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Rousseau on Stage Playwright, Musician, Spectator

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Rousseau on Stage Playwright, Musician, Spectator (previously SVEC) Rousseau on stage playwright, musician, spectator Ed. MARIA GULLSTAM and MICHAEL O’DEA Vf VOLTAIRE FOUNDATION • UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD [email protected] www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk Rousseau on stage: playwright, musician, spectator Ed. MARIA GULLSTAM and MICHAEL O’DEA Following his opposition to the establishment of a theatre in Geneva, Jean- Jacques Rousseau is often considered an enemy of the stage. Yet he was fascinated by drama: he was a keen theatre-goer, his earliest writings were operas and comedies, his admiration for Italian lyric theatre ran through his career, he wrote one of the most successful operas of the day, Le Devin du village, and with his Pygmalion, he invented a new theatrical genre, the Scène lyrique (‘melodrama’). Through multi-faceted analyses of Rousseau’s theatrical and musical works, authors re-evaluate his practical and theoretical involvement with and influence on the dramatic arts, as well as his presence in modern theatre histories. New readings of the Lettre à d’Alembert highlight its political underpinnings, positioning it as an act of resistance to external bourgeois domination of Geneva’s cultural sphere, and demonstrate the work’s influence on theatrical reform after Rousseau’s death. Fresh analyses of his theory of voice, developed in the Essai sur l’origine des langues, highlight the unique prestige of Italian opera for Rousseau. His ambition to rethink the nature and function of stage works, seen in Le Devin du village and then, more radically, in Pygmalion, give rise to several different discussions in the volume, as do his complex relations with Gluck. Together, contributors shed new light on the writer’s relationship to the stage, and argue for a more nuanced approach to his theatrical and operatic works, theories and legacy. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: a theatre and music chronology Introduction: ‘La vérité est que Racine me charme’, MARIA GULLSTAM and MICHAEL O’DEA Part I. Rousseau as theorist of theatre and opera 1. The anthropological foresight of the Lettre sur les spectacles, FELICITY BAKER 2. The dramaturgy of Rousseau's Lettre à d’Alembert and its importance for modern theatre, PATRICK PRIMAVESI 3. The voice of nature in Rousseau’s theatre: reconstructing a dramaturgy, JØRGEN LANGDALEN 4. Rousseau’s Pygmalion and the limits of (operatic) expression, JACQUELINE WAEBER Part II. Rousseau as playwright 5. Pygmalion’s power struggles: Rousseau, Rameau and Galathée, MARIA GULLSTAM 6. Rousseau and his early comedies: the concept of the comic, MARIE- EMMANUELLE PLAGNOL-DIÉVAL 7. Rousseau’s Pygmalion and the theatre of autobiography, DAVID MARSHALL Part III. Rousseau’s operatic and theatrical posterity 8. The melodic language of Le Devin du village and the evolution of opéra- comique, DAVID CHARLTON 9. Rousseau’s ghost: Le Devin du village at the Paris Opera, 1770-1779, MICHAEL O’DEA 10. A theatrophobic dramatist: J.-J. Rousseau’s position in theatre historiography and on today’s stage, WILLMAR SAUTER 11. The judgement of Rousseau: Paride ed Elena by Gluck and Calzabigi (Vienna 1770), MAGNUS TESSING SCHNEIDER Maria Gullstam’s main area of research at Stockholm University is Rousseau’s theatre aesthetics. She is a member of the research group Performing Premodernity and of the research network Rousseau and Sweden. Michael O’Dea is emeritus professor of French at Université Lyon 2, and his research focuses on Rousseau and Diderot. He is completing a new edition of Rousseau’s Essai sur l’origine des langues. Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, September 2017 ISBN 978-0-7294-1199-8, xxx+310 pages, 40 ills £75 / €90 / $105 Vf VOLTAIRE FOUNDATION • UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk VOLTAIRE FOUNDATION ORDER FORM Voir au verso pour les commandes en France. Please send the completed form to: Administrator, Voltaire Foundation, 99 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6JX. Payment can be made by credit card (complete details below) or cheque (made payable to the ‘Voltaire Foundation Ltd’; sterling cheques must be drawn on a British bank, dollar cheques on an American bank, or euro cheques). Please complete this form in BLOCK CAPITALS. 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