Everist Music of Power

The Music of Power: Parisian Opera and the Politics of Genre, 1806–1864
Author(s): Mark Everist

Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Fall 2014), pp. 685-734
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The Music of Power: Parisian Opera and the
Politics of Genre, 1806–1864
MARK EVERIST
M
usic for the stage may be understood in terms of institution, power,
and genre. Nowhere is this more true than in the kaleidoscopic
range of music drama produced in nineteenth-century Paris during
the period 1806–64, when institution and repertory were aligned according
to a system of licenses. Such an alignment resulted in a network of power
relationships between states, impresarios, librettists, artists, entrepreneurs, and
composers. This article seeks to understand and explain how these relationships
functioned in nineteenth-century Paris. At the center of the inquiry are
institutional structures and their relationship to those responsible both for
the creation and cultivation of stage music in the period. They explain the
context for the cultural agents and products not only of the main opera
houses in nineteenth-century Paris—the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique, and
the Théâtre-Italien—but also the host of smaller, shorter-lived institutions
that supported and promoted opera during the period. These institutional
structures embodied a politics of genre in which every operatic and theat-
rical enterprise was implicated; it was expressed in various types of nego-
tiation, subterfuge, or diktat and—far from projecting a top-down view of
state power—shows entrepreneurs, librettists, and composers successfully and
frequently manipulating and subverting the system. Power, in nineteenth-
century French music for the stage, was everywhere.
Nineteenth-century Parisian stage music has been no stranger to the anal-
ysis of relations between state power and cultural artifact, and many works
produced at the Paris Opéra during the middle third of the nineteenth cen-
tury have been interpreted in a number of ways ranging from Jane Fulcher’s
attempts to read specific operas in the light of contemporary historical events
to Sarah Hibberd’s view that the historical events staged in such works as
Auber’s La muette de Portici and Gustave III should be viewed more as a
Research for this article was undertaken with the support of Arts and Humanities Research
Council Research Leave, awarded in July 2005. I am grateful for the commentaries on drafts of
this article made by Philip Gossett, Steven Huebner, Ralph Locke, William Weber, and the
anonymous readers for this Journal.
Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 67, Number 3, pp. 685–734 ISSN 0003-0139, electronic ISSN
1547-3848. © 2014 by the American Musicological Society. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission
to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website,
www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/jams.2014.67.3.685.

686 Journal of the American Musicological Society
retelling of modern postrevolutionary history.1 Other examples of similar

approaches include Benjamin Walton’s interpretation of Rossini’s Le siège de
Corinthe as a response to, and engagement with, Parisian Philhellenic
practices, Diana Hallman’s analysis of the antisemitic in Halévy’s La Juive,
and Mary Ann Smart’s reading of Donizetti’s Don Sébastien as an act of
mourning for the recently deceased Duc d’Orléans.2 Anselm Gerhard’s
Urbanization of Opera, perhaps for the first time, invited its readers to
consider grand opéra in terms of its urban reception as the basis for readings
of the classics of the Opéra, and Cormac Newark projects the same repertory
across the history of the novel in the nineteenth century.3
The current study complements this work in two ways. First, it considers
that an account of Parisian stage music based exclusively on the works
premiered at the Opéra presents at best an incomplete picture of the operatic
culture of nineteenth-century Paris.4 Second, it assumes a view of state power,
and the works engendered by that power, less as a set of hierarchical pres-
sures and more as a network of regulations, practices, and negotiations.
These two scholarly trajectories contribute to the analysis of the politics of
genre.5 Aligning a wider institutional perspective on nineteenth-century stage
music with a Foucauldian approach to the ways in which power structures
interact—acknowledging his view that “power is everywhere”—comes closer
to a regime of truth that explains the wealth and complexity of the culture of
stage music in nineteenth-century Paris.6
1. Fulcher, Nation’s Image; Hibberd, French Grand Opera. The Nation’s Image may be
productively read in conjunction with Huebner, review of Fulcher, Nation’s Image; and
Macdonald, “. . . and Politics.”
2. Walton, Rossini in Restoration Paris, 108–53; Hallman, Opera, Liberalism, and Antisemitism;
Smart, “Mourning the Duc d’Orléans.”
3. Gerhard, Die Verstädterung der Oper; Newark, Opera in the Novel.
4. This is not to suggest that secondary theaters have been absent from contemporary
scholarship. See for example the study of works based on Sir Walter Scott in Paris between
the 1820s and 1840s in Hibberd, French Grand Opera, 21–26 and her work on dream
phenomena on the Parisian stage (idem, “ ‘Dormez donc, mes chers amours’ ”), both of
which draw on ballet-pantomime and comédie-vaudeville and the theaters that promoted
them, as well as on grand opéra and opéra comique. Other parts of the culture have been stud-
ied in their own right: the Théâtre-Italien’s history during the Restoration is the subject of
Johnson, “Théâtre Italien,” and that of the Opéra-Comique during the same period is exam-
ined in Bara, Le Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique. Beyond the Restoration, Walsh, Second Empire
Opera provides a documentary account of the work of the Théâtre-Lyrique from the end of
the July Monarchy to the beginning of the Third Republic.
5. The concept of the politics of genre can be traced back to several sources. Here, it finds
its point of origin in Wellek and Austin, Theory of Literature, 226, and further adumbrated by
Derrida (“Law of Genre”) and Cohen (“History and Genre”) in the 1980s.
6. Michel Foucault’s comments on the dispersal of power across and around networks are
glossed in terms of power having “the privilege of consolidating everything under its invincible
unity” and of being produced “from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every
relation from one point to another” (History of Sexuality, 93). Power must be analyzed, accord-
ing to Foucault, “as something which circulates, or rather as something which only functions in

