Introduction

Home , Achille Fould, Jules Baroche, Ludwig II of Bavaria

Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-82938-0 — The Empire at the Opéra Mark Everist Excerpt More Information

The Empire at the Opéra 1

Introduction Theatre, power and music are impossible to separate, and attempts to under- stand creative acts on the musical stage without taking their relationship into account are doomed to failure at worst, to incompleteness at best. Whether active in the seventeenth-century court, the eighteenth-century public theatre, the nineteenth-century café-concert, the twentieth-century music hall or the twenty-ﬁrst-century digital world, creative artists were enmeshed in networks of practice that were subject to what Foucault called technologies of power, and the immediate and more recent success of their works was a direct result of how such power circulated and how individuals negotiated the structures, constraints and opportunities these technologies presented.1 Exactly how the elements of theatre, music and power play off one another differs according to time and place. Technologies of power vary, for example, between the Drury Lane theatre in the 1690s, the court of Ludwig II of Bavaria in the 1860s and the Reichskulturkammer in the 1930s; their interpretation depends on administra- tive structures, institutional rivalries and the ways in which creative and recre- ative artists interact with them. Furthermore, the documentary record left by different cultures means that modern abilities to negotiate them are also highly varied. Nineteenth-century France, with Paris at its heart, stands at the centre of understanding the relationship between music, theatre and power because of its worldwide inﬂuence, its creative élan and the sophistication of theatrical organisation, as well as the exhaustive physical record of the culture that survives.2 The city is central to any understanding of music in the European theatre since it not only exported works to all corners of the globe – opéras, opéras comiques and comédies-vaudevilles that could be heard from Manchester to Melbourne

1 For an outline of how power, politics and genre interact across the ﬁrst two thirds of the nineteenth century, largely derived from Foucauldian theories of power, see Mark Everist, ‘The Music of Power: Parisian Opera and the Politics of Genre, 1806–1864’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 67 (2014), 685–734, especially 686–9. This theoretical analysis underpins commentaries on power in the current Element. 2 The fundamental text outlining questions of institution, agency and repertory in the nineteenth- century Parisian theatre is Nicole Wild, Dictionnaire des théâtres parisiens au xixe siècle: les théâtres et la musique (Paris: Amateurs des Livres, 1989), 306–7; see also Wild, Dictionnaire des théâtres parisiens (1807–1914), Collection Perpetuum mobile (Lyon: Symétrie, 2012). Outlines of the repertory of the four major opera houses in the Second Empire are contained in four works by Albert Soubies: Soixante-sept ans à l’Opéra en une page du ‘Siège de Corinthe’ à ‘La Walkyrie’ (1826–1893) (Paris: Fischbacher, 1893); Soixante-neuf ans à l’Opéra-Comique en deux pages de la première de ‘La dame blanche’ à la millième de ‘Mignon’ (1825–1894) (Paris: Fischbacher, 1894); Histoire du Théâtre-Lyrique (1851–1870) (Paris: Fischbacher, 1899); Le Théâtre-Italien de 1801 à 1913 (Paris: Fischbacher, 1913). The four works are integrated into a single online resource: Sarah Gutsche-Miller and Mark Everist, ‘List of French Music Drama Performances’ (www.fmc.ac.uk/collections/bibliographical-resources-and-work-in-progress/).

