depuis l'établissement de l'Académie royale de musique jusqu ä présent (Paris, 1753), I, 127, 131.Google Scholar See also Grave, La, Le théâtre (n. 3), 316–17.Google Scholar Mozart complained of the riskiness of composing for the Opéra in a letter of 11 September 1778 ( Bauer, Wilhelm A. and Deutsch, Otto Erich, eds., Briefe und Aufzeichnungen [Kassel, 1962], II, 473–4Google Scholar). This practice is alluded to in the remarks about Abbé de Calcari in the second paragraph of the review of Scylla quoted below.
19 Dussieux, Louis and Soulié, Eudoxe, eds., Mémoires du Duc de Luynes sur la cour de Louis XV 1735–1758 (Paris, 1860), V, 386Google Scholar (= April 1744). See also Laurencie, La, L'école française (n. 5), I, 294–5.Google Scholar
20 Barnabé Farmian de Rozoi (also ‘Durosoi’), ‘Lettre à M. de la Place, Auteur du Mercure, sur le feu M. LE CLAIR, premier Symphoniste du Roi’, Le Mercure de France (11 1764), 192.Google Scholar
21 Page 128. From internal evidence it appears that this issue went to press around 23 September.
22 Trénard, Louis, ‘Le Mercure de France’, in Histoire générale de la presse française: Des origines à 1814 (Paris, 1969), I, 207ff.Google Scholar
23 According to the attributions of the nineteenth–century manuscript Fichier Peyrot in the Département de la musique of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Fuzelier was the ‘auteur’ of the Mercure between 1744 and 1752, but his involvement with it dated from 1721 (Trénard, I, 142, 207ff.).
24 Composers who set Fuzelier's texts include: Abbé, Aubert, Bernier, Bourgeois, Campra, Cardonne, Colin de Blamont, Courbois, Destouches, Dugné, Duport, Gilliers, Grenet, Iso, Matho, Mondonville, Mouret, Neil, Quinault, Rameau, the brothers Rey and Stuck. See Brenner, , A Bibliographic List (n. 16), 70–2Google Scholar; Tunley, David, The Eighteenth–Century French Cantata (London, 1974), 75, 106Google Scholar; Vollen, Gene E., The French Cantata: A Survey and Thematic Catalog (Ann Arbor, 1982), 163–8, 370–2.Google Scholar
25 The words of this scene, the love triangle between Scylla, Glaucus and Circe, are reprinted in Girdlestone, , La tragédie en musique (n. 8), 408–9Google Scholar, who praises them (293).
26 Fuzelier's statement is at variance with the stage directions in the manuscript and engraved scores and in the printed libretto, all of which state that Scylla collapses onto a bed of grass, where she expires. Fuzelier of course had the libretto in front of him as he wrote his review. There seems little reason to doubt this aspect of his accurate and consistent account of the work, especially as the new action supplies a logical means of connecting the scene showing Scylla's demise with the final scene, and represents the kind of last–minute refinement that those in charge of the production could easily have made.