The Music of Power 687
Paris between the Empire and the Commune was home to a number of
institutions—the Opéra,7 the Théâtre des Variétés, the Opéra-Comique, the
Théâtre-Lyrique, among others—whose repertory, personnel, geographical
location, audience, and ambition were subtly distinguished.8 These organi-
zations participated in complex networks that were subject to wide-ranging
technologies of power: matrices of influence and benefit that changed not
only according to government but also to personal and political preference.9
the form of a chain. It is never localised here or there, never in anybody’s hands, never appro-
priated as a commodity or piece of wealth. Power is employed and exercised through a net-like
organisation [emphasis added]” (idem, “Two Lectures,” 98). For a succinct account of Foucault’s
views on the concept of the network of power, see Rouse, “Power/Knowledge,” 107–10.
Foucault’s propositions on regimes of truth underpin not only the following paragraphs but the
general thrust of this article. He concludes an interview entitled “Truth and Power” with a written
response: “ ‘Truth’ is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production,
regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements. ‘Truth’ is linked in a circular rela-
tion with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces
and which extends it. A ‘regime’ of truth” (“Truth and Power,” 74).
7. The study of the relationships between creative activity and institutional power in
nineteenth-century France has been bedeviled by a confusion between institution and physi-
cal location (the Salle Feydeau as opposed to the Opéra-Comique, for example). For reasons
of clarity, institutions are referred to by their formal title in this study and not by the building
they occupied. The only exception is that the term Opéra is used to encompass all the changes
in title to which the organization was subject during the period covered here: 1806–64
(Académie Royale de Musique, Académie Impériale de Musique, Académie de Musique,
Théâtre de l’Opéra, Théâtre de la Nation, Opéra-Théâtre de la Nation, Académie Nationale
de Musique, Théâtre Impérial de l’Opéra). The genre opéra comique (lower-case) is distin-
guished from the opera house that mainly promoted it: Opéra-Comique.
8. The fundamental text for understanding the chronology, topography and administrative
personnel of Parisian lyric institutions in the nineteenth century is Wild’s 2012 Dictionnaire des
théâtres parisiens (1807–1914). The inventory in this work (23–427) is based on the second
volume of idem, “Musique et théâtres parisiens.” The “Introduction Historique” to the 1989
Dictionnaire des théâtres parisiens au XIXe siècle (5–12) is an abridgement of “Musique et
théâtres parisiens,” 1:1–31 (subsequent references to this work are to the 1989 publication).
Important background sources for Wild’s study are Bossuet, Histoire administrative, and idem,
Histoire des théâtres nationaux.
9. Technologies of power were identified by Michel Foucault as emerging in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries and possessing a “concrete and precise character” and were de-
signed to “undertake the administration, control, and direction of the accumulation of men”
(“Truth and Power,” 66–67). The invocation of institutional networks with the ability to nego-
tiate power is strongly reminiscent of the concept of the “artworld” first constructed by Arthur
Danto in 1964 and endorsed by George Dickie a decade later (Danto, “Artworld”; Dickie, Art
and the Aesthetic; see also Dickie’s revised position as expressed in idem, Art Circle). While the
“artworld” provided a context in contemporary art criticism for the distinction between art and
non-art, it was subject to immediate criticism for its narrowness of concept (Silvers, “Artworld
Discarded”), but the term remains of value, immediately one moves outside the domain of art
history, as a pointer to the importance not just of institutions but of the ways in which they
interlock to create meaning. The first systematic attempt to engage with social questions and the
“artworld” was Becker, Art Worlds, which had much in common with early Bourdieu (see the
latter’s “Production of Belief,” based on essays originally written in 1977 and 1983; see also
Irvine, “Institutional Theory of Art”). The emphasis in this study on such social issues as

