Chapter 10 explains many ways in which Italian music in particular was cultivated at the new Comédie-Italienne from 1716, directed by Luigi Riccoboni. Arias in Italian by Mouret contributed to divertissements of plays. Research into the company’s principal singers introduces an account of Le Joueur, written in-house as a response to Giuseppe Orlandini’s Serpilla e Baiocco at the Opéra in 1729. An edition of Le Joueur specially made for this book is referred to, accessible from its online space. Evidence then shows that different French singers were influenced by performing Italian, or Italianate, music: Pierre Théveneau, Charles Rochard, Joseph Caillot. ‘Il soldato valoroso’ focuses on a descriptive aria by Mouret (1729) presaging comic narratives in the French repertory. ‘Towards La Servante maîtresse’ explains the special nature of the 1746 performances of Pergolesi’s La serva padrona, then discusses French acting skills in relation to the requirements of Italian musical comedy. The repertory of Eustachio Bambini’s visiting troupe at the Opéra (1752–54) is discussed in relation to French cultural experience. The early career of Marie-Justine Favart is described, and her singing. French experience of intermezzi is assessed using a 1954 recording of Il maestro de musica, sung and spoken in German.

This chapter is organized around Diderot, who gave much attention to the craft of acting, and remains the best-known eighteenth-century theorist of acting. In two essays of the 1750s, Diderot conjured up a vision of twentieth-century naturalism, echoing Saint-Albine’s fashionable emphasis on feeling, while in his later Paradox on the Actor he argued that the best actors reproduce emotion on stage through cold analysis. Diderot invoked numerous contemporary actors, and this chapter establishes how the point of view of these actors differed profoundly from that attributed to them by Diderot. Antoine-François Riccoboni: who emphasized core technique for the benefit of amateurs. Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni: patronizingly dismissed by Diderot, who went on to adopt her arguments. Marie-Madeleine Jodin: a rebellious protégée who rejected his advice. Michel ‘Kelly’ Sticotti: a jobbing actor whose ideas had a complex genesis. Hyppolite Clairon: a remarkable actress and teacher whose published account of the acting process offers a more subtle analysis than Diderot. François-Joseph Talma: an articulate actor who challenged Diderot’s attack on Sticotti. Coda: theatre and oratory: two modes that remained closely related, despite claims that theatre somehow ‘liberated’ itself from oratory.

In this chapter I show how the job of the Baroque actor was to embellish the dramatic poem, and as it were to colour in the outline provided by the text. Actor and writer: Racine coached young actresses in exactly how to deliver his lines, but experienced actors wanted more autonomy. ‘Action’ in sacred oratory: Louis de Crésolles’ Jesuit treatise on acting atomized the body, and allowed Christians to think in a technical way about their performance methods, but Le Faucheur’s Protestant manual placed more emphasis on authenticity of feeling. Mondory and Corneille: A reading of Le Cid reveals the physicality and emotionalism expected of the celebrity lead actor, in a balance of power between actor and writer that would subsequently be eroded. The first manuals dedicated to stage acting: Perrucci and Gildon look back to seventeenth-century practice, as does Jean Poisson, the first professional actor to offer advice about performance to non-actors in a printed manual of 1717. Another actor, Luigi Riccoboni, in 1728 published a manifesto for novice Italian actors, warning them against French formalism and arguing for the primacy of feeling. He is less interested in the work of the voice, and more concerned with the way feeling operates on the body.