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Aristophanes, Rameau and Platée1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2012
Abstract
Rameau's Platée owes much more to Aristophanes' comedy The Frogs than the frog chorus. The main character in The Frogs, Dionysus, may well have been the inspiration for many of the traits of the nymph Platée. Both rule over wetlands and their inhabitants, and both are subjected to extensive mockery. While Dionysus is a divine patron of the theatre, Platée is a visual metaphor for opera. Dionysus, disguised as Heracles, fails to measure up to the hero, exhibiting cowardly behaviour and physical weakness, just as Platée fails to speak and act as a satisfactory operatic heroine, the model for which is, arguably, Lully's Armide. The parodic elements in the debate between Aeschylus and Euripides over the nature and function of tragedy resonate with the parody of tragédie lyrique which lies at the heart of Rameau's opera.
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References
2 Halbreich, Harry, ‘Platée, ou de l'incongruité’, Platée, L'Avant Scène OPERA 109 (Paris, 1999), 56–9Google Scholar, questions whether her physical beauty, or lack of it, in fact plays much of a role, observing that there is no reference to physical ugliness in the livret. Further, he points out that in an era when small-pox scars and other physical deformities were common, education and manners carried more weight.
3 Charles-Antoine Coypel (1694–1752), Portrait de l'acteur Jelyotte en costume de femme (c. 1745, Musée du Louvre).
4 The appearance on the stage of a man dressed as a woman was deeply offensive to some. In discussing the character of Tacmas, a travesty role in Rameau's opéra-ballet Les Indes galantes (1735), the Mercure de France decreed, ‘The dignity of our theatre does not support the weakness of a man dressed up as a woman. This degradation of the superior sex dulls the soul of the spectator.’ (‘La diginité de notre Théâtre ne soutient pas la lâcheté d'un homme travesti en femme. Cet avilissement du sexe supérieur affadit l'âme du spectateur.’) As quoted in Halbreich, 58.
5 Michel Sénéchal, who became identified with the role of Platée, beginning in 1956, dressed as an androgynous clown with a painted face in a dress with a tiny crown on his head, so he was identifiably human. The Spoleto production featured a reasonably attractive Platée thus avoiding the issue of ugliness. The Platée of both the Mark Morris production and that of the Paris opera (and thus featured in the DVD cited in note 12, below) is clearly part amphibian.
6 Remond de Sainte Albine reviewing Platée in the Mercure de France (March 1749), 188–95, provides a list of offensive words and others used in a vulgar or suggestive context, nevertheless, he concludes with, ‘Platée est un de ses [Rameau's] ouvrages les plus brillians.’ He touches on the issue of bienséance, ‘A way of speaking [which] would appear trivial in the mouth of a divinity, a nymph, or a sovereign would not offend at all in the mouth of a peasant.’ (‘Une façon de parler paroît trivial dans la bouche d'une Divinité, d'une Nymphe, d'un souverain, & elle ne blesse point dans la bouche d'un paysan.’)
7 For a discussion of reviews of Platée in relation to issues of language, as well as the bienséances as they apply to Platée, see Thomas, Downing A., ‘Rameau's Platée Returns: A Case of Double Identity in the Querelle des bouffons’, this journal, 18 (2006), 1–19Google Scholar.
8 Bartlett, XLVII, counts thirty-one performances of the opera and another fifty-four of the prelude alone.
9 Soldini, Elisabetta, ‘Œuvres à l'affiche’, Platée, L'Avant Scène OPERA 109 (Paris, 1999), 78–81Google Scholar, provides a partial list of twentieth-century performances. The earliest took place in Munich on 26 January 1901.
10 Soldini, 78, lists performances in Montecarlo in 1917 and Como and Milan in 1921. For a discussion of the three complete recordings of this work by Rosbaud (Pathé DTX 223-224, 1956), Malgoire (CBS Masterworks M2K44982, 1988) and Minkowski (Musifrance WE815-ZA, 1988), see Perroux, Alain, ‘Discographie’, Platée, L'Avant Scène OPERA 109 (Paris, 1999), 74–7Google Scholar.
11 The first English performance took place at Sadler's Wells by the English Bach Festival Orchestra in celebration of Rameau's Tercentenary year under the direction of Jean-Claude Malgoire. The American performance took place in Charleston, South Carolina as part of the Spoleto Festival.