Thus, the concept of genre as contract between creator and performer that
may be maintained, broken or subverted, and that functions so well for
instrumental music, cannot entirely do justice to the variety of music drama
promoted in nineteenth-century Paris: comédie-vaudeville, grand opéra, bal-
let, opéra comique, petit opéra, mélodrame, opera buffa, and opera semiseria,
or to the culture that supported it. In short, while genre in instrumental
music floats between competing forces (publishing, interpretation, instrumental
technologies, and performers, for example) genre in stage music cannot be
fully understood independently of the institutional framework in which it was
embedded.10
Power, as one recent commentator has remarked, was “at the center of
the French lyric system.”11 It was exercised not only by institutions and
the state, but also by creative individuals who worked within, subverted,
triumphed over, but could in turn be destroyed by, institutional net-
works.12 This article seeks to develop this axiomatic view, to examine the
contexts—of politics, genre, and power—in which nineteenth-century
Parisian stage music was produced and consumed. In doing so, it brings
into question the premise that power is necessarily hierarchical, coercive,
and suggests an approach that views it as something that “comes from be-
low,” that “bring[s] about redistributions, realignments . . . and conver-
gences of the force relations.”13
In the context of nineteenth-century opera, the concept of power may be
parsed in many different ways: the creative power of librettists, composers,
managers, stage designers, costumiers, and other agents who shaped the pro-
duction of music drama; institutional power embodied in the network of or-
ganizations that allowed a dozen or more opera houses or theaters hosting
stage music to coexist simultaneously in the same city; and the power of audi-
ences, the censors, and the press. Many examples—the emergence of a style of
through-composed opera in five acts on a historical theme around 1830, the
expansion of the scope of opéra comique from the late 1840s onwards and the
personnel, institution, audience, and topography, as well as on more obvious sources of power,
clearly owes much not only to Becker and Bourdieu but also to earlier attempts to engage with
the concept of the “artworld.”
10. The clearest recent statements on genre in instrumental music as a series of negotiable
contracts are found in Kallberg, “Understanding Genre,” and idem, “Rhetoric of Genre.” Key
background texts to these statements, which also necessarily place their focus away from institu-
tional networks are Lejeune, Le pacte autobiographique, and Dubrow, Genre.
11. “Au centre du système lyrique français” (Lacombe, “De la différenciation des genres,” 260).
12. According to Clarissa Rile Hayward, “institutions shape what actors can do in particular
social contexts, what they want to do, and the ways in which it is strategically rational for them
to pursue particular aims, ends, and interests” (De-Facing Power, 4). For a broader introduction
to the “New Institutionalism” that underpins this article, see Hall and Taylor, “Political
Science,” and Smith, “If Politics Matters.”
13. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 94. For a further analysis of the concept of “alignment”
see Wartenberg, Forms of Power, 150.

development of opérette in the 1850s, for example—may be better understood

when examined within the networks of institutional power as described by
Michel Foucault in writings from the 1970s.
The relationship between opera and the state ranges from a situation where
creative power could be exercised almost without reference to institutional
power—where artists could allow their aesthetic ambitions to take them where
they wished within the limits of existing structures—to instances where institu-
tional power could override creative power completely or at least force different
compromises. In extreme cases—such as its attempt to create new genres at the
Théâtre de la Renaissance in the late 1830s—the state could effectively sup-
press creative power by making decisions that affected the local practices of
composers and librettists and by attempting to create genres that were by no
means the product of the relationship between creative and institutional power.
An alternative both to current understandings of opera in France in the
nineteenth century and to the ways in which opera and culture interrelate
more generally explains how technologies of operatic power—systems,
mechanisms, and regulators—might underpin future interpretative strate-
gies. Such an account both encompasses the multiplicity of organizations
that makes up the polity in which power is negotiated, and effaces the dis-
tinction between creative and institutional power within which the creation
of works and development of genres might be thought to be contained.14
Technologies of Power
The imperial rationalization of Parisian opera houses and theaters, undertaken

