‘Du Paradis Rêvé’: Parodies of Japonisme in Saint-Saëns's La princesse jaune

Abstract

The debut of a Japanese exhibit at the 1867 Exposition Universelle prompted a new enthusiasm for Japan (dubbed japonisme) that soon gripped artistic and literary circles in Paris. Camille Saint-Saëns's one-act opera La princesse jaune, which premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1872, emerged at the height of this fervour. At first glance, it might seem that La princesse jaune simply followed the trend. Yet, on closer examination it is possible to understand its story of an infatuated young artist as a playful, subversive commentary on japonisme. This article thus poses the question: How might we understand La princesse jaune as a parody? To answer this, I begin by considering its protagonist as a mockery of the elitist and exclusive japoniste subcultures that emerged in the wake of the Exposition. Borrowing from William Cheng's concept of ‘opera en abyme’, I then consider the opera's dream sequence, examining how its shifting diegesis highlights the fragile and ephemeral nature of the Orientalist dream. Ultimately, I argue that reading La princesse jaune as a parody allows us not only to reframe the work within Saint-Saëns's œuvre, but also to reassess its place within the wider contexts of nineteenth-century operatic Orientalism.

The inaugural appearance of a Japanese exhibit at the 1867 Exposition Universelle caused a stir in the Parisian artistic world. Inspired by the prints, ceramics and sculptures on display, a new market emerged for imported prints and objets d'art, soon followed by a deluge of mass-produced replicas and japonaiserie. Such was the interest that the trend acquired a name: japonisme.¹ From this furore emerged the Société du Jing-lar, a small group of devotees who met on a monthly basis from 1868.² Alongside activities such as eating with chopsticks, drinking sake and wearing kimonos, the Jing-lar's efforts aspired towards the academic: ‘diplomas’ decorated in woodblock style were awarded to its members (see Figure 1).³ This quasi-academic status, along with its select, all-male membership, positioned the Société as an exclusionary and highly gendered space of (sometimes imagined) expertise against a perceived tide of new amateur interest. By the early 1870s, then, japonisme had evolved from a growing artistic and aesthetic movement into a contentious site of cultural capital.

Figure 1. Philippe Burty's diploma, signed by members of the Société du Jing-lar. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Arts, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection. New York Public Library Digital Collections, NYPG95-F219.

It was in this atmosphere of specialist interest that Camille Saint-Saëns's one-act opera La princesse jaune premiered at the Opéra-Comique on 12 June 1872. Though the influence of japonisme in 1870s France has been well studied with regard to visual arts and literature,⁴ musicological scholarship has generally focused elsewhere.⁵ Dating from Saint-Saëns's earlier forays into the realm of musical exoticism (what Lynne Johnson calls his ‘Fantasy’ period⁶), La princesse jaune – with its story of a lovesick artist's drug-induced ‘trip’ to Japan – might at first appear the very pinnacle of japoniste fantasy. However, following closer inspection, I suggest that La princesse jaune did not simply reproduce or perpetuate the wider interest in Japan, but rather offered a playful – and at times even subversive – commentary that highlighted the more ridiculous elements of 1870s japonisme.

Saint-Saëns was not averse to indulging in this kind of intellectual exploration himself. On certain subjects (such as Greco-Roman culture), he would attempt to present himself as a quasi-scholarly authority.⁷ Equally, however, he could be highly suspicious of groups whose interests, in his view, bordered on the fanatical: in the decades to come, he would be scathingly critical of the Wagnerists who had come to dominate Parisian musical life.⁸ That Saint-Saëns seemed comfortable in holding both these positions – a passionate pursuer of his own academic interests and a stern critic of those who did much the same – was a recurrent pattern throughout his life, and goes some way to explaining his approach to La princesse jaune.