12 Platée (TDK, 2003) Opéra National de Paris, with the Orchestra and Chorus of Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble, Mark Minkowski, cond. With Paul Agnew as Platée.
13 For example, ‘There are orchestral effects which make Richard Strauss sound grey. Not only do we witness a couple of marvellous storms but there are also parodies of idyllic nature: no nightingales here but rather croaking frogs, hooting owls and a charivari of bird noises’; Smith, Richard Langham, ‘Opera on its Head’, The Musical Times, 133 no. 1788 (February 1992), 83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is a highly favourable review of the Minkowski recording.
14 Girdlestone, Cuthbert, Jean-Philippe Rameau: His Life and Work (London, 1957; rev. edn New York, 1969), 404Google Scholar.
15 Tommasini, Anthony, ‘Gods are Catty to the Swamp's Miss Piggy’, New York Times, 30 September 2004Google Scholar.
16 Others have attempted to explore Platée in relation to Greek drama in a more general way. Quéro, Dominique, ‘Platée, “Drame Satyrique”?’ in Humour, ironie et humanism dans la litterature française: Mélanges offerts à Jacques van Heuvel par ses élèves et amis, ed. Koeppel, Philippe (Paris, 2001), 195–220Google Scholar, suggests that the opera owes its mixture of comic and tragic elements to the satyr plays only one of which, Cyclops, by Euripides, survives.
17 Gross, Nathan, ‘Racine's Debt to Aristophanes’, Comparative Literature, 17 (1975), 209–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ironically, Girdlestone, 404, briefly compares the mockery found in Les Plaideurs and that found in Platée without recognising that they might been inspired by the same author.
18 Racine, Jean, Les Plaideurs (Paris, 1669), Au lecteurGoogle Scholar.
19 Girdlestone, 404, condemns the mockery in Les Plaideurs with the same censoriousness with which he approaches the character of Platée: ‘it is derisive, pitiless, without the sympathy with which habitually comic playwrights like Molière give warmth to their creations.’ He then points out that both Racine and Rameau were ‘artists whose normal activity lay in, or near, the field of tragedy.’
20 Dacier, Anne, Le Plutus et les Nuées traduites en françois, avec des remarques & un examen de chaque pièce selon les régles du théâtre; par Mademoiselle Le Fèvre (Paris, 1684)Google Scholar. Brumoy, Pierre, Théâtre des grecs (Paris, 1730)Google Scholar. This latter work saw multiple editions and was later translated into English by Elizabeth Lennox under the supervision of Samuel Johnson.
21 Sallier used an edition from 1516. Aristophanis ranae was published in Paris in 1730.
22 Bartlett provides a detailed biography of Autreau, emphasising his connections with the operatic world from the beginning of the eighteenth century. Schwarz, H. Stanley, ‘Jacques Autreau, A Forgotten Dramatist’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, 46 (1931), 498–532CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses his importance to theatre history. When the Comédie Italienne returned to Paris in 1716 from its long exile (beginning in 1697), the company was out of touch with current Parisian taste. Autreau saved them from bankruptcy by providing them with their first success, Port à l'Angloise, ou les Nouvelles Débarquées. Over the next two decades he continued to provide them with both successes and failures.
23 Autreau, Avertissement, ‘Je n'ai fait d'autre changement à l'histoire que d'animer la figure de bois, et d'en faire une nymphe ridicule.’ See Anderson, Nicolas, ‘Rameau's Platée: Burlesque or grotesque?’, Early Music, 11 (1983), 505CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 The following is a partial summary of Bartlett's table, LXXVII, giving a history of the opera from its beginnings through to the eighteenth century.
25 Bartlett, LXXII.
26 Her assistant Iris is eliminated as well.
27 Autreau, Œuvres, 86.
28 This is the only reference to frogs in Autreau's earlier version.
29 Platée, Act II scene 8: ‘Platée est ramenée sur la Scène par une troupe d'Habitants de la champagne, de leurs femmes & de leurs enfants qui l'entourent & le moquent d'elle.’