by a series of decrees and ministerial rulings during 1806 and 1807, changed
the face of Parisian cultural life for over half a century. This regulatory frame-
work was a vivid embodiment of the “administration and control” animated
by what Foucault identified as technologies of power. In response to the
wide range of theaters spawned by the theatrical liberty unleashed by the
revolution of 1789, the emergent empire classified eight institutions into
four grands théâtres and four théâtres secondaires:15 the Opéra, the Comédie
14. The concept of the work is much less familiar for nineteenth-century France than it is at
the beginning of the twenty-first century, and recourse to such, by now, well-known concepts as
Werktreue is insufficient (see Goehr, Imaginary Museum, and the cascade of texts that it
prompted: see, among others, Hesse, “Musikwerk und Aufführung,” and Danuser, “Werktreue
und Texttreue”). The concentration on German nineteenth-century instrumental music is clear.
Even in Weber, Oper und Werktreue, the subjects are J. C. Bach, Berg, and Gluck. The only
French example concerns modern stagings of Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann. While the
textual instability of music drama in nineteenth-century Paris goes without saying, understand-
ing this fluidity has to be tempered by the contemporary view that works were as much identi-
fied by their original subject matter as by their immediate form (see below).
15. See the list of 51 theaters functioning with a license by 1795 given in Hostein, La liberté
des théâtres, 51–52.

Française, what would shortly become the Théâtre-Italien, and the Opéra-
Comique, in the first group, and Théâtre de la Gaîté, Théâtre de
l’Ambigu-Comique, Théâtre des Variétés and Théâtre du Vaudeville, in the
second group. Each institution was assigned a genre, largely based on existing
practice, and all other theaters were ordered to close.16 The “technology”
remained in place until its repeal in 1864, and apparently controlled the cen-
tral focus of European consumption and reception of stage music throughout
the first half of the nineteenth century.
It was an act of unbridled political power, and one that tolerated no
compromise, no appeal. The Empire immediately established a series of
structures to support the newly drawn map of Parisian opera as readily as
it had redrawn the map of Europe from Austerlitz to Wagram. Central to
imperial control of opera and theater were the licenses granted to each,
signed by the Emperor, in which the specific set of genres associated with
the institution was identified, described, and delimited. In the knowledge
that more public money was spent on subventions to stage music and the-
ater in Paris than anywhere else in the world, the state was at pains to en-
sure that the complex network of lyric institutions was not hobbled by
unnecessary overlap and dispersal of resources. Thus, the Opéra was the
single institution permitted to produce ballet and music drama entirely in
music (by which was meant continuous opera), the Théâtre-Italien works
exclusively in Italian, the Comédie Française tragedy, and the Opéra-
Comique “all sorts of comedy and tragedy mixed with couplets, ariettes
and ensembles.”17 Although ensuring discrete repertories at each of the sec-
ondary theaters was not as important as at the grands théâtres since none was in
receipt of a state subsidy, the Gaîté was restricted to pantomimes and harle-
quinades and the other three theaters to vaudeville; in its commingling of spo-
ken dialogue and music (importantly based on what were called airs connus, or
pre-existent music) vaudeville was the closest point of contact—and hence the
strongest competition—with opéra comique which mixed newly composed
16. The enactment of this legislation was complex. Napoléon’s decree which set out the dis-
tinction between grands théâtres and théâtres secondaires was promulgated on June 8, 1806 (Décret
concernant les théâtres), and the règlement followed logically ten months later on April 25,
1807: Ministère de l’Intérieur: Règelement pour les théâtres [April 25, 1807]. However, it is clear
that this legislation—especially as it re-lated to the identification of which theaters were secondaires
and particularly the fate of the unauthorized theaters—met with imperial disapproval. It took a
second décret from the emperor for the full impact on the rest of theatrical Paris to be felt: “All
unauthorized theaters shall be closed by August 15, [1807]” (“Tous les théâtres non autorisés par
l’article précédent seront fermés avant le 15 août [1807]”) (Décret impérial sur les théâtres, 2).
A summary of the legislation is in Wild, Dictionnaire (1989), 7–8; the full text was published and
republished throughout the licensing period and beyond, each time the law was subject to review
and reinterpretation. See, for example, Blanc and Vivien, Traité de la législation des théâtres,
20–21; Lacan and Paulmier, Traité de la législation, 1:98–100; Véron, Paris en 1860.
17. “Toute espèce de comédies ou drames mêlés de couplets, d’ariettes et de morceaux
d’ensemble” (Ministère de l’Intérieur: Règlement pour les théâtres [April 25, 1807], 2).