I am not the first to read Saint-Saëns's work as parody – or as its more politically charged cousin satire.⁹ Yet despite efforts to frame La princesse jaune as a work that was not intended to be taken entirely seriously, no previous study has sought to consider what implication these elements of parody might have for our understanding of Saint-Saëns and of musical Orientalism more generally. This is not to exaggerate his cultural sensitivity: he must after all be understood in the context of the social and political landscape of early Third Republic France. Furthermore, over the course of his long life (1835–1921), Saint-Saëns's views on exoticism evolved, defying any single interpretation of his œuvre in this respect. Ralph Locke's recent uncovering of Saint-Saëns's misgivings about the French colonial project expressed in later life might serve as an invitation to re-evaluate this aspect of his output and, to this end, my study turns to his earlier work.¹⁰

This article therefore makes the case for La princesse jaune as both an insight into its composer and a new lens on the cultural and artistic landscape of japonisme in Paris in the 1870s. It argues that the opera can be read not simply as a fantasy typical of the Orientalist model, but more profitably as a parody. In so doing, it exposes the ambivalent relationship between japonisme as an aesthetic movement and the more exclusionary subcultures prompted by its widespread appeal. It also reveals the tensions between the established understanding of nineteenth-century Orientalism as a fantastical site of escapism, and the ways in which the likes of the Jing-lar saw themselves as gatekeepers of an expertise that was arguably more imagined than real. With all this in mind, I do not seek to compare Saint-Saëns's imagined Japan with the ‘genuine’ article, even as it might have been understood by French scholars at the time – after all, Edward Said warns that more often than not the language used throughout the nineteenth century to describe the Orient did not even attempt to be accurate.¹¹ Rather, I propose that to examine La princesse jaune in this way is not only to challenge the assumption that nineteenth-century Orientalism might always have been a ‘serious’ pursuit, but also to reveal the underlying fragility of the japoniste movement at the height of its influence.

My discussion begins with an account of La princesse jaune's journey to the stage of the Opéra-Comique, tracing the influence of japonisme on the development of the work. I then examine the dream sequence in detail, parsing the plot, music and staging to identify the moments of departure from what might at first seem a straightforward Orientalist fantasy into a more meta-critical view of the work. Finally, I consider the implications of an explicit dream narrative, proposing both a new dimension to our understanding of the wider trend of operatic Orientalism and a fuller contextualisation of La princesse jaune in Saint-Saëns's œuvre – particularly his earlier works – than has previously been possible.

Staging japonisme

La princesse jaune was the first of Saint-Saëns's operas to be performed, but it was not his first attempt at writing in the genre. He had completed Le timbre d'argent in 1865, but plans for its premiere were disrupted first by the Franco-Prussian War, then by the Paris Commune (1870–1).¹² As compensation for the delay, Camille du Locle – who had recently resumed his post as the co-director of the Opéra-Comique alongside Adolphe de Leuven – offered Saint-Saëns a commission for a new opera, for performance alongside two other one-acters the following year. Du Locle also facilitated Saint-Saëns's introduction to the librettist Louis Gallet, leading to a long-term professional collaboration and personal friendship.

Apparently inspired by the current fashion for Japan,¹³ Saint-Saëns and Gallet soon proposed a new work to du Locle. However, the original scenario was not met with enthusiasm. In a 1911 article published in the Écho de Paris, the composer recounted du Locle's nervous response to their plan:

Japan was fashionable, people talked of nothing but Japan, it was a furore; the idea came to us to make a Japanese piece. It was submitted to du Locle, but pure Japan, on stage, frightened him; he insisted that we modify it, and it was he, I think, who had the idea of a half-Dutch, half-Japanese setting in which this little work La princesse jaune was to take place.¹⁴

With this suggestion, the two set about writing a new scenario, and Saint-Saëns would complete the score in May 1872. It is not clear from Saint-Saëns's account why du Locle was so uneasy about the prospect of an entirely Japanese setting, but his suggested modification did more than simply add dramatic interest. With the addition of the second setting in Holland, La princesse jaune moved away from straightforward, picturesque exoticism towards a Pygmalionesque¹⁵ narrative of the fragile, ephemeral fantasy of japonisme.

Over its six scenes, the plot of La princesse jaune – dismissed by Gustave Bertrand in Le ménestrel as ‘almost enough for one act’¹⁶ – took full advantage of the opportunities offered by a dual setting. Its protagonist, a Dutch artist named Kornélis, is obsessed with all things Japanese. Alongside his scholarly fascination with art and poetry, he is also infatuated with an image of a woman rendered on a piece of japonaiserie, whom he names Ming. His cousin, Léna, herself in love with Kornélis, despairs that he will ever reciprocate her feelings. After a quarrel, Kornélis drinks an opium-laced potion which transports him to an imagined Orient.¹⁷ At first delighted with the Japan of his dreams, he passionately declares his love to a woman he believes to be Ming come to life, but is actually his cousin dressed in a kimono.¹⁸ Returning to reality, he recognises his true love for Léna, and renounces Ming – and Japan – forever.¹⁹