2 Elements in Musical Theatre

and from Seville to Shanghai – but it was also a magnet for every foreign composer from Mozart to Wagner with ambitions beyond the immediately local.3 The city’s cultural institutions were a focus for European cultural exchange as well as centres of worldwide diplomacy.4 Paris was also the hub for the projection of its own cultural memory and that of nations who shared its aesthetic products. At the core of Parisian theatrical and operatic culture stood the Opéra on the rue Le Peletier: a physical embodiment of sophisticated creative impulse and worldwide inﬂuence, as well as of domestic theatrical memory and diplomatic initiative. The Paris Opéra functioned within a complex ecosystem of institution, individual and genre governed by a citywide system of licences; this dominated the theatrical and musical landscape from 1807 to 1864, when the so-called liberty of the theatres was declared. Each theatrical organisation in Paris was responsible for a particular mix of musical, theatrical and choreographic genres, and every licence protected the holder against trespass from other institutions. So while the Théâtre Italien, for example, held the monopoly on the performance of Italian opera in its original language, the Paris Opéra matched this with the exclusive right to ﬁve-act grands opéras on historical themes that made use of orchestral recitative and danced divertissements, ballets-pantomimes and shorter operas – petits opéras – designed to accompany the ballet. The Théâtre du Vaudeville was restricted to comédie-vaudeville (which rejected the use of original music in favour of timbres taken from La clé du caveau, and melodies from opéra comique and elsewhere) while the Opéra Comique was the home of the genre that gave it its name: opéra comique – the ‘eminently

3 Still the most exhaustive source for understanding the dissemination of music in the theatre worldwide is Alfred Loewenberg, Annals of Opera: 1597–1940, 3rd ed. revised and corrected (London: Calder, 1978). For a theoretical position which argues for a fundamentally Franco- Italian musical culture in the nineteenth-century European theatre based on contemporary case studies, see Mark Everist, ‘Cosmopolitanism and Music for the Theatre: Europe and Beyond, 1800–1870’, Music History and Cosmopolitanism, ed. Anastasia Belina, Kaarina Kilpio and Derek Scott (London: Routledge, 2019), 13–32. 4 The term ‘diplomacy’ is here used in the sense articulated by Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht as a way ‘to conduct relationships for gain while avoiding conﬂict’ (Sound Diplomacy: Music and Emotions in Transatlantic Relations, 1850–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 4). Studies of diplomacy and music abound, but are polarised around superpower relations after 1945 and the early modern period; see for example the collection of essays edited by Rebekah Arendt, Mark Ferraguto and Damien Mahiet, Music and Diplomacy from the Early Modern Era to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Studies of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cultural diplomacy are a more appropriate context for those of the nineteenth. See among others the special issue of Early Music, ‘Music and Diplomacy’ 40 (2012) and such studies of diplomacy and other art forms in the early modern period as Maija Jansson, Art and Diplomacy: Seventeenth-Century English Decorated Royal Letters to Russia and the Far East (Leiden: Brill, 2015) and Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia, ed. Zoltán Biedermann, Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello. Studies in Contemporary World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

The Empire at the Opéra 3

national genre’, as it was regularly called – which presented works that subtly balanced traditions of prose drama and music composed by the nation’s leading artists. Relationships between creativity, politics and memory were focussed most strongly during the Second Empire (1852–70), when Emperor Napoléon III brought the Paris Opéra under the direct control of the imperial household. As a consequence, some of the most powerful statesmen in the country were allowed to regulate the artistic policy of the institution. Such power was expressed through control of a repertory dominated by various forms of memory – national, foreign, artistic – as well as by the priorities of diplomacy and politics. Despite frequent appeals to their own experience, none of the members of the governing body of the Opéra had any previous involvement in theatrical management, and the consequences for the repertorial design not only of the Opéra, but also for all forms of music in the Parisian theatre in the second half of the nineteenth century were far reaching. This Element shows that the politicians responsible for this aesthetic coup d’état took their control over the routine management of the Opéra as a pretext for comprehensive change. Senior members of Napoléon III’s government assumed power over the Opéra’s repertory, and over all aspects of its artistic management, in ways unknown since the ancien régime; they did this both for their own beneﬁt and for the proﬁt of the state as it used the Opéra for public demonstrations of power.5 In doing so, this network of senior politicians developed a conservative artistic policy that emphasised military and diplomatic imperatives, accelerated the process of canon formation and promoted an operatic and aesthetic memory of the past. The consequences were felt across all parts of theatrical culture in France, the rest of the continent and the globe.

