Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera: A History

Description

Since its inception, French opera has embraced dance, yet all too often operatic dancing is treated as mere decoration. Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera 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 - present in every act of every opera - is essential to understanding the work. The book considers the operas of Lully - his lighter works as well as his tragedies - 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.

Rebecca Harris-Warrick is Professor of Music at Cornell University, New York. She has published widely on French Baroque music and dance, with excursions into nineteenth-century opera, and has prepared critical editions of ballets by Lully and of Donizetti's opera, La Favorite. Much of her scholarly work has been informed by her interests in performance; she has studied early dance and performed as a Baroque flutist. She serves on the editorial boards for the Les Oeuvres completes de Jean-Baptiste Lully and the Journal of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

'An indispensable resource for those reconstructing this repertoire for the stage, Harris-Warrick's book also offers much of interest to scholars in many subspecialties of early modern European history who are willing to do the work of connecting her impressive study to the world beyond the stage.' Chantal Frankenbach, Notes 'Harris-Warrick, a leading scholar of the music of the French baroque, demonstrates an encyclopaedic command of the vast repertoire of the Academie Royale de Musique, drawing on the libretti and scores of well over 100 operas and related genres, including the opera-ballet, the pastorale heroique and the little-studied genre of 'fragments'. ... Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera: A History constitutes a seminal contribution to the field of scholarship in French baroque opera and dance. More than a history, this is a handbook for scholars and performers alike in comprehending the complex thought and dynamic visions that informed seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French opera.' Natasha Roule, Cambridge Opera Journal