dialogue and music.18 This attempt at ensuring that single genres were
assigned to particular institutions has recently been theorized into an opposi-
tion between co-répertoire—where genres are kept carefully distinct—and
contre-répertoire—where genres overlap; in the first case, the licensing system
is assumed to function without serious difficulty whereas in the second,
contre-répertoires have the effect of bringing the individual institutions within
the network that constitute the licensing system into conflict in a way that may
be resolved only through the exercise of power.19
Alongside the eight theaters under central government control were a
host of other entertainments that were controlled by the Prefect of Police.
Ten years after the enactment of the Napoleonic legislation of 1806/7,
there were five petits spectacles, eleven soirées amusantes (all of which involved
music), and thirty-nine grands bals en exercice, which included the exhibition
of a crocodile, optical illusions, ombres chinois, dance-halls, automata, and
waxworks.20 By and large, there was little competition between these enter-
tainments and the four grands théâtres, but any mix of music and dialogue at
the petits spectacles could call down the wrath of any or all of the secondary
theaters. The Prefect of Police also had an important supervisory role in the-
atrical activities ranging from the Paris première of Tannhäuser in 1861 to the
display of an elephant on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle in 1826: maintain-
ing public order, and ensuring the safety and security of all the theatrical
buildings in the city.21 He was able to shut down any performance if he
considered the threat to the public excessive; and even the Opéra was not im-
mune to such action, as when a performance of La muette de Portici was
stopped on February 6, 1843, not because of any revolutionary qualities em-
bodied in the work itself but because Gilbert Duprez, who had been the
Masaniello of choice since the 1840 revival, was not available, nor was his
understudy, Claude-Marie-Mécène Marié de l’Isle, and the third in line,
18. Ibid., 3–4.

19. For the concepts of co-répertoire and contre-répertoire see Pouradier, “Opéra, Comédie-
Française et Opéra-Comique” Useful for understanding the background to Pouradier’s ap-
proach is her “Le répertoire.” The strength of Pouradier’s theoretical engagement lies more in
its power as heuristic tool to examine specific source-based instances of the deployment of op-
eratic power rather than in its ability to explain the complexity of a single incident, sequence of
incidents or historical continuum. Its heuristic precepts underpin much of what is discussed in
this article.
20. During the second half of 1816, the Prefect of Police and the Minister of the Interior
conducted an inquiry into the threats posed to the Opéra-Comique by such petits spectacles.
Among the surviving documents is the État des théâtres secondaires, des petits spectacles, bals,
soirées amusantes, curiosités et marionettes ambulantes, October 1, 1816 (F-Pan F21 1045), from
which this account is taken.
21. The responsibilities of the Police during the Restoration were outlined in two works
from 1818: Préfecture de Police: Ordonnance concernant la police intérieure et extérieure des spec-
tacles, supplemented by Préfecture de Police; Instruction pour messieurs les commissaires de police,
officiers de paix, officiers de la gendarmerie royale de Paris, et adjudants.

Placide-Alexandre-Guillaume Poultier was sick. The fourth choice for the role
that evening, Raguenet (only his family name has survived), met with so little
approval that his performance triggered a riot that was contained only by the
Prefect of Police clearing the building with the aid of armed force.22
The transfer of power from the state to the opera house was effected via
the formal license (privilège) which specified the duration of the manager’s
tenure, his repertory, financial terms (especially if the license involved a state
subvention), and other matters.23 From the early 1830s onwards, the license
took on a more perfunctory form and dealt simply with the legal status of the
manager’s contract while questions relating to repertory and the day-to-day
functioning of the opera house were contained in the cahier des charges.24
Here were detailed the nature of the repertory, the number of performances
per year, the length of the season, the proportion of new work that the man-
ager was obliged to showcase, and frequently the nature of the performing
forces themselves. The cahier des charges could also become a site of negoti-
ation where the manager could seek to nuance the stipulations of the state to
his own advantage.25
A particular feature of the management of operatic culture during the
Bourbon Restoration, and one that created significant levels of rancor, was
the redevance des théâtres secondaires, a levy on all the non-royal theaters at
a rate of 5 percent on all receipts, that was to be paid to the Opéra alone.
This was instituted in 1811, and was unsuccessfully challenged in the courts
between 1826 and 1828, but while the collection of the levy was supposed
to be carried out by the Préfet de la Seine, he was frequently slow or reluctant
to forward the money to the Opéra and also failed to punish those insti-
tutions that failed to pay. The sums that came to the Opéra, while an impor-
tant contribution to its budget, were far smaller than the 300,000 francs
per annum described by the Opéra’s manager, Louis-Désiré Véron.26 The
22. Report by Auguste Louis Joseph Casimir Gustave de Franquetot (1788–1865) Comte
de Coigny, president of the Commission des théâtres, to Minister of the Interior, February 10,
1843 in reply to letter from the Prefet de Police (Gabriel Delessert) to the Minister (Charles
Marie Tanneguy, duc de Duchâtel), February 7, 1843 (F-Pan AJ13 180 (X)). Fulcher (Nation’s
Image, 101) cites an extract from Delessert’s letter to Duchâtel, but goes on to argue, against all
the evidence, that “the Opéra seemed to be becoming an arena where political tensions could be
given expression through indirect, hence legally acceptable, symbolic means” (ibid, 101–2).
23. See, for example, the licenses for the Théâtre Royal de l’Odéon in Everist, Music
Drama at the Paris Odéon, 44–53.
24. The first cahier des charges in which most of the detail from the formal license appeared
was the one granted Véron in February 1831, and immediately revised in May 1831 and again
in May 1833 (F-Pan F21 4655(2)).
25. From 1831, any change of manager at a grand théâtre or théâtre secondaire would
always be accompanied by a new cahier des charges, which would almost invariably entail a rene-
gotiation of its terms.
26. Véron, Mémoires d’un bourgeois de Paris, 1:164.