From the outset, as Brian Rees notes in his account of the premiere, hopes for the work from the Opéra-Comique management were not high. De Leuven, who was more than a little anxious about the new directions taken by his partner in revolutionising the theatre, suggested that a claque be engaged, proposing a payment of fifty francs for the premiere and another fifty francs for the twentieth performance.²⁰ De Leuven's fears would prove to be well-founded: as Rees continues, the second payment was ultimately ‘surplus to requirements’. Critics generally panned all three operas performed that night – the other two being Georges Bizet's Djamileh (another Gallet libretto on an exoticist theme) and Émile Paladilhe's Le passant, both of which had premiered in the preceding months. Despite La princesse jaune's light-hearted storyline and colourful costumes (designed by du Locle himself), it won little favour with the critics.

Reviewers attacked Saint-Saëns's score with what the composer would later describe as ‘ferocious hostility’.²¹ In Le radical, Eugène Jacquet remarked that ‘M. Saint-Saëns's music is pretentious and affected. Melodic idea is rare here, that is to say absent.’²² Harsher still, Albert de Lasalle wrote in Le monde illustré, ‘As for us, we would rather they cut off both our hands than have to applaud these reckless attempts at dramatic music.’²³ Gallet's libretto fared little better: the reviewer for Le pays lamented ‘It is gloomy, this work, not a flash of gaiety, not a poor little ray of good humour.’²⁴ Perhaps most damningly, Paul Foucher wrote in L'opinion nationale:

The young man gets tipsy, falls asleep, sees his cousin in a dream … and when he wakes up, marries the Japanese woman – not his cousin – who seems to have been informed of his dream. How? Having understood absolutely nothing, I wanted to consult my colleagues: the first told me that the young girl had heard her cousin dreaming; the second, that she had guessed; third, a columnist, who had given up, imagined that she had been able to reach an agreement with the directors of the local theatre to have a costume, a set and extras. It was therefore impossible for me to know how Kornélis returned to his cousin Léna, because in the dream the Princesse jaune looked like her. If Léna already looked like the image, why did [Kornélis] not love the first one – before drinking? If it is that the apparition looks like Léna, whom Kornélis did not like, why isn't he sobered from his dream? Mystery!²⁵

From this, it appears that Foucher had been unable to follow the plot, resorting to asking his fellow critics for their interpretations. But if his report is to be believed, none of them seems to have fully understood what had happened on stage.

Intriguingly, despite the widespread cultural fascination with Japan, some critics appeared puzzled by Saint-Saëns's musical intervention in the trend. Paul Bernard, writing in La gazette musicale, commented in apparent exasperation:

Do you notice that since the Japanese embassies, everything related to this funny country is in vogue? The Japanese-made eclipses the Paris-made, our shops are full of its products, at the painting exhibition we find Japanese pictures in every room; finally, regarding the strongly felt need that music should pay its due, the Opéra-Comique has taken care of this.²⁶

For him, La princesse jaune was yet another tiresome rendition of a charming (if superficial) Japanese theme; the possibility of reading it as a commentary on japonisme seems to have eluded him. The lukewarm critical reception did not improve, and the initial run of La princesse jaune closed after just five performances. Though it received a foreign showing in Stuttgart in 1880, and would be revived relatively frequently in France until the First World War, the status of this one-act opera comique has since waned.

The work's lack of popularity in performance has largely been mirrored by musicological scholarship. Indeed, while La princesse jaune might be understood as an important precursor to better-known works set in Japan, such as Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado (1885) and Puccini's Madama Butterfly (1904), it is conspicuously absent from many early assessments of the composer's œuvre.²⁷ In recent years, however, its prospects have changed significantly. Hugh Macdonald's book on Saint-Saëns and the stage has shone light on much previously neglected music, and his chapter on La princesse jaune constitutes the opera's first extended analytical study in English.²⁸ Within francophone scholarship, Mitsuya Nakanishi's writings on Saint-Saëns and Japan have in turn provided many valuable insights into La princesse jaune's inspirations and influences.²⁹ Furthermore, the centenary commemorations of the composer's death in 1921 have injected new momentum into the study of Saint-Saëns's œuvre, including lesser-known works such as La princesse jaune.³⁰