27 Le Mercure de France (10 1746), 152–60.Google Scholar
28 Prod'homme, Jacques-Gabriel, ‘Marie Fel (1713–1794)’, Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 4 (1902–1903), 485–518Google Scholar; idem, ‘A Pastel by La Tour: Marie Fel’, Musical Quarterly, 9 (1923), 482–507Google Scholar; Teneo, Martial, ‘Marie Fel’, in Jean–Philippe Rameau, Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1924), XVIII, lxxix–lxxxiGoogle Scholar; Prod'homme, , ‘Pierre de Jélyotte (1713–1797)’, Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 3 (1901–1902), 686–717Google Scholar; Pougin, Arthur, Un ténor de l'Opéra au XVIII siècle: Pierre de Jélyotte et les chanteurs de son temps (Paris, 1905)Google Scholar; Letainturier–Fradin, Gabriel, La Camargo (Paris, 1908)Google Scholar; Beaumont, Cecil W., Three French Dancers of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1934)Google Scholar; Moore, Lillian, ‘The Great Dupré’, Dance Magazine, 34 (06 1960), 40–2, 62–3.Google Scholar
29 Masson, Paul–Marie, L'opéra de Rameau (Paris, 1930), 121.Google Scholar Re-using sets was practicable because many scenes in serious operas were set in a few traditional locales: the hall of a great palace, a temple, a battle encampment, the ocean shore, a rustic landscape, the mouth of hell, a triumphal arch, a formal garden and so on. The scenic designer at the Opéra in 1746 was François Boucher ( Masson, , 118–24Google Scholar). Examination of hundreds of paintings, drawings and sketches by Boucher reproduced in modern publications has failed to turn up any material that might be associated with the two sets newly created for Scylla. For a discussion of the audience, the auditorium and the mise–en–scène, see Zaslaw, Neal, ‘At the Paris Opéra in 1747’, Early Music, 10 (1983), 514–16.Google Scholar
30 See Voltaire's letter of 25 December 1761 to Pinot Duclos: ‘C'est â l'opéra, c'est â ce spectacle consacré aux fables, que ces enchantements conviennent et c'est là qu'ils ont été le mieux traités’ ( Correspondance, ed. Besterman, [n. 17], XLVII, 282).Google Scholar
31 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Lettres de deux amans, habitans d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes: Julie ou La Nouvelle Héloïse (Geneva, 1761)Google Scholar, part 2, letter 23, contains a biting satire on the machines and décor at the Opéra.
32 For instance, the following anonymous poem, found among other places in the Mémoires du Duc de Luynes (see n. 19) under the date 25 November 1757:
Contre la moderne musique
Voici ma dernière réplique:
Si le difficile est le beau,
C'est un grand homme que Rameau,
Mais si le beau, par aventure,
Etoit la simple nature,
Dont il doit être le tableau,
C'est un sot homme que Rameau.
33 See Kintzler, Catherine, Jean-Philippe Rameau: Splendeur et naufrage de l'esthétique du plaisir à l'âge classique (Paris, 1983), 99–133.Google Scholar
34 The overture and a suite of dances, ed. Boulay, Laurence, are published by Boosey & Hawkes (London, 1956)Google Scholar; the overture and a different selection of dances are on L'Oiseau–Lyre SOL 303 (English Chamber Orchestra, cond. Raymond Leppard).
35 The passacaille is also on Musical Heritage Society MHS 519 (Paillard Chamber Orchestra, cond. Jean-François Paillard).
36 Glaucus's ariette and Scylla's air ‘Sermens trompeurs, tendre langage’ (Act III scene 1) are published in Grovlez, Gabriel, ed., Les plus beaux airs de l'opéra français (London, 1924).Google Scholar In a review of this publication, Julien Tiersot (undoubtedly aware of the prejudice discussed below at n. 74) remarked that these two numbers ‘montrent que la plus haute maîtrise dans l'art instrumental n'est point une mauvais école pour écrire dans le plus beau style du chant, même dramatique’. Revue de musicologie, 8/12 (11 1924), 189.Google Scholar
37 Grave, La, Le théâtre (n. 3), 195.Google Scholar
38 Performance dates are drawn from the thrice–weekly Affiches, annonces et avis divers and the manuscript Journal de l'Opéra in the Bibliothèque de l'Opéra, Usuels 201, 379–81, which is itself derived from the Affiches. At the annual ‘Capitations’ (benefit concerts for the leading singers and dancers) held that year on 7, 14 and 26 December, excerpts from a number of operas were performed, but nothing from Scylla (382–3).
39 Page 464. According to Beffara (n. 7), La Soubrette maîtresse was in two acts with two divertissements. (La Soubrette maîtresse is Pergolesi's La serva padrona, more frequently known in French as La Servante maîtresse.)
40 Affiches, annonces et avis divers (17 10 1746), unpaginated.Google Scholar
41 Le Mercure de France (11 1746), 122.Google Scholar Internal evidence suggests that this issue went to press about 20 November. According to Beffara, , Dictionnaire (n. 7), 625Google Scholar, ‘Pietro’ was Pierre Sodi, a ‘Roman born with a singular talent for the composition and performance of pantomime-dances’.