30 Girdlestone, 444, summarises the frustrations Voltaire experienced in working with Rameau on La Princesse de Navarre in 1744 and 1745 at the same time the composer was dealing with Autreau. de La Dixmérie, Nicolas Bricaire, Les Deux ages du gout et du genie français, sous Louis XIV et Louis XV (Paris, 1769)Google Scholar, in discussing the contributions of Louis de Cahusac to the art of lyric poetry, says, ‘Il [Cahusac] sacrifie souvent les droits du Poëte ceux du Musicien; c'est une justice que lui rendait l'illustre Rameau, qui sur cette matière pouvait juger sans appel. Au surplus, nous ne pouvions que gagner à cet sacrifice.’ (He often sacrifices the rights of the poet to those of the musician; it is a right that he yielded to the illustrious Rameau, who in this matter could render judgement without appeal. Besides, we could only benefit from this sacrifice.)
31 Bartlett, LXXVI, demonstrates that the later contribution of the other librettists Le Valois d'Orville and Balot à Sorat who made alterations to the livret at various times was minor.
32 Current scholarship has emphasised the ritual nature of the origins of comedy. See, for example, Rothwell, Kenneth S., Nature, Culture and the Origins of Greek Comedy: A Study of Animal Choruses (Cambridge, 2007), 7Google Scholar.
33 The Prologue to Platée exploits this connection. On the origins of the prologue, see Quéro, Dominique, ‘Bacchus et la naissance de comédie’, Dix-Huitième Siècle, 29 (1997), 255–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Lada-Richards, Ismene, Initiating Dionysus: Ritual and Theatre in Aristophanes' Frogs (Oxford, 1999), 163–4Google Scholar.
35 Rothwell, 20–1, refers to this as ‘festive inversion’.
36 On this point, the ‘burlesque’ nature of Dionysus has been extensively treated. Lada-Richards challenges this interpretation.
37 Heracles was enslaved by Queen Omphale for one year as punishment for the killing of Iphitus, the brother of Iole. According to some sources, she made him do women's work, and he is depicted by ancient artists dressed as a woman spinning wool.
38 See Lada-Richards, 17–26, for further discussion of the significance of Dionysus' costume. Dionysus was the patron of women and the centre of their secret rites where he wore, at times, women's clothes.
39 Dover, K. J., Aristophanes: Frogs (Oxford, 1993), 17Google Scholar.
40 In The Frogs, the body of water is a ‘bottomless lake’, identified by scholars as the Lake of Acheron. Others, including Brumoy, I, 143, have assumed it to be the river Styx, which it is clearly not. See Terpening, Ronnie H., Charon and the Crossing: Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Transformations of a Myth (London and Toronto, 1985), 53–9Google Scholar.
41 Dionysus is god of many things. His ubiquity is unique in the Greek Pantheon. Dionysus was regarded as an outsider, whose presence in the Greek religion was the result of foreign influence.
42 Dionysus became god of the marshes because his sanctuary was located in a marshy area of Athens. The sound made by the Greek frog rana ridibunda is uncannily like the sound of Aristophanes' frogs.
43 Rameau here is imitating the rana temporaria or common frog indigenous to Europe, which emits one exclamatory croak. Here the roles are reversed with the frogs picking up the song from Platée, whereas Dionysus takes on the frogs' cadence.
44 The debate began with a scholia of unknown age (ΣFrogs211) which specifically states the frogs are invisible. Most recently Allison, Richard, ‘Amphibian Ambiguities: Aristophanes and His Frogs’, Greece and Rome, 30 (April 1983), 8–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, summarised the arguments for and against the appearance of the chorus. He observes, ‘quite simply, and astonishingly for such a well-loved scene, there is no scholarly agreement, even on the broadest level, how it was presented in the theater’. His arguments against the appearance of the frogs, in addition to the issue of expense include (1) frogs in the wild, especially the Greek frog rana ridibunda, are heard more often than seen; Aristophanes was a keen observer of wildlife. (2) All the verbs used by Charon describe the frogs as being heard but never mention their being seen. (3) Frog choruses are found in earlier plays and, therefore, would be no novelty to the Athenian audience. Marshall, C. W., ‘Amphibian Ambiguities Answered’, Echos du monde / Classical Views, 40 (1996), 251–65Google Scholar, rebuts Allison's argument point-by-point and then offers the suggestion that the frogs were behind Dionysus, invisible to him but visible to the audience. Most recent research cites these two articles to support their conclusions either way, but the issue will never be conclusively settled.