My interpretation of La princesse jaune as a playful engagement with the themes of japonisme is not a denial of Saint-Saëns's relationship with exoticism. Indeed, he remained invested in the phenomenon in myriad ways throughout his life; even when he had travelled extensively, he continued to view his subject through a lens of nineteenth-century French colonialism. Furthermore, his writings on music from this era, which give an uncompromising insight into his views on the musics of non-Western cultures, dissuade an overly generous reading of his position on the topic.³¹ Nevertheless, La princesse jaune offers a new facet to our understanding of the composer's early relationship with exoticism, and can be understood as his operatic reflection upon it. The Orient as appears in La princesse jaune is an entirely imagined locale – Kornélis and Léna never leave the comfort of their home in the Netherlands – and the dream sequence instead presents it as an explicit narrative of fantasy. By this means, La princesse jaune's representation of japonisme is both distanced and reflective, allowing for a perspective on the artistic craze that was markedly different from other japoniste cultural products of the time.

Kornélis and the japonistes

Having established the cultural contexts in which La princesse jaune emerged and was first performed, we will now turn to its protagonist, Kornélis. When it comes to the phenomenon of japonisme, the Société du Jing-lar offered plentiful material for parody. The select membership of the Jing-lar included the most illustrious of Japanese art enthusiasts. Among them were Philippe Burty, who had coined the term ‘japonisme’ in an 1872 article in La renaissance littéraire et artistique,³² the painter Félix Bracquemond, who had been one of the first to discover Hokusai's sketchbooks,³³ and Zacharie Astruc, an early writer on Japanese art who would become the group's leader.³⁴ The absence of women from this membership roster is worthy of note. Indeed, as Christopher Reed has observed, the self-selecting, homosocial inner circles of japonisme were highly unreceptive to women – except, of course, when it was the silent, mystical figure of the geisha.³⁵ Furthermore, Elizabeth Emery has highlighted that the Jing-lar were all too ready to dismiss the knowledge and influence of women (many of whom were recognised authorities) within the japoniste movement; their lack of (formal) education, Burty asserted, was likely to have left them ill-equipped to produce meaningful insights into the topic.³⁶

Moreover, Emery emphasises that the so-called ‘expertise’ of some members of the Jing-lar was only assumed. Burty, for instance, freely admitted that he could not speak Japanese, and that he relied largely on intuition to interpret his objects of study.³⁷ In his writings, however, he assumed the mantle of authority, reminding his readers insistently that it was he, after all, who had coined the term ‘japonisme’.³⁸ By the early 1870s, then, there was a significant difference between the wider cultural trend of japonisme and those who, seeking to defend their clique, closed ranks to exclude those they considered uninitiated or amateur. While the commentary of La princesse jaune has been understood as a response to the former, there is compelling evidence to suggest that we might instead read it as a critique of the latter.

While he might not be as brazen as Burty, the japoniste in Kornélis is only a thinly veiled portrait – and it is not difficult to imagine him keeping company with the Jing-lar. Not only is he an avid collector of Japanese art, but his interest is also an academic one. This fascination is evident from the very first scene of La princesse jaune: Léna reads one of his poems aloud, deciphering the alternating lines of Japanese and French text (Example 1). The latter lines would seem to be Kornélis's own translation, standing in, presumably, for Dutch.

Example 1. Camille Saint-Saëns, La princesse jaune, no. 1: Récit et ariette.

As Macdonald reveals, the Japanese lines are lifted from the 1871 edition of the Man'yōshū, a notable collection of Japanese poetry compiled, transliterated and translated by the renowned specialist Léon de Rosny.³⁹ More specifically, they are taken from a piece entitled ‘Vers composés par une femme à l'occasion de la mort de l'Empereur’.⁴⁰ The French lines in the libretto, however, are not the same as de Rosny's translation; rather, as Nakanishi observes, they are more general encapsulations of the themes of the text.⁴¹

Kornélis is not the only japoniste in La princesse jaune, however. As Reed notes, Léna shares her cousin's interest in Japan, although – much like the women who threatened the mystical male-only space of the Société du Jing-lar – she is precluded from entering Kornélis's fantasy.⁴² Indeed, it would seem that she is quite mystified by his infatuation with Ming's image, and dumbfounded when his affections have transferred to her upon his return from the dream world. The intensity of Kornélis's captivation by Ming mirrors the Jing-lar's fascination with the geisha, contributing to a highly gendered vision of Japan that existed only within the male imagination.

