Hearing Through the Eye in Eighteenth-Century French Opera

This essay draws together evidence for hitherto undiscussed theatre sequences in Paris that brought together, in opera, special scenic, lighting and musical conceptions. The theatres involved were the Opéra, the Comédie-Italienne and the Théâtre Feydeau. If the evidence is obviously fragmentary, the cyclic and institutional nature of Parisian practice acts as a mitigating factor in assessment. The composers discussed are Rameau, Mondonville, Grétry, Boieldieu and Méhul, represented in case studies between 1749 and 1800. The influence of Servandoni is included. In 'Naïs' and 'Titon et l'Aurore', theatre staging elements (with mime actors in the former example) already come to dominate certain narrative moments. Three scenes are compared from later opéra-comique, featuring elements that link fervent responses to landscape in the 18th century with pre-Romantic themes such as the poet-hero (Salomon Gessner), the mountains of Switzerland, pantheism and the consequences of love outside the bonds of legalised marriage.