45 Brumoy, I, 143–4.
46 In the course of the play there are many references to the Athenian naval victory at Arginusae which occurred only a few months before the performance.
47 There are a number of different interpretations of the humour found in this scene. Rothwell, 136–40, suggests that the frogs mistakenly think they can sing as well as swans. This interpretation might be reflected in Rameau's unmelodic setting of ‘Quoi’. Others are based on the erroneous assumption that Dionysus is rowing across the river Styx, for example, Revermann, Martin, Comic Business: Theatricality, Dramatic Technique, and Performance Contexts of Aristophanic Comedy (Oxford, 2006), 65Google Scholar.
48 This may be regarded as a satire on Heracles' vaunted reputation as a monster killer. For more on Heracles' reputation in this respect, see Padilla, Mark W., ‘Herakles and Animals in the Origins of Comedy and Satyr-Drama’, in Le Bestiaire d'Héraclès. IIIe Rencontre héracléenne, ed. Bonnet, Corinne, Jourdain-Annequin, Colette and Pirenne-Delforge, Vinciane (Liège, 1998), 217–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Note the similarity here with Platée's inept search for a mate.
50 Sommerstein, 14.
51 Sophocles died while Aristophanes was working on the play and therefore plays no part.
52 Four of Racine's eleven tragedies are at least in part based on plays of Euripides: Phèdre (from Hippolytus, also Seneca's Phaedra), Andromache (from Andromache), Iphigénie (from Iphigenia in Aulis) and Antigone (from The Phoenican Women, as well as Sophocles' Antigone). By contrast, Corneille based only Medée (Medea) on a play by Euripides. Rameau–Pelligrin, Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) is based on Euripides, Seneca and Racine.
53 Sommerstein, 12, discusses the about-face in the treatment of Dionysus between the first and second part of the play.
54 Harvey, Susan, ‘Operatic Parody in Eighteenth-Century France: Genesis, Genre and Critical Function’, Ph.D. diss. (Stanford University, 2002)Google Scholar.
55 A number of statements in eighteenth-century essays on parody reflect this sentiment, for example, ‘bien des tragédies déguisent les vices en vertus, les parodies leur en arrachent le Masque’ (‘Many tragedies disguise vices as virtues, parodies tear away their mask’). ‘Discours à l'occasion d'un discours de M.D.L.M. sur les parodies’ in Parodies du Nouveau Théâtre Italien (Paris, 1738; rpt. 1970), xxxi.
56 Dinaux, Arthur and Brunet, Gustave, Les Sociétés badines, bachiques, littéraires et chantants, leur historie et leurs travaux (Paris, 1867)Google Scholar. This group was originally formed to sing songs of a popular nature while ‘celebrating Bacchus’. Between songs there were discussions concerning literature and drama, including comedy. Before its demise in 1739, this group numbered around twenty, including the singer Jelyotte (an indication that Rameau's association with the singer was not limited to the stage). The playwright Bernard-Joseph Saurin (1706–81), a member of the group, has left a poem in praise of Jelyotte, providing a sense of the vigorous discussions which took place there:
57 ‘un ouvrage en vers composé sur une piéce entire … que lon détourne à un autre sujet & à un autre sens par le changement de quelques expressions … [Parody is] le flambeau dont on éclaire des défauts d'un auteur qui asurprise l'admiration.’ Sallier, L'Abbé, ‘Discours sur l'origine et sur le caractére de la Parodie’, Histoire de l'Academie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres avec les memoires de literature tirez des Registres de cette Académie depuis l'année M.DCCXXII jusques & compris l'année M.DCCXXXIII. Tome septiéme (Paris, 1733), 402Google Scholar.
58 The repertory of the Nouveau Théâtre Italien included parodies of Lully's tragedies Atys, Armide and Roland, Rebel's and Francœur's Pyrame et Thisbé, and Charpentier's Medée, among others.