This characterisation of Kornélis as a slavish devotee to a distant fantasy was met with suspicion at the opera's premiere. In his write-up for the Gazette musicale, Bernard complained that he was weak, impressionable and far too easily ‘conquered by his madness’.⁴³ Furthermore, critics also tended to conflate the insipidity of Kornélis with the performance abilities of Jean Lhérie. For instance, Simon Boubée wrote in the Gazette de France:

we will allow ourselves to make a slight observation of M. Léhrie [sic]. This observation does not relate to his talent as a singer; we are intimately convinced that he would sing very well if he had a voice; but there is a side of his role that seems to have escaped him completely … The decent little gentleman we see at the Opéra-Comique is able to have a vanilla ice cream at Imoda's, but he will never go looking for delirium in an opiate potion.⁴⁴

While Lhérie's characterisation divided critical opinion, Boubée's description of his lacklustre performance was emblematic of a wider trend to dismiss Kornélis. In his own study, Reed suggests that critics’ anxieties about La princesse jaune were prompted by the work's ‘failure to sustain the homosocial fictions of japonisme’; that is, that Kornélis's awakening from the dreamed paradise of Japan, and his eventual renunciation of japonisme, destroys its escapist appeal altogether.⁴⁵ However, if Bernard and Boubée are typical, it would seem that critics were not altogether impressed with the idea of a passive, idle japoniste either.

Yet if it is the fanatical Société du Jing-lar that is being mocked by Kornélis's brand of japonisme, a question then emerges: why is La princesse jaune set in Holland, rather than France?⁴⁶ At first glance a Dutch setting for the European portion of the story might seem, as Nakanishi proposes, a straightforward gesture towards the unique trading relationship the Netherlands had maintained with the Japanese throughout the Sakoku period.⁴⁷ However, the continued contact with Japan meant that the Dutch did not share the rest of Europe's fervour for ‘discovering’ it once the borders opened in the 1850s. It seems, then, that Kornélis's engagement with japonisme – characterised by obsessive collection and study – was more French than Dutch. From this perspective, a further question arises: Why does the opera not use Paris as its European setting?⁴⁸ There is little archival evidence to explain this, beyond the composer's account of du Locle's reaction to the first draft of the opera's scenario, but we might entertain the possibility that a Parisian setting was too close for comfort. Perhaps a Dutch backdrop allowed La princesse jaune to make a playful poke at French japonisme (and the likes of the Jing-lar) while avoiding many of the potential pitfalls of a direct parody.

Fantasies of japonisme

While the preceding discussion has established the work's engagement with Japan and its culture (particularly with key texts such as the Man'yōshū), the dream sequence is far less reliant on pre-existing sources. Instead, it favours a more generalised evocation of a homogenised ‘Far East’. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the score. Pentatonicism had appeared in earlier scenes to signal references to Japan. For instance, Léna's vocal line (and the mirroring orchestral accompaniment) in Example 1 alternates between an arpeggiated pentatonic melody when she reads Kornélis's poem in Japanese and recitative on a single note when she returns to French. However, it is in the dream sequence that Saint-Saëns makes fullest use of typical Orientalist musical vocabulary, when Kornélis's fantasy ‘comes to life’.⁴⁹ As the dream world appears, an offstage chorus sings (Example 2). Accompanied by delicate bells, this pentatonic melody floats from the wings to create an ethereal, other-worldly effect. The text is genuine Japanese, but – as Macdonald suggests – its content betrays its prosaic origin: phrases include ‘How are you today? Good afternoon, today is a fine day' (‘Anata wadô nasaï masita!’), presumably lifted from a Japanese phrasebook.⁵⁰

Example 2. Camille Saint-Saëns, La princess jaune, no. 5: Scène, chœur, chanson et duo.

This combination of pentatonicism and instrumental effect drew from the usual bank of musical signifiers of the Orient common in nineteenth-century Western musical practice. Although printed transcriptions of Japanese melodies were circulating in France in the 1860s and 1870s,⁵¹ these bear no resemblance to anything in La princesse jaune's score.⁵² In fact, it seems that the only wholesale musical borrowing was from Saint-Saëns's own Désir de l'orient (1871) (Example 3), elements of which appear in both the overture and in Scene 2 (Example 4). In this re-use of melodies from the earlier work, it is as if, as Nakanishi describes, the composer's ‘Désir de l'orient’ and Kornélis's ‘Désir du Japon’ are one and the same.⁵³

Example 3. Camille Saint-Saëns, Le désir de l'orient.