Technologies of Power The changes to the administration of the imperial theatres in the early years of the Second Empire threw the special status of the Opéra into relief: it was no longer run by a directeur-entrepreneur, but was brought back directly under the ﬁnancial control of the state, a return to the pre-1831 situation that would not be reversed until 1866.6 The Opéra was placed under the supervision of

5 This is a radically different proposition to that made in Jane Fulcher, The Nation’s Image: French Grand Opera As Politics and Politicized Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), where the nation’s image of the title is claimed to be embodied in a handful of well-known grands opéras. It is closer in spirit to the alternative programme sketched out by Hugh MacDonald, ‘ ... And Politics’ [review of The Nation’s Image], Musical Times 129 (1988), 405–6. 6 The series of directeurs-entrepreneurs began with Louis Véron in March 1831; he was followed by Edmond Duponchel, Léon Pillet and Nestor Roqueplan. The latter was appointed alone (he had collaborated with Duponchel and Pillet for two years beforehand) in November 1849, and he

4 Elements in Musical Theatre

a Commission supérieure permanente ... du théâtre impérial de l’Opéra on 30 June 1854.7 Although the title of the Commission recalled that of the Commission de surveillance (later Commission spéciale), active during the July Monarchy and the Second Republic, its membership was strikingly different. Whereas its predecessor had been largely made up of those with a professional interest in the arts and in theatre and opera in particular, the Second Empire’s Commission supérieure was made up of some of the most powerful men in the country: politicians, aristocrats and state appointees. Such a move constituted a significant modification to the technologies of power that characterised the broader nineteenth century. The Commission’s actions represented a fundamental change in the ways in which power was enacted within the domain of the theatre. For the first two- thirds of the nineteenth century, a set of complex legal provisions had kept all the competing institutions in Paris – from the Opéra to the exhibition of an elephant on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle – in a loose alignment. In such an environment, power could be deployed from below, and the apparently unem- powered could win aesthetic and cultural battles by virtue of clever negotiation and subtle (re)readings of legislation. Technologies of power were much less immutable components of the network of human and non-human actors that underpinned the culture of music in the theatre, and much more sites of challenge and context.8 During the Second Empire, however, while the rest of the Parisian theatrical establishment could continue in exactly the same way – to negotiate, to challenge, the Opéra was now subject to a regime of power that brooked no argument. Although this Element gives rare examples of the Opéra’s

remained four further months as administrator before François-Louis Crosnier took over the Opéra’s management. For a succinct summary, see Wild, Dictionnaire des théâtres parisiens, 311–12. The relationship between the institutional culture of music and theatre in the French nineteenth century and Foucauldian technologies of power is discussed in Everist, ‘Music of Power’, 689–99. 7 The formal decree is Ministère d’État et de la Maison de l’Empereur: Décret [sur l’administration du Théâtre Impérial de l’Opéra] (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1854). See Paris, Archives Nationales (hereafter F-Pan)AJ13 443 (I). It was published in the Moniteur universel on 2 July 1854 and in La revue et Gazette musicale de Paris on 9 July 1854. The importance of the Second Empire and the Commission supérieure permanente ...du théâtre impérial de l’Opéra has been largely ignored. For general studies, see Genevieve Chinn, ‘The Académie Impériale de Musique: A Study of Its Administration and Repertory from 1862–1870’ (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1969); Viviane Deschamps, ‘Histoire de administration de l’Opéra de Paris (Second Empire–Troisième République)’, 2 vols. (PhD diss., Université de Paris IV, 1987). More recent is Hervé Lacombe, ‘L’Opéra sous le Second Empire’, Les spectacles sous le Second Empire, ed. Jean-Claude Yon (Paris: Armand Colin, 2010), 159–72. For an attempt to address the importance of the period in terms of the structures of power that underpinned it, see Everist, ‘Music of Power’, 697 and 706–8. 8 Such challenge and contest took many forms. See Everist, ‘Music of Power’, 699–703 and 709–26 for examples.