A few years later the playwright Jean–Baptiste Jourdan protested such practices: ‘[U]n homme de talent est sorti du sein de l'Orchestre avec un Opéra; c'étoit son premier Ouvrage, il eut fallu l'encourager; huit jours après, on a eu la cruauté de le mutiler & de substituer â la place d'un de ses Actes un méchant Intermède’. Le Correcteur des bouffons à l'écolier de Prague (Paris, 1753), 11.Google Scholar Jourdan's remarks apparently refer to Les Amours de Tempé, music by Antoine Dauvergne, which had its première on 7 November 1752. The ‘mutilation’ of this work is documented in Lajarte, , Bibliothèque musicale (n. 4), I, 222–3.Google Scholar
42 14 November 1746.
43 See n. 41.
44 Affiches, annonces et avis divers (17 11 1746Google Scholar and subsequent issues), and the manuscript journal cited in n. 38.
45 Dussieux, and Soulié, , Mémoires (n. 19), VIII, 36Google Scholar; Dufourcq, Norbert, La musique à la cour de Louis XIV et de Louis XV, d'après les Memoires’ de Sourches et Luynes, 1681–1758 (Paris, 1970), 105.Google Scholar
46 The dispute between Leclair and Guignon, long known only from an anecdotal report by Marpurg, Friedrich Wilhelm, Historisch–kritische Beyträge zur Aufnahme der Musik, I (Berlin, 1754), 466–7Google Scholar, has been confirmed by an archival document published in Recherches sur la musique française classique, 11 (1971), 230Google Scholar, by Simone Poignant and discussed by Barthélemy, Maurice, ‘L'affaire des pages de la Chapelle royale en 1741’, Recherches, 13 (1973), 157–61.Google Scholar Lest this incident unfairly cast Leclair in too unfavourable a light, it should be mentioned that Guignon was notoriously contentious.
47 Concerning Leclair's patrons, see n. 14, and Laurencie, Lionel de La, ‘A propos des protecteurs de J.-M. Leclair l'aîné’, Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 9 (11 1907), 61–5.Google Scholar
48 In Corneille's play of 1675, Neptune responds to Glaucus's entreaties for Scylla's return by offering to transform her into a Neriad, provided that Jupiter approves. Jupiter finds this resolution just, and Glaucus resigns himself to catching occasional glimpses of his loved one playing in the waves.
49 However, the creators of Scylla probably did not fare badly financially. For a new opera the regular fees granted to a poet and a musician were 100 livres each for the first ten performances and 50 livres each for every subsequent one, in addition to a lifetime pass giving free entry to the Opéra. Thus for eighteen performances each man earned 1,400 livres plus his pass. For comparison, one livre bought about 7½ pounds of bread or about 5 pounds of mutton, beef or pork; a good new French violin cost about 20 livres.The best violinists in the Opéra orchestra earned 1,000 livres, the least 300. Finally a modest house that Leclair bought in an unfashionable suburb of Paris in 1758 cost 2,000 livres. Cf. Hauser, Henri, Recherches et documents sur l'histoire des prix en France de 1500 à 1800 (Paris, 1936).Google Scholar
50 The manuscript full score: call number A. 185. a. and b. Pincherle, Leclair (n. 14), 42 and 116Google Scholar, believed, I think erroneously, that this score was an autograph. The three original orchestra parts (haute–contre, taille, basson) listed by Lajarte as extant in 1876 ( Bibliothèque musicale, I, 204Google Scholar) were recently rediscovered by Gorce, Jérôme de La, ‘L'Orchestre de l'Opéra et son évolution de Campra à Rameau’, Revue de musicologie, 76 (1990), 23–43, here 38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