Example 4. Camille Saint-Saëns, La princesse jaune, no. 2: Air.

While Saint-Saëns made no claim to using Japanese melodies or music as inspiration, critics at the premiere nonetheless seemed keen to ascribe a sense of cultural authenticity to the score, albeit with little authority. Adolphe Jullien wrote in Le français, ‘imitative music plays a big role here: having never been to Yeddo, I gladly take all this for authentic Japanese’.⁵⁴ Other reviewers fell into the trap of conflating Japan with a homogenous ‘Far East’. Octave Fouque, for instance, appeared to miss the Japanese allusions entirely, declaring ‘China is the source of these strange sounds’.⁵⁵ Such commentary reveals a certain yearning for the ‘genuine’ article – a desire for authenticity that was not, in itself, a new trend in music criticism – although in the end, Saint-Saëns's reliance on pentatonicism suggests that generalised ‘exotic’ effect ultimately took precedence.

These clichés of the Orient were not confined to the score: the use of an opiate potion (supposedly from Japan) to transport Kornélis to his dream world is particularly conspicuous. While opium had been regularly prescribed for medicinal purposes throughout Europe in the nineteenth century, the Opium Wars of the 1840s and 1850s meant that the drug became inextricably associated with pejorative stereotypes of Oriental decadence and addiction.⁵⁶ That opium was a substance more associated with China than with Japan seems to have been of little import.

The opera's treatment of Ming also reveals a certain blurring of cultures. As Nakanishi stresses, her name, reminiscent of the Chinese Ming Dynasty, is not drawn from the likes of the Japon illustré or the Anthologie japonaise.⁵⁷ Indeed, it is a linguistic impossibility in Japanese, the ‘ng’ sound never being found at the end of a word. Ming is in many ways an elusive character; it is never established exactly who or what she is. This in itself requires careful consideration. On the one hand, Reed suggests that the lack of detail regarding Ming's precise form – whether as a painting or a sculpture – could be seen to underline the trivial nature of her role, and thus to indicate the fundamental ‘interchangeability of japonaiseries’.⁵⁸ On the other, this lack of cultural specificity might also be contextualised within the larger landscape of operatic Orientalism. Studies of the relationship between gender and race abound in opera studies, particularly in relation to exoticised female characters⁵⁹ – although the representation of Ming departs from the seductive femme fatale formula seen elsewhere in the repertoire: she seems more in keeping with the submissive geisha stereotype that pervaded the nineteenth-century cultural imagination.⁶⁰

This broad-strokes musical evocation of Japan, combined with the culturally indistinct elements of the plot, might first seem to be at odds with the opera's precise quoting of original texts (such as the Man'yōshū) in earlier scenes. Despite his academic interest in its literature and culture, Kornélis's experience of Japan never moves beyond that of his own drug-altered consciousness, and nobody but he – and the offstage chorus – can speak or sing within it. However, the dream sequence should not be treated uncritically. While it is difficult (and impractical) to tease apart where Kornélis's fantasies end and those of the opera begin, a closer examination of the dream offers a new possibility for reading La princesse jaune as a part of the wider Orientalist tradition. Through Kornélis's dream of Japan, the escapism of nineteenth-century japonisme moves to centre-stage. It is no longer an implied fantasy of the sort that underpins much Orientalist opera; it instead becomes an explicit part of the narrative.

Orient en abyme

The use of framing devices was not uncommon in literary and cultural examples of nineteenth-century Orientalism. This technique served both to create distance between the reader and the narrative, and to ‘contain’ the Orientalised Other through the (re)imposition of a Western lens on the story. Such devices owed much to the relatively new phenomenon of travel writing. For example, in the framing of his novella Carmen, Prosper Mérimée assumed the persona of an anonymous writer – who serves as a moralising force as much as a narrative one – reporting his encounters with Don José on his travels through Spain.⁶¹ Dream narratives also achieved this distancing effect, with the additional benefit that their heightened fantasy existed only ephemerally, and consequently did not pose a threat to the status quo.