The Empire at the Opéra 5

attempts to challenge state power, there are few, if any, instances of subtle argument or adroit negotiation resisting the ironclad power of imperial pressure, and no examples of successful challenge. The Commission’s president was Ministre d’État Achille Fould, who was succeeded by Alexandre Florian Joseph, Count Colonna-Walewski in 1860.9 Four of the Commission’s members served in Napoléon III’s Third Cabinet, the principal deliberative environment for the state from 2 December 1852 until the end of the Second Empire.10 Fould and Eugène Rouher had also been ministers in Napoléon III’s First Cabinet (minister of ﬁnance and minister of justice, respectively), and Fould had also been Ministre d’État during Napoléon III’s Second Cabinet.11 Gustave-Louis Chaix d’Est-Ange was effectively legal counsel for the Commission, and Alphonse Gautier was its secretary; the former had a distinguished track record in legal work in the theatre, and the latter was closely tied to the emperor’s household.12 The other active members of the

9 Standard texts on Fould are Jacques de Brabant, Achille Fould et son temps (1800–1867): l’homme clef du Second Empire (Pau: Cairn, 2001), and Édouard Bornecque-Winandy, Achille Fould, ministre de Napoléon III (Paris: Téqui, 1989). For Walewski, see Françoise de Bernardy, Alexandre Walewski: 1810–1868, le ﬁls polonais de Napoléon. Presence de l’histoire (Paris: Perrin, 1976). Previously, the only account had been Maurice Lanthenay, ‘Comte Walewski, homme d’État français (1810–1868)’, Les contemporains, 14 November 1909. R as Comte Walewski, homme d’état français (1810–1868) (Paris: Les Contemporains, 1909). 10 The full membership of the Commission supérieure in 1854 was (the three members of Napoléon III’s Third Cabinet are indicated by †): †Achille Fould (*1800): Ministre des Finances (1851–2), Ministre d’État (1852–60), Ministre des Beaux-Arts (1853–60), Ministre de la Maison de l’Empereur (Président) (1852–60); †Eugène Rouher (*1814): Ministre de l’Agriculture, du Commerce et des Travaux publics (1855–63), Vice-Président du Conseil d’État (1852–63), Ministre d’État (1863–9); Raymond-Théodore Troplong (*1795): Président du Sénat (1852– 69), Président de la Cour de Cassation (1852–69), member of the emperor’s conseil privé (1858–69); Charles-Auguste, Comte de Morny (*1811): Ministre de l’Intérieur et des Beaux- Arts (First Cabinet), Président du Corps législatif (1854–), ambassador to Russia (1856–); †Jules Baroche, Ministre Président du Conseil d’État (1852–63), Ministre des affaires étrangers (1860), without portfolio (1860–3), Ministre de Justice (1863–9); Félix-Marius-Joseph- François (Félix-Mamès), Comte Baciocchi (*1830): Premier chambellan, surintendant des spectacles de la cour, de la musique de la Chapelle et de la Chambre (1855–), senateur (1866); Gustave-Louis-Adolphe-Victor-Charles Chaix d’Est-Ange: ancien député, membre de la commission municipale et départmentale de la Seine; Alphonse Gautier: Secrétaire général du ministère de la Maison de l’Empereur (secretary). 11 See Alain Malglaive, Eugène Rouher, 1814–1884: biographie ([Broût-Vernet]: Association Azi la Garance, 2005). Older, but still useful is Robert Schnerb, Rouher et le Second Empire (Paris: Colin, 1949). See also the collection of essays Eugène Rouher: actes des journées d’étude de Riom et Clermont-Ferrand des 16 et 17 mars 1984, no ed., Institut d’Études du Massif Central 28 (Aurillac: Imprimerie Moderne, 1984). 12 Involved in legal disputes with Balzac and Hugo since the early 1830s, Chaix d’Est-Ange was also responsible for the charges against the perpetrators on the attempt on Napoléon III’s life in January 1858. See Adolphe Robert and Gaston Cougny, Dictionnaire des parlementaires français, 5 vols. (Paris: Bourloton, 1889–91), 2:24–5. Gautier was the author of a study of the imperial household, Études sur la liste civile en France (Paris: Plon, 1882), and appears in modern accounts of the household. See for example Catherine Granger, L’empereur et les arts: la liste civile de Napoléon III, Mémoires et documents de l’École des Chartes 79 (Paris: l’École des