51 Two identical copies of the original edition of the libretto in the Bibliothèque de l'Opéra bear the title–page imprint: ‘AUX DEPENS DE L'ACADEMIE. / On trouvera les Livres de Paroles à la Salle de l'Opéra & à l'Académie Royale / de Musique, rue S. Nicaise’. At the end of the libretto the ‘Privilege du Roy’ gives exclusive rights to publish words and music of operas in France to Sieur Exposant, forbidding anyone else ‘de graver, ni faire graver, imprimer, ou faire imprimer, vendre, faire vendre, débiter ni contrefaire lesdites Impressions, Planches & Figures de Paroles, de Musique des Opéras, Ballets & Fêtes, qui ont été ou qui seront representez par ladite Académie Royale de Musique, tant séparément que conjointement en tout ni en parie, sans la permission expresse & par écrit dudit Sieur Exposant’. None the less, in 1756 François and Claude Parfaict in the Dictionnaire des théâtres de Paris (Paris, 1756), 5, 102–3Google Scholar quoted from a copy of a libretto for Scylla which they cited as ‘in–4°, à Paris, de Lormel’. I have been unable to locate a copy of such an edition. Yet another edition was reported by Marpurg, Friedrich Wilhelm, ‘Chronologisches Verzeichniβ der seit 1645 bis 1754 in Paris aufgeführten Opern, nebst dem Leben verschiedener Französischen Componisten’, Historisch–kritische Beyträge, ⅓ (Berlin, 1756), 232–60Google Scholar, here 259. See also Laurencie, La, L'école française (n. 5), I, 293Google Scholar n. 1. According to Marpurg Scylla was in ‘volume XVIII’ of the Recueil général des opéra published in Paris by Ballard. I have examined dozens of copies of this collection, all containing sixteen volumes, as does the Slatkine reprint edition (Geneva, 1971). Beffara, , Dictionnaire (n. 7), 552Google Scholar, also lists the contents of sixteen volumes, even calling the last ‘the sixteenth and finale volume’. However, a copy exactly corresponding to Marpurg's description is found in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris; it proves to be a ‘binder's collection’ created by Ballard as the makeshift successor to the newly typeset first sixteen volumes.
52 Vallas, Léon, Une siècle de musique et de théâtre à Lyon 1688–1789 (Lyons, 1932), 276.Google Scholar
53 The information from the Inventaire of 1748 (call number 134.008) was discovered in 1980 by Lionel Sawkins, who generously placed it at my disposal.
54 Vallas suggested that the second set of performances took place c. 1750–55. See Pincherle, , Leclair (n. 14), 107.Google Scholar
55 Zaslaw, Neal, ‘Leclair, Jean–Marie (l'aîné)’, RISM, Series A/I: Einzeldrucke vor 1800, V, ed. Schlager, Karlheinz (Kassel, 1975), 272–4Google Scholar; Subira, José, La musica en la Casa de Alba (Madrid, 1927), 210–12 and plate XXXVII.Google Scholar
56 An engraved plate inserted between pp. 116 and 117 in the November issue contains the melodies, bass lines and words of Glaucus's air ‘Quand je ne vous vois pas’ (Act I scene 6) and Circé's air ‘Reviens ingrat, mais cher amant’ (Act IV scene 1), both of which had been praised in Fuzelier's review of the previous month.
57 Minuetti diversi. VIIe recueil de menuets nouveaux français et italiens tels qu'ils se dansent aux bals de l'Opéra … (Paris: Madame Boivin, n. d.), 118–19.Google Scholar
58 In a brief foreword to this publication Leclair wrote of ‘l'Overture de mon Opéra, peu connuë a cause de l'embarras qu'il doit y avoir à l'executer, comme je l'ay donné d'abord. On la trouvera icy sans être afoiblie, arrangée de façon à pouvoir plus facilement l'entendre.’ This remark has been taken to reflect on the technical capabilities of French orchestras of the time. But as the violin pans of the trio-sonata version are no easier than, and nearly identical to, those of the orchestral version, the embarras referred to by Leclair must have been that of assembling an orchestra, as compared with finding players for a trio sonata. The misinterpretation of this passage began immediately with a remark about the new version of the overture in the Affiches, annonces et avis divers (4 04 1753)Google Scholar: ‘On la trouvera plus facile ici’.
The only other music from Scylla that appeared in print during the eighteenth century was a gavotte (Prol., 1), part of Leclair's posthumous trio, Op. 14 (1765).
