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How to Catch the Devil? Performance Materiality and Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2020

T. SOFIE TAUBERT
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Abstract

Stage machinery enters the historical narrative often enough through mishaps and interruptions. This article takes as its starting point a report of the Paris opera director Véron in order to think about the role of materiality in the analysis of past performances. The occasion, depicted in the report, is the opening night of Robert le Diable, written by Eugène Scribe and composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer. The article discusses two key questions on the historiographic value of the report as a source for performance analysis. (1) How can we unfold the performativity of a past performance through archival documents? (2) What is the impact of the materiality of machinery, bodies and space in the theatrical interplay?

Type
Dossier–Theatrical Vestiges: Material Remains and Theatre Historiography
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , October 2020 , pp. 315 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2020

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References

NOTES

1 Neue Musikzeitung Köln, 15 May 1882, TWS Sammlung Hagen 119115; French original: Véron, Louis-Désiré, Mémoires d'un bourgeois de Paris, vol. 3 (Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1857), pp. 164–6Google Scholar. My translation. This reprint is surrounded by several more reports reprinting or retelling Véron's Mémoires provoked by the fiftieth jubilee of the first performance.

2 Meyerbeer grew up in a Jewish family in Berlin. After studies in Vienna and Italy, he lived in Paris.

3 The performance was conducted by François-Antoine Habeneck and directed by Adolphe Nourrit (acting also as Robert) and Louis-Désiré Véron – himself director of the opera. The performance was choreographed by Filippo Taglioni and the decoration designed by Charles-Edmond Duponchel and Pierre-Luc Cicéri. The performers were Adolphe Nourrit (Robert), Nicolas-Prosper Levasseur (Bertram), Marcelin-Léger Lafont (Raimbaud), Alexandre-Aimé Prévost (Priest), Pierre-Auguste ‘Alexis’ Dupont (Master of Ceremonies), Jean-Etienne-August Eugène Massol (Herald), Jean-Pierre Hurteau (Alberti), Laure Cinti-Damoreau (Isabelle), Julie Dorus-Gras (Alice) and Héléna Marie Taglioni (Abbess).

4 Meyerbeer himself took care that Cicéris's decorations were reproduced for the Berlin premiere in 1832, but the scenario is quoted in numerous drafts, visible for example in the holdings of the Theatre Collection Cologne in Hermann Burghart, Vienna 1900/Carl Lautenschläger, Munich 1996; the toy theatre version of Robert der Teufel by Trentsensky, or Vinzenz Sterra, Halle 1898.

5 Act III, scene viii: ‘Bacchanale: The nuns recognize each other and express their joy. With the allegro vivace the light turns brighter, the chandeliers in the cloister inflame.’ Notes of the director Theo Raven, in: Wittmann, Carl Friedrich Robert der Teufel. Romantische Oper in fünf Akten von Giacomo Meyerbeer, Eugène Scribe und Germain Delavigne (Theodor Hell) (Leipzig: Philip Reclam, 1920), p. 104Google Scholar. TWS L 5442.

6 Davis, Tracy C., The Broadview Anthology of Nineteenth-Century British Performance (Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2012), p. 13Google Scholar.

7 Connor, Steven, Paraphernalia: The Curious Lives of Magical Things (London: Profile Books Ltd, 1996), p. 3Google Scholar.