6 Elements in Musical Theatre

Commission were Raymond-Théodore Troplong, the president of the Sénat;13 the Comte de Morny, the president of the Corps législatif;14 and Jules Baroche, the president of the Conseil d’État. Comte Baciocchi, premier chambellan, superintendent of court entertainments, of the chapel and of chamber music, was also a member of the Commission and would rise to even greater promin- ence after 1860.15 Troplong was a distinguished jurist, and Morny – the emperor’s brother-in-law – had held the posts of Ministre de Finance and Ministre de Beaux-Arts in Napoléon III’s First Cabinet. When the remit of the Commission was extended to other Parisian theatres and opera houses in December 1860, Baciocchi was appointed Surintendant not only of the Opéra, but also of the Théâtre Italien, Opéra Comique and the Odéon. The Commission supérieure that had been responsible for the Opéra for the previous six and a half years was technically abolished.16 However, no formal surintendance was established to replace the Commission supérieure, and the effect on the relationship between the imperial household, the members of Napoléon III’s cabinet and the Opéra was negligible. Even when the theatres and opera houses were reorganised again in June 1863, the Opéra was given a special status, allowing the imperial household a continued free rein on its management.17 This position remained in place until March 1866, when the direction of the Opéra was passed back to a directeur-entrepreneur, who as before took the ﬁnancial risk supported by a generous state subvention; this effectively marked a brief return to the situation that pertained in 1831 and throughout the July Monarchy.18 From 1854 to 1866, notwithstanding various technical changes of management, the direct imperial control continued

Chartes, 2005); Xavier Mauduit, ‘Le ministère du faste: la Maison de l’Empereur Napoléon III’, Parlement[s], Revue d’histoire politique 4 (2008), 69–83. 13 Troplong’s biography is fragmentary. For what little is known, see Robert and Cougny, Dictionnaire des parlementaires français, 5:451–2. 14 Morny’s ﬂamboyant career has attracted far more attention, however. Christopher Robert, Le duc de Morny: ‘empereur’ des Français sous Napoléon III (Paris: Hachette, 1951) is the standard text; Agnès d’Angio-Barros, Morny: le théâtre du pouvoir (Paris: Belin, 2012) is just the most recent of several biographies. 15 For Baroche, see Jean Maurain, Baroche, ministre de Napoléon III: d’après ses papiers inédits: un bourgeois français au XIXe siècle (Paris: Alcan, 1936). The memoirs of Baroche’s widow are an important source for the history of the Second Empire; see Frédéric Masson, ed., Second Empire. Notes et souvenirs (Paris: Crès, 1921). For Baciocchi, see the entry in Robert and Cougny, Dictionnaire des parlementaires français, 1:134. 16 The imperial decree that appointed Baciocchi as surintendant of the imperial theatres is dated 8 December 1860 (F-Pan AJ13 443 (I)). 17 Two separate decrees were enacted on 1 July 1863 (both ibidem), the ﬁrst established the Direction de l’Administration des Théâtres with Camille Doucet at its head; the second named Baciocchi the Surintendant Général des Théâtres. For Doucet, see Jean-Charles Roman d’Amat and Michel Prévost, eds., Dictionnaire de biographie française, 22 vols. to date (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1932–), 11:650–1. 18 F-Pan AJ13 443 (I): 22 March 1866.