secondary theaters refused to pay after the July Revolution in 1830, and
Louis-Philippe abandoned the levy the following year.27
A picture of Parisian opera houses functioning efficiently within the
bureaucratic structures of government was never a complete one during
the licensing period; with very few exceptions, and from the beginning of
the July Monarchy almost exclusively, an intermediary tier of manage-
ment was installed, and it was here that much of the brokering of oper-
atic power took place. The Commission des théâtres was central to the
cartography of Parisian operatic life throughout the July Monarchy and
Second Republic, and into the Second Empire. Even as early as 1817,
the secondary theaters were beginning to take too liberal a view of the
relationship between vaudeville and opéra comique, with the result that
officials within the Maison du Roi were beginning to notice that receipts
at the Opéra-Comique were dropping. The consequence, according to
Jules Jean-Baptiste François de Chardebœuf, Comte de Pradel, would be
“the rapid decline in French dramatic art,” for which he blamed “the
excessive number and the overly generous scope of licenses.”28 The
Opéra-Comique had been complaining about the way in which second-
ary theaters were breaking the terms of their licenses and consequently
impinging on its repertory almost as soon as the 1806/7 legislation had
been enacted, but a decade later the Maison du Roi acted by setting up a
Commission des théâtres, made up of five members of the Institut de
France, with the task of identifying the reasons for the décadence de l’art
dramatique et théâtral and finding ways of remedying it.29 The Commis-
sion fell apart because the Minister of the Interior considered that it “is
useless. It would be called on only to debate something that is already
judged. . . . If there are attempts at trespass at the Vaudeville, at the
Variétés, on the Boulevard, they will be immediately suppressed.”30
Given that the Commission des théâtres, in one form or another, was to be
so important from the early 1830s until the end of the licensing period, it
is reasonable to ask why such an idea was so quickly abandoned. Difficulties
must have arisen because the grands théâtres were at that point under the
27. For a definitive account of the redevance des théâtres secondaires, see Drysdale, Louis
Véron, 36–38.
28. “La prompte décadence de l’art dramatique en France’; “le trop grand nombre et la
trop grande étendue des privilèges.” Letter from Jules Jean-Baptiste François de Chardebœuf,
Comte de Pradel to the Minister of the Interior, Joseph-Henri-Joachim Lainé, August 5,
1817 (F-Pan F21 1045).
29. Letter from the Comte de Pradel to Minister of the Interior, September 22, 1817 (F-Pan
F21 960). The members of the Commission des théâtres were François-Juste-Marie Raynouard,
François-Nicolas-Vincent Campenon, Henri-Montan Berton, Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère
de Quincy and Hippolyte Auger.
30. “est inutile. Elle ne serait appelée qu’à débattre une chose déjà jugée. . . . S ides
empiètements étaient tantés au Vaudeville, aux Variétés, au Boulevard, ils seraient réprimés
aussitôt” (F-Pan F21 960, cited in Wild, “Musique et théâtres,” 1:41).

