Research Catalog

Title

Dance and drama in French baroque opera : a history / Rebecca Harris-Warrick.

Author

Harris-Warrick, Rebecca

Publication

Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xx, 484 pages : ollustrations, music; 26 cm.

Summary

Since its inception, French opera has embraced dance, yet all too often operatic dancing is treated as mere decoration. This book exposes the multiple and meaningful roles that dance has played, starting from Jean-Baptiste Lully's first opera in 1672. It counters prevailing notions in operatic historiography that dance was parenthetical and presents compelling evidence that the divertissement is essential to understanding the work. The book considers the operas of Lully and the 46-year period between the death of Lully and the arrival of Rameau, when influences from the commedia dell'arte and other theatres began to inflect French operatic practices. It explores the intersections of musical, textual, choreographic and staging practices at a complex institution - the Academie Royale de Musique - which upheld as a fundamental aesthetic principle the integration of dance into opera.

Series Statement

Cambridge studies in opera

Uniform Title

Cambridge studies in opera.

Subject

• Lully, Jean-Baptiste, 1632-1687
• Operas (Lully, Jean-Baptiste)
• 1600-1799
• Dance in opera > History > 17th century
• Dance in opera > History > 18th century
• Opera > Dramaturgy
• Opera > France > 17th century
• Opera > France > 18th century
• Dance in opera
• Opera
• France

Genre/Form

• History
• History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Machine generated contents note: pt. I Lully -- 1. The Dramaturgy of Lully's Divertissements -- Alceste (1674) -- Atys (1676) -- Armide (1686) -- Inside and Outside the Divertissement -- 2. Constructing the Divertissement -- Primary Sources -- Interpreting the Didascalies -- The Mechanics of Lully's Divertissements -- The Characters -- Staging the Dancers and the Chorus -- Dance Inside of Choruses -- The Choreographic Treatment of Dance-Songs -- Independent Instrumental Dances -- Chaconnes and Passacailles -- Divertissement Architecture -- The Dramaturgical Implications of Mechanics -- Reading the Texts -- Text and Action -- Celebrations -- 3. Dance Foundations -- Basic Principles of Baroque Dance -- Movement Vocabulary -- Dance-Types -- Construction of Choreographies -- Lully's Dance Troupe -- 4. Dance Practices on Stage -- The Dancing Forces -- Counting the Dancers -- Distributing the Dancers -- Deploying the Dancers across a Divertissement -- Style and Expression -- Musical Characterization -- Key -- Form -- Texture and Orchestration -- Phrase Structure -- Instrumental Music and Movement -- 5. Prologues -- Atys -- Armide -- 6. The Lighter Side of Lully -- Les Fetes de l'Amour et de Bacchus -- Cadmus et Hermione, Alceste, and Thesee -- Le Carnaval -- Psyche -- Le Triomphe de l'Amour -- Acis et Galatee -- pt. II The Rival Muses in the Age of Campra -- 7. The Muses Take the Stage -- Genre Terminology -- Sources -- Reading the Cast Lists in Librettos -- 8. Thalie, Muse of Comedy -- The Decade after Lully -- "Italy" Comes to the Opera -- L'Europe galante (1697) -- Les Fetes venitiennes (1710) -- 9. Thalie Visits the Fairs -- Appropriated Frames -- Operatic Parodies -- Dancing Master Scenes -- The Masked Ball on Stage -- Comic Simultaneity -- "Fragments" as a Genre -- 10. The Contested Comic -- Domestication -- Le Carnaval et la Folie (1704) -- Les Fragments de M. de Lully (1702) -- Les Fetes de Thalie (1714) -- The Realm of the Heroique -- Les Fetes grecques et romaines (1723) -- La Reine des Peris (1725) -- Naturalizing Novelty -- 11. Melpomene, Muse of Tragedy -- Achille et Polixene (1687) -- Medee (1693) -- Tancrede (1702) -- Hypermnestre (1716) -- Jephte (1732) -- 12. Melpomene Adapts -- Three Divertissement Types -- Italianisms in the Tragedie en Musique -- Pastoral Divertissements -- Nautical Divertissements -- Lully Revivals -- 13. Terpsichore, Muse of the Dance -- The Dance Troupe During the Early Eighteenth Century -- Personnel and Staffing -- The Stars of the Troupe -- A Case Study: The Dumoulin Brothers -- Crossovers -- Les Caracteres de la danse and Its Offspring -- The Symphonies of Jean-Fery Rebel -- Operatic Incarnations -- Shared Practices -- "Tous vos pas sont des sentiments" -- 14. In the Traces of Terpsichore -- Notated Choreographies "Dansees a l'Opera" -- Soloists as Choreographers -- Dance Types, New or Newly Characterized -- "Venetian" Dances -- Dances for Arlequin -- Peasant Dances -- Entree grave -- Menuet -- Passepied -- Tambourin -- Contredanse -- Who Dances Where -- The Muses' Entente -- Epilogue -- Appendices -- Appendix 1 Works Performed at the Academie Royale de Musique, 1695 -- 1732, in Which the Impact of the Comedie Italienne Can Be Seen -- Appendix 2 A Partial List of Performances Consisting of "Fragments" 1702 -- 1732.

ISBN

• 9781107137899
• 1107137896

LCCN

^^2016023675

OCLC

946968074

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library