The Empire at the Opéra 7

unchecked. Indeed, Baciocchi’s appointment in 1860 was disingenuous, since his previous positions had been as premier chambellan and director of court entertainments, the chapel and chamber music, and the Commission’s secretary, Gautier, was also a member of the imperial household. Together with Walewski, who succeeded Fould as Ministre d’État, these three effectively ensured that direct imperial control of the Opéra – as well as the other Parisian opera houses – continued throughout the 1860s. Not only were the members of the Commission and its successors powerful in their own right, they also represented different arms of the legislature: the Cabinet, the Sénat, the Conseil d’État, the Corps Législatif and the imperial household. All were placed at the centre of the imperial court and of Parisian diplomacy. Such a context aligned well with the diplomatic nature of the audiences, culture and repertory of the Opéra, as opposed to that of the Opéra Comique, the home of the genre éminement français that resisted foreigners’ attempts to encroach on its territory.19 Positioning the Commission centrally in this environment meant, however, that the Opéra was subject to pressures from members of the Commission who might seek to exploit these networks of power for their own ends. Many of the responsibilities of the Commission were familiar from previous incarnations of the same organisation: oversight of budgets and accounts, management of expenses for new works and revivals, copyright matters, seat prices and pensions. Règlements généraux pertained to such matters as the management of the birthday of Napoléon Bonaparte – always celebrated during the Second Empire – of the imperial box and its transfer to others, and of the presence of the emperor and of the imperial family, especially in cases when the emperor might attend incognito.20 The Commission also had responsibility for the engagement of artists, and when this concerned members of the chorus, orchestra or corps de ballet, activity could be largely routine; when it extended to the premiers sujets for the ballet and principals for the opera, as well as the management of their debuts, the Commission assumed a much wider range of movement in terms of artistic policy than might have been expected. But it was in the power the Commission had in terms of what was called la réception des

19 For a late, but representative and articulate statement of this position, see Les annales du théâtre et de la musique 2 (1877), 212–13. While the differences between audiences at the Opéra and Opéra Comique have been exaggerated (see the important corrections in Steven Huebner, ‘Opera Audiences in Paris 1830–1870’, Music and Letters 70 (1989), 206–25), the levels of diplomatic activity at the Opéra far outclassed those at the Opéra Comique. See Mark Everist, ‘Music, Theatre and Diplomacy: The Paris Opéra during the Second Empire’, forthcoming. 20 For example, Baciocchi wrote to Perrin noting that the emperor was going to attend a performance, incognito, of Auguste Mermet’s Roland à Roncevaulx on 14 October 1864 (F-Pan AJ13 443 (III)). The arrangements were perfunctory and explicit.

8 Elements in Musical Theatre

ouvrages – what libretti might be considered and which composers might be invited to set them, to say nothing of the proposals received from third parties – that the Commission’s power to set the artistic agenda was exercised most relentlessly. Several routine activities reveal clear moves beyond the remit of previous regulation, particularly in respect of the degree of inﬂuence the imperial entou- rage could have on questions of programming and protocol at the Opéra. For example, the emperor and his family were scheduled to attend a ballet premiere on 11 August 1856;21 Fould himself remarked to the director of the Opéra, Alphonse Royer, that ‘On this occasion, it appears useful to me to inform you that His Majesty the Emperor has noticed with some displeasure the extraordin- ary lengths of the entr’actes at premieres at the Opéra; and I beg you to take all the necessary measures to shorten their length as much as possible next Monday.’22 Trajectories of power in this case may be traced from the emperor, via his Ministre d’État, to the Opéra. Control of the Commission was embodied unambiguously in the gift of its president, and imperial power was explicit and absolute. More far-reaching changes could be executed towards the end of Royer’s tenure by means of instruction from the secretary of the Commission – Gautier – to Royer’s secrétaire-général, Félix Martin. In the tersest of notes, the Opéra could be told that the Ministre d’État, now Walewski, wanted a complete change in the programme: ‘The minister, whom I have just seen’, wrote Gautier, ‘wants nothing less in the world than a performance of Lucie [de Lammermoor] on Sunday. Replace Lucie [de Lammermoor] with Le philtre or Le comte Ory’.23 The petit opéra that accompanied the ballet was not Lucie de Lammermoor, neither was it Le philtre or Le comte Ory, but one of the last performances of the revival of Gluck’s Alceste, which had begun its run at the end of the previous year.24 Exactly how the deployment of power played out