supervision of the Maison du Roi whereas the secondary theaters were loosely
under the control of the Minister of the Interior. This meant that dis-
agreements between any of the secondary theaters and, for example, the
Opéra-Comique involved two government departments, each with its own
administrative structure and its own minister. Under such circumstances, it
comes as no surprise that the Maison du Roi would be enthusiastic about a
Commission to protect its own interests whereas the Ministry of the Interior
would have had more confidence in the existing system of licenses to ensure
the regulation of the opera houses and theaters of the capital.
No supervisory committee was in place during the Restoration, a situa-
tion that was ameliorated, but by no means rendered satisfactory, by the fact
that the Théâtre-Italien was placed under the same management as the
Opéra between 1819 and 1827.31 At the same time, however, the Opéra-
Comique was having to fight off competition for the genre that gave the
institution its name from the newly titled “Théâtre-Royal de l’Odéon,
Second Théâtre Français.”32 Because these often bitter arguments over
which institution was permitted to play which parts of the repertory were
confined to two royal theaters, they could therefore be settled by recourse
to the Maison du Roi alone. The opening of new theaters (by 1827, these
included the Gymnase-Dramatique, the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin,
and the Théâtre des Nouveautés) however resulted in various challenges to
the royal theaters that the 1806/7 legislation had never envisaged. Louis-
François Sosthène de la Rochefoucauld, in a ministerial arrêté, formalized
a practice that had emerged in the legislative vacuum during the previous de-
cade: individual directors and administrators of royal theaters were expected
to watch over “secondary theaters [who] give themselves permission daily to
overstep the generic boundaries that are assigned them.”33 While such prac-
tices had been common for most of the Restoration, formalizing managers’
31. Wild, Dictionnaire (1989), 198.

32. Given the status of a royal theater in 1818, by 1824 it had received a license to play cer-
tain segments of the opéra comique repertory and this put it in direct conflict with the Opéra-
Comique itself. See Everist, Music Drama at the Paris Odéon, 199–226.
33. “théâtres secondaires [qui] se permettent journellement de sortir du genre qui leur a été
taxativement assigné.” Managers were required to report institutions which “allowed themselves
especially frequently to perform plays mixed with romances, ariettes, duets, trios, ensembles and
choruses, whether newly composed or borrowed from scores belonging to works composed for
the Opéra, Opéra-Italien or Opéra-Comique” (“se permettent surtout de jouer fréquemment des
pièces mêlées de romances, ariettes, duos, trios, morceaux d’ensemble et chœurs, soit de musique
nouvelle, soit empruntés des partitions appartenantes aux pièces composées pour le grand opéra
français, l’Opéra Italien et l’Opéra Comique”). They were further enjoined to ensure that “libret-
tists and composers of the latter works were not given permission to play or sing the airs or their
accompaniments at any other theater in the Capital” (“les auteurs et compositeurs des dites pièces
ne pourront donner aucune autorisation d’en jouer ou chanter les airs et accompagnements sur
aucun autre théâtre de la capitale”); Arrêté promulgated by Louis-François Sosthène, Vicomte de
La Rochefoucauld, March 29, 1827, and countersigned by the Chef du Département des Beaux
Arts, François-Henri Hilaire, Comte de Tilly (F-Pan AJ13 109 (I)).

responsibility to inform the government of such transgressions of license

ensured that this method of surveillance would continue throughout the
licensing period.
A Commission de surveillance établie près le Conservatoire et l’Académie
royale de Musique was established in early 1831 at the point when the man-
agement of the Opéra was given to the directeur-entrepreneur, Véron.34 At
first, their work concerned exclusively the Conservatoire and Véron’s
management of the Opéra. When Véron resigned in 1835 to be replaced by
Charles-Edmond Duponchel, the committee was reconstituted to encom-
pass all the royal theaters as well as the Conservatoire. With a new title of
Commission spéciale près le Conservatoire et les théâtres royaux, it was a medi-
ating force between the Minister of the Interior (to which all theaters were
now subject) and the managers of the opera houses and theaters responsible
to the ministry. The members of this committee wielded immense power,
and could arbitrate, almost without appeal, on all matters brought to their
attention by either the minister or a manager of one of the institutions.35
The remit of the Commission, even before it took over the supervision of
all the royal theaters, was broad. It was responsible for reviewing candidates
for directorships of opera houses and theaters in the capital; drafting cahiers
de charges and their renegotiation on managers’ behalf; approving libretti
and synopses of ballets; receiving requests from the Ministry of the Interior,
managers, and third parties for action and report; and receiving requests for
retirement. Its meetings frequently involved interviews with managers, art-
ists, representatives from Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques
that frequently provided its consideration of requests and reports.36 In the
context of drafting Léon Pillet’s cahier des charges at the Opéra in 1841, for
34. See the minutes of the Commission’s meetings from March 1, 1831 to August 31, 1835
in F-Pan F21 4633 (3–4). The Commission consisted of Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard (replaced
when he became Chef du Division des Beaux Arts by Auguste Hilarion, comte de Kératry),
Edmond Blanc, Armand Bertin, Jean-Baptiste-Roger Fauchon d’Henneville, with Claude
Antoine Gabriel, duc de Choiseul-Stainville as Chair and Edmond-Ludovic-Auguste Cavé as
Secretary.
35. A case in point concerned the Commission’s revision to Pillet’s contract in early 1841,
the wording of which was queried by the minister on March 18. The Duc de Coigny’s chilly,
and well-documented, response written on behalf of the Commission shows quite clearly where
he thought the balance of power resided, and the absence of any counterresponse from the
Minister shows that he shared that view (F-Pan AJ13 180 (III)).
36. Although based on such secondary sources as Bossuet, Histoire administrative, Fulcher’s
account of the power of the Commission (Nation’s Image, 57–64) is a fair reflection of its activities
as fully documented both before 1835 and from 1836 onwards (for the latter see F-Pan F21 4633
(5–7) and F-Pan F21 4634 (1–2). It is difficult to agree entirely with Cras’s complaint that Fulcher
claims for the Commission “une autorité bien plus grande qu’un examen scrupuleux des sources
ne permet, à mon sens, de la faire. Ainsi, elle illustre le pouvoir exercé par cet organisme à l’aide
d’exemples pris dans les premiers mois de l’année 1831, à une époque où Véron n’avait pas
encore pris la direction de l’Opéra” (Cras, “L’exploitation de l’Opéra,” 87–88) since Fulcher’s
evidence clearly ranges widely across the July Monarchy.