59 ‘Love is the principal motivation for these ridiculous metamorphoses; love renders them [parodies] easy to execute; otherwise there would be infinitely fewer [parodies], if tragic poets would only apply themselves to such subjects as Cinna and Britannicus, and so many others of the same character.’ (C'est l'amour qui est la source principale de ces metamorphoses ridicules; c'est l'amour qui facilite l'exécution, & qui par là-même les rend si communes & si nombreuses: au lieu qu'elles le seroient infiniment moins, si les Poëtes Tragiques ne s'attachoient qu'à des sujets semblables à ceux de Cinna, de Britanicus, & de tant d'autres du meme caractére.) Louis Riccoboni, ‘Observations sur la Parodie’, 283, as cited in Harvey, 242.
60 Sallier, 400–1.
61 Sallier, 400, ‘Aristophane en fournit une infinité d'exemples’. Euripides' play Hippolytus contains a line deemed controversial, because it involves the breaking of an oath. When Hippolytus learns of the guilty passion that the queen Phaedra harbours for him, the nurse begs him not to reveal it and break his oath to remain silent. Hippolytus replies, ‘My tongue has sworn, but my heart has not.’ Sallier's example comes from the conclusion of The Frogs, when Dionysus chooses Aeschylus over Euripides for a return visit to the land of the living, and the latter reminds him of his promise to take him back. Dionysus responds by quoting Hippolytus, refunctioning the line. Both Racine in Phèdre (1677) and Rameau–Pellegrin in Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) avoid this situation by having the queen reveal her passion for Hippolytus herself.
62 Rose, Margaret A., Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Post-Modern (Cambridge, 1993), 57Google Scholar.
63 As cited in Rose, 57.
64 Note the unromantic substitution of the cuckoo for the song bird in Act I scene 4.
65 Jupiter transforms himself into a small four-legged creature (a dog?) and then an owl. He then returns to his original form and unleashes his thunderbolts, terrifying Platée.
66 Note Aristophanes' other plays, Wasps and Birds, where animals are used as substitutes for humans. The most recent major contribution to this field of study include Sifakis, G. M., Parabasis and Animal Choruses (London, 1971)Google Scholar and Rothwell (see n. 33). To be noted is his analysis of the frog chorus, and the frog's place in Greek society, 135–41. Lada-Richards (1999) devotes large portions of her study to Dionysus' relation to nature and animals.
67 Dill, Charles, Monstrous Opera: Rameau and the Tragic Tradition (Princeton, 1998), 12–13Google Scholar.
68 See also Thomas, Downing A., Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, 2002), 35Google Scholar.
69 This portrayal can be contrasted with Italian opera of the period, where castratos frequently played women in a thoroughly convincing way, although, as caricatures suggest, not always successfully.
70 I have found two French parodies that personify opera. Susan Harvey, 109, describes a work entitled La vengeance de Columbine, ou Arlequin beaufrere du Grand Turc, comédie avec la parodie de l'Opéra de Tancrède (anon., 1703) where opera refuses to make an entrance until after the overture is played. After the overture to Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, opera is carried in on a stretcher, announcing that he is too ill to make the journey to Turkey. Alain-René Lesage (1668–1747) produced a work with D'Orneval in 1729 entitled Les Spectacles malades (see below). An extreme example of personification appears in Alexander Pope's Dunciad (Book 4, 1743) where opera is portrayed as a harlot (Book 4, 45) seducing the upper classes.
71 de la Viéville, Lecerf, Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la musique françoise (Paris, 1704; rpt. Geneva, 1972), 46Google Scholar. Cowart, , ‘Of Women, Sex and Folly: Opera under the Old Regime’, this journal, 6 (1994), 212, quotes the entire passage in translationGoogle Scholar.
72 This is not to suggest that Rameau was commenting on French or Italian opera per se, but on opera in general.
73 If she were not in some way unattractive, Juno's reaction to her at the end would make no sense.
74 No critic refers specifically to the appearance of Platée, but general condemnations of ‘lewdness’ and ‘obscenity’ (specifically the words used by Voltaire describing the court performance) may refer to her. See Bartlett, LXI–LXII.
75 Kintzler, Catherine, ‘Platée: la comédie vérité de la tragédie’, Platée, L'Avant Scène OPERA 109 (Paris, 1999), 46–8Google Scholar. Susan Harvey lists three parodies prior to 1750. On the relation between Platée and the tragédie lyrique, see also Bouissou, Sylvie, ‘Platée de Rameau à l'avant garde d'une evolution du goût’, in La ‘Querelle des Bouffons’ dans la vie culturelle française du XVIIIe siècle, ed. Fabiano, Andrea (Paris, 2005), 33–41Google Scholar.