21 The ballet-pantomime Les elfes, by Henri de Saint-Georges and Joseph Mazilier, with music by Nicolo Gabrielli. 22 ‘A cette occasion, il me parait utile de vous faire connaître que S. M. l’Empereur a remarqué avec peine la longueur démesurée des entr’actes à l’Opéra, les jours des premières représentations; et je viens vous prier de vouloir bien prendre toutes les mesures nécessaires pour en abréger autant que possible la durée lundi prochain’ (Letter from Fould to Royer, 9 August 1856; F-Pan AJ13 451 (I)). 23 ‘Le Ministre que je viens de voir ne veut pour rien au monde qu’on joue Lucie [de Lammermoor] dimanche [9 March 1862] / Remplacez Lucie [de Lammermoor] par Le philtre ou Le comte Ory’ (Letter from Gautier to Martin, 5 March 1862; F-Pan AJ13 443 (III)). 24 Petit opéra – a term with no less an institutional pedigree than grand opéra – denoted works at the Paris Opéra usually in two acts without a ballet designed to form an evening’s entertainment with a ballet-pantomime in an environment where grands opéras in ﬁve acts were simply too long – with themselves a substantial divertissement – to pair with a ballet-pantomime. Petits opéras replaced the use of morcellement: the practice of using single acts from classic grand opéra to accompany ballet. See Mark Everist, ‘Grand Opéra – Petit Opéra: Parisian Opera and Ballet from the Restoration to the Second Empire’, 19th-Century Music 33 (2010), 195–231. For

The Empire at the Opéra 9

in this case is not evident; there would have been little objection on the part of the Opéra to either Auber’s Le philtre or Rossini’s Le comte Ory, and although Gautier’s peremptory command must have resulted in further negotiation, Walewski got his way insofar as Lucie de Lammermoor was not played, but not to the extent that his exact wishes were fulfilled. Here, the technologies of power are being deployed, not on behalf of the emperor or the state, but fulfilling the aesthetic whim of the Ministre d’État himself. The individual agents that make up the Commission supérieure and the network of practices in which they are enmeshed betray complex relationships of influence and taste. Exactly how these relationships were configured is shrouded in doubt and subject to the vagaries of evidence that largely conceals such affiliations. In the instance just cited, Gautier – the secretary of the Commission – attributed the aesthetic demand to the Ministre d’État, Walewski, but it is far from clear that this is not merely a shorthand for ‘the emperor’ or Gautier masking his own preferences by attributing them to higher authorities. Glimpses can be seen of Napoléon III’s taste in his actions around the 1858 production of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi as Roméo et Juliette and of the subsequent attempts to extract a work out of Verdi the same year, but again these are all ventriloquised through third-party voices, and the establishment of reliable networks of influence and taste is only as feasible as the surviving sources permit.25