59 Because of such practices, modern investigators can sometimes be deceived by lists of revivals of operas (in France especially Lully's), imagining that these works kept their identities to a greater extent than was in fact the case. The only sustained attempt to study this phenomenon is Rosow, Lois Ann, ‘Lully's Armide at the Paris Opéra: A Performance History, 1686–1766’, Ph.D. diss. (Brandeis University, 1981).Google Scholar See also Schneider, Hebert, Die Rezeption der Opern Lullys (Tutzing, 1982), 75–122.Google Scholar
60 Borde, Jean Benjamin de La, Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne (Paris, 1780), III, 502.Google Scholar The same words are found in Beffara, , Dictionnaire (n. 7), 464.Google Scholar
61 Le Mercure de France (12 1754), II, 196–7.Google Scholar
62 This is confirmed by instructions found in scores of Thésée at the Bibliothèque de l'Opéra. See Lully, Jean–Baptiste, Thésée (Paris [?1878])Google Scholar, abridged vocal score ed. by Lajarte, Theodore de, 229, note.Google Scholar
63 Le Mercure de France (5 03 1779), 50–1.Google Scholar
64 Le Mercure de France (2 06 1771), 172.Google Scholar
65 Lajarte, Théodore, ‘Les transformations d'un opéra au dix–huitième siècle’, La Chronique musicale, ⅖ (15 04 1874), 61–5.Google Scholar
66 I have been unable to locate a copy of the libretto of Jean–Baptiste Blache's Scylla et Glaucus, grand ballet d'action (Lyons, An XII)Google Scholar, danced by Perlet at the Grand Théâtre in Lyons in 1804, to determine if there is any connection between it and Leclair's Scylla. This libretto is cited in Jacob, P. L., ed., Bibliothèque dramatique de feu M. de Soleinne (Paris, 1844), II, 338, 363Google Scholar; and briefly discussed by Trénard, Louis, Lyon de l'Encyclopédie au préromantisme (Paris, 1958), 569–70.Google Scholar
67 De la corruption du goust dans la musique françoise (Lyons, 1746), 23.Google Scholar
68 See n. 75.
69 Le Mercure de France (01 1766), I, 187–97.Google Scholar
70 Collé, Charles, Journal et Mémoires (Paris, 1868), I, [i], n. 2Google Scholar; Paulmy, René Louis de Voye de, d'Argenson, Marquis, Journal et Mémoires du Marquis d'Argenson, ed. Rathery, E. J. B. (Paris, 1872–73), IV, 117–21, V, 73Google Scholar; idem, Notices sur les oeuvres de théâtre, ed. Lagrave, Henri (Geneva, 1966)Google Scholar, infra; Tourneaux, Maurice, ed., Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique par Grimm, Diderot, Raynal, Meister, etc. (Paris, 1878), I, 67.Google Scholar
71 Amelot, , Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de l'Académie royale de musique, depuis son établissement jusqu'en l'année 1758, MS (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Rés 519, 154)Google Scholar; Bonnassies, Jules, Les spectacles forains et la Comédie française (Paris, 1875), 50–1Google Scholar; Albert, Maurice, Les théâtres de la foire (1660–1789) (Paris, 1900), 187–8.Google Scholar The fair theatres reopened no later than February 1747, when a parody of Lully's Armide was presented.
72 Lettres sur les hommes célèbres dans les sciences, la littérature & les beaux arts, sous le règne de Louis XV (Amsterdam and Paris, 1752), 128–54.Google Scholar
73 Seconde lettre du correcteur des bouffons à l'écolier de Prague (Paris, 1753), 15.Google Scholar
74 The classic formulation of this notion is Tartini's critique of Vivaldi as reported by Brosses, Charles de, L'Italie il y a cent ans (Paris, 1836), II, 362–3.Google Scholar See also Pincherle, Marc, Vivaldi (New York, 1957), 200–1.Google Scholar
75 Dictionnaire portatif, historique et littéraire des théâtres, 2nd edn (Paris, 1763), 401.Google Scholar
76 Anon, ., Rameau aux Champs–Elisées, Nouvelle nouvelle (Amsterdam, 1764), 27.Google Scholar Grimm attributed this pamphlet to an otherwise unknown author, ‘Duransot’ ( Correspondance littéraire, 124–5)Google Scholar; Cioranescu, Alexandre, Bibliographie de la littérature française du dix–huitième siècle (Paris, 1969), III, 1600Google Scholar, attributes it to Leclair's eulogist Rozoi (see n. 20 above).