La princesse jaune's dream sequence introduces an additional layer of complexity to its plot, with most of the latter half of the work taking place in a mediated reality far from its first Dutch setting. William Cheng's concept of ‘opera en abyme’ in Korngold's Die tote Stadt (1920) – itself borrowing from André Gide, then Lucien Dällenbach – provides a useful aesthetic starting point for analysing these layers of ‘nested diegesis’ on stage.⁶² Basing his approach on the artistic technique of placing a copy of an image within itself, Cheng identifies four separate layers of diegesis within Korngold's work.⁶³ La princesse jaune is admittedly less complex than Die tote Stadt in this regard, with only two layers of diegesis: the opera's ‘real’ world in the Netherlands, and the drug-induced dream world of Kornélis's Japan. Nevertheless, these layers of reality put the nineteenth-century Orientalist dream itself on stage, and they complicate our understanding of how the fantasy operates and what it represents.

Staging the dream sequence presents a dramaturgical challenge. While it would be feasible for the Orient to remain unseen as a figment of Kornélis's imagination, such an approach would sacrifice many of the advantages of the operatic form as a vehicle for visual spectacle. At the premiere, at least, it seems that the production took every opportunity to stage a dream that was, as de Lasalle describes, as ‘visible to the spectator’ as it was to Kornélis.⁶⁴ A pair of set designs dating from the years following the 1872 premiere give some indication as to how this effect was achieved, as the stage transforms from a snowy Dutch townscape to a Japanese harbour scene (Figures 2 and 3). In this imagining, Kornélis's vision of Japan is just a version of his own hometown rendered ‘Oriental’ – a harbour being an apt choice for a narrative of encounter. This transition from one setting to another is emphasised by ethereal pentatonic melodies from the offstage chorus (seen previously in Example 2).

Figure 2. Philippe Chaperon, La princesse jaune set design, dated 1873–4 and 1876. Bibliothèque nationale de France, F-Po MAQ.A.441.

Figure 3. Philippe Chaperon, La princesse jaune set design, dated 1873–4 and 1876. Bibliothèque nationale de France, F-Po MAQ.A.441.

The layers of diegesis and the distance created by the dream are not stable in themselves, however. They exist both separately, as two distinct settings, and simultaneously, as it is only Kornélis who is transported by the potion. While the opera begins and ends in the ‘real’ world, the dream sequence complicates our understanding of what actually constitutes the ‘real’. Kornélis drinks the potion and is conveyed to the Orient in his imagination, but Léna – sometimes herself, sometimes Ming – blurs the distinction between these diegetic layers. From the libretto, Léna's own position is clear. When Kornélis, believing that she is Ming come alive, declares his love, Léna responds with confusion; despite her intrusion into his consciousness, she has no awareness of the dream world. Yet her transformation into the living Ming makes it difficult to discern what is dream and what is reality.

Despite the visual and musical anchoring points, then, the mediated ‘reality’ of the dream sequence becomes unstable with the addition of performers, and staging this shifting dual diegesis would have been a challenging task. While opéra comique conventions imply a neat ending with a happy couple, the conclusion of La princesse jaune might well have felt contrived. If Foucher's account of his fruitless search for plot clarifications from fellow critics is to be believed, one might conclude that the success of this one-act opera was at least partly hampered by its convoluted plot.

The heightened fantasy of the dream sequence ultimately complicates any consideration of La princesse jaune. Thomas Cooper has previously argued that the work's emphasis on the ‘essentially fictive nature of Orientalism’ might alter our understanding of how Orientalism functions in opera more broadly.⁶⁵ But I propose that the potential for subversion in La princesse jaune lies not just within the dream sequence, but also in who is dreaming. Kornélis considers himself a scholar of Japan, only for his interest to be quickly dispelled on encountering his fantasy first-hand. While none of the contemporary criticism likened him to the Jing-lar, it is certainly not hard to picture him among their ranks. Although the humorous potential of this work appears to have been largely missed by both contemporary critics and subsequent scholars, pursuing this potential reading allows us to move away from an understanding of the cultural phenomenon of nineteenth-century japonisme as a fantasy that has been recognised only subsequently. It is clear from La princesse jaune that the tenuous, fragile nature of the japonistes’ dream was acknowledged from the movement's earliest days.