Artistic Management When the Commission began to exercise its power over the management of artists, it began also to trespass on questions of repertory and artistic policy. For some issues, matters were no more complicated than they had been for the ﬁrst half of the century. The case of Delphine Ugalde is a good example.26 Very successful at the Opéra Comique from 1848, she had moved to the Opéra in 1858 where she sang the role of Léonore in Le trouvère (the translation of Verdi’s Il trovatore). It seems likely that this was less than successful since when Léon Carvalho made a straightforward request to the Commission to engage her at the Théâtre Lyrique, it was immediately granted, and she began at Carvalho’s

a reading of Rossini’s Le comte Ory as a petit opéra, see Damien Colas, ‘Questioning the Frenchness of Le comte Ory’, Opera and Nation: An International Conference to Commemorate the Bicentenary of Ferenc Erkel’s Birth (December 2011), special issue of Studia musicologica 52 (2011), 373–92, especially 375–81. 25 See below, 45–47. 26 For a summary of Ugalde’s career, see Kimberly White, ‘The Cantatrice and the Profession of Singing at the Paris Opéra and Opéra Comique, 1830–1848’ (PhD diss., McGill University, 2012), 324; Kimberly White, Female Singers on the French Stage, 1830–1848. Cambridge Studies in Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 162.

10 Elements in Musical Theatre

opera house more or less immediately.27 Whether the Commission were acting with the agreement of the Opéra’s director, Royer, is, however, unclear. Whatever accommodation Royer might have reached with the Commission over the employment of vocal artists, François-Louis Crosnier’s (Royer’s predecessor) attempts to recruit from elsewhere were thwarted. Just after the establishment of the Commission, Crosnier was close to recruiting Marie- Caroline Miolan-Carvalho to the Opéra from the Opéra Comique. Crosnier had already succeeded in agreeing to terms (Fr 30,000 over three years), and requested permission to proceed. The outcome is of course well known: her move to the Théâtre Lyrique in 1855 resulted in an astonishing range of newly created roles (by Clapisson, Massé and no fewer than five by Gounod).28 Fould had refused Crosnier’s request to hire her at the Opéra for purely financial reasons, although it might well have been the case that Miolan-Carvalho would have followed her husband, Carvalho, to the Théâtre Lyrique when he took over as director in 1856 in any case.29 The Commission’s further interference in Crosnier’s attempts to develop vocal talent at the Opéra may be illustrated by the attempts by Marianne de Ricci Poniatowska, the Comtesse Walewski and wife of Comte Walewski, to find a place at the opera for Mlle Berti. Poniatowska had attempted to advance Berti’s career in 1859 by writing directly to Fould, who in turn passed the request to Royer. In breaking the news that the committee could not permit Berti to debut at the Opéra, Royer went to far greater trouble than usual to detail the inadequate pronunciation and insufficient musical training she had exhibited in her performance of the page’s aria from act i of Les Huguenots in order to discharge his obligations to the wife of the Commission’s president.30 In the same year Fould again transmitted a request, this time from Ministre de l’Algérie et des Colonies, Prosper de Chasseloup-Laubat, recommending a tenor called Escarlate for a position at the Opéra. Escarlate was currently employed in New Orleans, and was heard twice – largely favourably – by the committee at the Opéra. The real problem was that it would cost Fr 20,000 to break his existing contract. Royer reported that Escarlate would make a useful addition to the Opéra troupe the following year in roles in Le trouvère and Les Huguenots (Manrique and Raoul, respectively).31 There is no trace of Escarlate

27 The request was made on 9 April 1858 and granted on 20 April (F-Pan F21 1121). 28 See the list of Miolan-Carvalho’s creations in Sean Parr, ‘Caroline Carvalho and Nineteenth-Century Coloratura’, Cambridge Opera Journal 23 (2012), 83–117 at 86. 29 See Fould’s letter to Crosnier, 10 January 1855 (F-Pan F21 1053). 30 F-Pan AJ13 451 (I). Royer and his colleagues heard Mlle Berti (Berty), about whom almost nothing is otherwise known, on 30 June 1859 (Journal de régie de l’Opéra, 30 June 1859; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Bibliothèque-Musée de l’Opéra (hereafter F-Po) RE-11). 31 Report dated 9 October 1859 (F-Pan AJ13 451 (I)).