76 Girdlestone, 416, thoroughly analyses the difference between the rhythms of the music and the accents of the lyrics.
77 These lines might sound commonplace, but I have searched for them in every one of Lully's operas, as well as other works by other composers and found nothing close. Lully owned these lines. Parodies should not be too obvious, as there is a certain satisfaction in being ‘in’ on a joke which the less knowledgeable might miss. Susan Harvey points to parodies of lines far more obscure than the one described here. In the context of almost continuous parody occurring in this part of the opera, there seems little doubt concerning the source of this reference.
78 Halbreich, 57, suggests that the swamp is the provinces.
79 An extended example of this topic serving as an oracular function is Zoroastro's monologue in Act I scene 1 of Handel's opera Orlando (1733).
80 Van Den Heuvel, Jacques, ‘Platée, opéra-bouffe de Rameau au milieu du XVIIIe siècle’, in Jean-Philippe Rameau Colloque Internationale, ed. de La Gorce, Jérôme (Geneva, 1987), 106Google Scholar. Also see Girdlestone, 407.
81 For example, Girdlestone, 165, ‘Despite its rising emotional strength and ultimate dramatic power there is no doubt that this chorus is too long for an opera. Since Rameau never wrote another like it he himself must have realized this.’ Is Rameau mocking himself by referencing it here?
82 This chorus resonates with Virgil, Georgics I, line 359, a colourful evocation of the sound of the ocean. The French translation provided by Brumoy, I, 169, of these lines reads, ‘Les rivages rentissent au loin de mugissements des flots qui s'entre-choquent’.
83 References to the cuckoo abound in eighteenth-century French literature. It is a night bird. Each time the cuckoo sings, a wife is unfaithful to her husband, so it is often cursed. Thus generally associated with marital unhappiness, its presence often intensifies a melancholy moment. Its voice is often described as sad. Typical is the following poetic evocation:
(Pierre-Antoine-Augustin de Piis, L'harmonie imitative de la langue française: poème en quatre chants, 1785)
In Platée the juxtaposition of the cuckoo's call with the text ‘charmants oiseaux’ in the chorus is truly discordant.
84 Parodies du Nouveau Théâtre, 3 vols. (Paris, 1738), III, 1–51.
85 Ibid., 51: ‘Les démons transformés en huissiers et sergens détruisent le palais d'Armide, qui au lieu de s'en aller sur un Char Volant, comme à l'opéra, passe en l'air dans une brouette, et la pièce finit.’
86 von Grimm, F. W., Le petit prophète de Boehmischbroda (Paris, 1753), 14–17Google Scholar.
87 Thomas (2002), 124, for audience obsession with Armide.
88 She is not hesitant to use her wealth as a ‘persuasive’ tool. For example, she offers a judge in her pending law suit a bribe.
89 Powell, John S., ‘The Opera Parodies of Florent Carton Dancourt’, this journal, 13 (2001), 106Google Scholar.
90 For example, Susan Harvey, 86–9, describes Dufresny's parody L'Opéra de Campagne (1692) in which Mme Prenelle imagines herself as Armide and becomes obsessed with Arlequin, who is going to play Renaud in her amateur production.
91 A recent example is the adaptation of The Frogs by Stephen Sondheim, where Aeschylus and Euripides are replaced by Shakespeare and Shaw.
92 Sommerstein, 239.
93 Frogs, 975–6.
94 Christensen, Thomas, Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1993), is devoted to developing this point. See in particular, 209–51Google Scholar.
95 Christensen, 7, ‘As the enthusiastic commendations of Condillac, d'Alembert and de Laborde all suggest, Rameau's theory of music was seen as a scientific system.’
96 The tension between text and music, inherent in opera, may be a subtheme of Platée. While the central interest may lie with the text for much of the opera, music overwhelms the text in Folie's aria. Bouissou, 37, opines that Folie, ‘could indeed be the incarnation of Rameau himself’ (‘l'extraordinaire personage de la Folie qui pourrait bien être l'incarnation de Rameau lui-même’).