77 Girdlestone, Cuthbert, Jean-Philippe Rameau, His Life and Work (London, 1957), 497.Google Scholar
78 See note 20.
79 La Rameïde, poème (St Petersburg, 1766), 11.Google Scholar Rameau neveu simply listed the operas; I have annotated his list in Table 1 to provide an historical context.
80 Le Cte de B***, ‘Eloge de M. Leclair’, Ordre chronologique des Deuils de Cour (Paris, 1766)Google Scholar, and 2nd edn in Nécrologe des hommes célèbres de France (Paris, 1775).Google Scholar In the Leclair literature (see n. 14) this essay is attributed to François Joachim de Pierre de Bernis, comte de Lyon (the famous Cardinal de Bernis). In Paul–Louis Roualle de Boisgelou's manuscript catalogue of his own music library, however, it is attributed to ‘M’ le Cte de Brassac’ (‘Catalogue des ouvrages sur la musique et oeuvres de musique en tous genres ayant appartenu à M' de Boisgelou, Bibliothécaire de la Bibliothèque impériale, décedé en 1806’, Brussels Conservatory Library, MS Litt TT, n° 24.347). Concerning Brassac, who was a composer, see Vollen, , The French Cantata (n. 24), 303–10.Google Scholar These remarks by ‘Le Cte de B***’ were reprinted without acknowledgement by Porte, Joseph de La and Clément, Charles François, Anecdotes dramatiques (Paris, 1775), III, 284–6.Google Scholar
81 Prod'homme, Jacques–Gabriel, ‘La musique à Paris de 1753 à 1757 (d'après un manuscrit de la Bib1iothèque de Munich)’, Sammelbändnde der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 6/4 (07–09 1905), 584.Google Scholar
82 Besterman, , Voltaire: Correspondance (n. 19), XXXI, 165.Google Scholar
83 [Nicolas Etienne Framery], ‘Quelques réflexions sur la musique moderne’, Journal de musique (05 1770), 11.Google Scholar
84 The Present State of Music in France and Italy (London, 1771), 25–33.Google Scholar
85 1673: Lully's first opera, Cadmus et Hermione; 1702Google Scholar: Raguenet's, FrançoisParallèle des italiens et des françois; 1733Google Scholar: Rameau's first opera Hippolyte et Aricie; 1752Google Scholar: Querelle des bouffons begins; 1774: Gluck's first Paris opera, Iphigénie en Aulide; 1778Google Scholar: Piccinni's first Paris opera, Roland. This chart and the three paragraphs that follow appeared in a different form in a review of Anthony's, JamesFrench Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau (New York, 1974)Google Scholar in The Musical Quarterly, 60 (1974), 490–2.Google Scholar
86 Tillet, Titon du, La Parnasse françois (Paris, 1732), 396Google Scholar; Brosses, Charles de, Lettres familières écrites en Italie en 1739 et 1740, ed. Colomb, M. R. (Paris, 1858), 336–7.Google Scholar
87 French Baroque Music, 111.Google Scholar
88 For instance, Lajarte, , Bibliothèque musicale (n. 4), 204Google Scholar; Clément, Félix and Larousse, Pierre, Dictionnaire des opéras, rev. edn by Pougin, Arthur (1905; rpt. Paris, 1969), 1012Google Scholar; Loewenberg, Alfred, Annals of Opera 1597–1940, 3rd edn (Totowa, NJ, 1978), col. 205.Google Scholar Further concerning modern evaluations of Scylla, see the article cited in n. 9, and Kenyon, Nicholas in ne New Yorker (23 02 1981).Google Scholar