‘Paradis rêvé’ to ‘Paradis perdu’

Indeed, the japoniste dream was not to last. In 1882, the Revue des arts décoratifs published an article titled ‘L'art japonais’, addressed to the director of the Gazette des beaux-arts, Louis Gonse. In this piece, its author, a ‘M. Josse’ (actually the Parisian jeweller Lucien Falize), recounted his fascination with the art of Japan in the wake of the 1867 Exposition Universelle. Intriguingly, however, he also noted the subsequent cooling of his initial fervour, reflecting:

now, my love is not extinguished, but it is calmer, as happens when the fever of possession has subsided and one looks upon one's mistress of the day before in broad daylight: she is still beautiful, smiling and full of grace, but one hesitates to take her for a wife. The comparison appears strange or brutal to you, but haven't we all, us artists, to some extent cohabited with the Japanese fée?⁶⁶

Given that some fifteen years had passed between the 1867 Exposition and the publication of this piece, it is perhaps not surprising that Falize had sensed a shift in his interests. By the 1880s japonisme had taken on a different guise, and Falize's account thus reflects the more established influence of Japan on French cultural life. Nevertheless, his narrative of obsessive fascination with the study of Japan to the point of ‘cohabitation’, only for that curiosity to fade, is not dissimilar to the plot of La princesse jaune. After all, Léna eventually supplants Ming in Kornélis's affections – although she is convinced that he has truly renounced his dreams of the Orient only when he declares ‘to the devil with Japan!’ (‘Au diable le japon!’).

With this resolution, however, comes the end of Ming. While the traditional conventions of opéra comique at the time might have denied her the dramatic, tragic death of exoticised heroines elsewhere in the repertoire (which are, so often, linked to their essential Otherness⁶⁷), Ming's fate only serves to diminish her narrative importance. After all, she does not die – she is not even a cast role deserving of a death aria. She simply vanishes, along with Kornélis's fantasy of Japan. If she does not exist in Kornélis's imagination, then she does not exist at all. Without Ming, his japoniste dream is dispelled; he has no fellow enthusiasts – no Société du Jing-lar – to hold his interest now.

The ease with which Ming entirely disappears from the narrative serves only to highlight further the fleeting, intangible dream of japonisme. In this case, Japan is not a real place inhabited by real people, but an escapist fantasy existing only within the confines of the male imagination. While critics at the time of La princesse jaune's premiere might not have used the term ‘japoniste’ to describe Kornélis, they made no effort to disguise their contempt for this young artist entirely overcome by his obsession with a faraway land. While it might be tempting to follow in the critics’ footsteps in highlighting the characters and plot of La princesse jaune as worthy of ridicule, it is also possible, as this study has shown, to understand the work as a deliberate attempt to make fun of the cultures of japonisme of the early 1870s.

To understand La princesse jaune as a parody on the furore of japonisme is to find it an entirely new place in the wider context of the aftermath of the 1867 Exposition Universelle. It is not simply a light, humorous rendition of a Japanese theme in response to current trends, but rather it offers a playful poke at the soft underbelly of japonisme and some of its most fanatical devotees. Such a reading is also an opportunity to reorient the work within Saint-Saëns's compositional œuvre; while Johnson has previously categorised La princesse jaune as part of his ‘Fantasy’ period, there is clearly something more complex operating beneath the surface. The composer's strident writings on non-Western music from this period should not be ignored – nor should his subsequent exoticist output, such as Samson et Dalila – but the Orientalist fantasy of La princesse jaune is not entirely uncritical. We might, then, reassess this work as both a precursor to other musical works set in Japan, and a new means of understanding Saint-Saëns prior to his first travels outside of Europe.

Moreover, such a reading opens up a new place for La princesse jaune in the larger canon of nineteenth-century Orientalism. It offers an alternative perspective to the dominant one of composers (and other creatives) reproducing the Orientalist paradigm without any critical engagement with the subject. By framing its Orient in the context of a dream sequence – heightening the fantasy still further – La princesse jaune foregrounds a larger truth about the Orientalist cultural project: that it is, in the end, based on nothing but dreams.

La princesse jaune is not a work that has found long-lasting success on the operatic stage, and its topical commentary on japoniste trends was likely a contributing factor to its lack of longevity. Nevertheless, re-situating this opera in the landscape of artistic japonisme illustrates the often playful interactions between music and wider cultural life in 1870s Paris, while also complicating our notion of how works of art engaged critically with the contexts in which they were created. With this new perspective, we can perhaps find a new home for La princesse jaune, both within our understanding of Saint-Saëns's œuvre, and as part of the canon of nineteenth-century Orientalist opera.