97 The Frogs, 940–5. Sommerstein translates μον
δíαις as ‘arias’, presumably because the dialogue later makes it clear that Euripides is referring to melodic (as opposed to recitative-like) songs. The term ‘arias’, however, has more modern associations which make it problematic in this context. Other translators almost universally translate the term as ‘monodies’, which poses its own problems in its associations with seventeenth-century opera and a more recitative-like style.
98 For a discussion of this work, see Isherwood, Robert M., Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Oxford, 1986), 74–5Google Scholar.
99 ‘De la rhubarb d’Amadis / Du vrai catholicon d’Armide / De la confection d'Atis / De l'elixir de Proserpine’; as cited in Isherwood, 75.
100 ‘[I]t is the uniformity of Lully's operas which causes the boredom which people experience in them nowadays.’ Denis Diderot, Réponse à l'auteur de la letter sur les Opéras de Phaëton et d'Hippolyte (1743), as cited in Woods, Caroline and Sadler, Graham, French Baroque Opera: A Reader (Aldershot, 2000), 104Google Scholar.
101 James Anthony suggests that this is most true of Lully's Roland and Armide, with the implication that this element has been overstated.
102 Frogs, 1041–2. Patroclus and Teucer were both heroes of the Trojan Wars.
103 Frogs, 1043–4. Stheneboea was the heroine of a lost play by Euripides.
104 ‘je croirai qu'il y a de la magie dans la composition de Rameau si ce ballet réussit; les paroles ne peuvent être plus basses, plus sottes, plus bêtes et plus ennuyeuses qu'elles le sont.’ For a thorough discussion of contemporary criticism, Bartlett, LXI and LXVI.
105 See Thomas (2006), which discusses language issues in Platée and the part they played in the debate over the singability of French language during the 1750s.
106 The art of conversation became an important part of French cultural life in seventeenth-century salons (see Goldsmith, Elizabeth C., Exclusive Conversations (Philadelphia, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For further discussions of the art of conversation in the eighteenth century, see Craveri, Benedetta, The Age of Conversation (New York, 2006)Google Scholar.
107 Thomas (2006), 10, argues that if she pronounces words properly (specifically ‘quoi’), she sounds like a social climber, and if she pronounces them badly she confirms her low social status. I am assuming that as a ruler, however humble, she possesses a nominal aristocratic status. Saint-Albine, 193, reinforces this interpretation by listing a nymph in the same class with ‘une divinité’ and ‘un souverain’.
108 Jupiter, Act II scene 3, ‘Seriez-vous insensible à mes tendres voeux?’
109 Act II scene 3, Jupiter: ‘Je vous offer des voeux constants. Vous ne répondez rien?’ Platée: ‘Pardonnez-moi, j'étouffe.’
110 Girdlestone, 416–19, devotes considerable space to discussion of this point.
111 Frogs, 1057.
112 Frogs, 1058–62. Platter, Charles, Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres (Baltimore, 2007), 20Google Scholar, points out that tragedy and epic, ‘share a sense that the characters of their representations are superior to contemporary humans … and both employ meters and special poetic dictions that help to create an environment that reinforces that sense of separation.’
113 Typical of the type of argument that ensues are Frogs, lines 1173–7:
Aeschylus: ‘And at this burial mound I invocate my father To hear and hearken.’
Euripides: ‘That's another thing he's said twice “To hear and hearken” – practically the same thing.’
114 Frogs, 1205–8.
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'Άργος κατασχών–'
ΑΙΣΧΥΛΟΣ. Ληκύθιον ἀπώλεσεν.
115 Frogs, 100 (see Sommerstein note, 165).
116 Platter, 36, concerning Greek comedy seems applicable here: ‘Comedy both debunks the tragic mystique and, at the same time, defines itself against tragedy. The result, from the perspective of Aristophanes, anyway, is to invert the traditional pecking order between tragedy and comedy, while exploiting tragedy's reputation in order to produce diverse comic effects.’
117 In this sense, the opera is conservative in that Platée reaps the rewards for not ‘fitting in’.
118 ‘Il y a de belles choses dans la musique; mais le sujet en est ridicule et mauvais, quoyque tiré d'Aristophane.’ Bartlett, LXI and XXVI.