example, it effectively defined those works that fell into the canon and those
that fell out of it; the removal of, for example, Gluck, almost all Spontini,
Sacchini, and Salieri, gave Pillet a repertory largely made up of works com-
posed in the previous decade, and—temporarily at least—severed the link
with the past that had characterized the Académie Royale de Musique since
the seventeenth century.37 The uncompromising minutes of their meetings
and reports written to the Ministers of the Interior commented on the qual-
ity of the performances, mises en scène, casting, and in some cases the quality
of the libretto and its music. The success of the Commission was incontest-
able, and so great that during the 1848 revolution, it was retained and given
a remit for all Parisian theaters.
An important consequence of the establishment and functioning of the
Commission spéciale was that it also provided a setting in which artists’ associ-
ations could make representations to the government, an environment that
had been denied them during the Restoration. Principal among these was the
Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD), the organization
that had been founded by Beaumarchais in 1777.38 In the 1840s, among its
other activities, it campaigned vigorously against the Opéra-Comique, which
it claimed was not fulfilling the obligations of its cahier des charges in relation
to the production of new works.39 And while this campaign might have been
thought to have backfired, the SACD’s petitions to government (March 9,
1820, June 2, 1830, July 1837, April 24, 1840, and November 12, 1850) for
a third lyric theater were important in the clamor that eventually resulted in
the establishment of the Théâtre-Lyrique.40 When the Commission spéciale
had been given its wider powers in 1835, there had been concerns in the
Ministry of the Interior that it might not be able to serve the interests of
all parties simultaneously, so the Minister, Adolphe Thiers, appointed a
Commissaire royal près l’Académie Royale de Musique, le Conservatoire de
Musique, le Théâtre Royal Italien et le Théâtre Royal de l’Opéra Comique to
supervise the managers of royal theaters. For the first five years, this was Pillet,
who in 1840 became manager of the Opéra itself. He was replaced by Édouard
Monnais, who served in this capacity throughout the rest of the July Monarchy,
37. Commission des Théâtres. Registre des Procès-Verbaux des délibérations, January 15,
1841 (F-Pan F21 4633 (7)).
38. See Boncompain, La Révolution des auteurs.
39. The Opéra-Comique’s cahier des charges stipulated that it should mount at least four
opéras comiques in three acts, each of which should be newly composed. The SACD began by
observing that Crosnier, during the 1841–42 year, had mounted only fifteen out of the obliga-
tory twenty acts, and—given that it represented the interests of those who might have written
the remaining five acts—argued that he should be required to fulfill the terms of his cahiers des
charges. The Commission spéciale considered this question, and when it came to its decision four
months later, reached the conclusion that the cahier des charges should be modified so as to
require the manager to play sixteen acts a year only. Letter from Commission dramatique des
auteurs et compositeurs français to Commission des théâtres, May 1842 (F-Pan F21 4673 (4g)).
40. Wild, “Musique et théâtres,” 1:156.

the Second Republic, and most of the Second Empire. He was still acting
as Commissaire impérial in 1864 when the licensing system was abolished,
after he had spent nearly a quarter of a century in the post.41
The Second Empire brought great changes to the management of enter-
tainment in the capital. In many respects, it marked a return to the past,
separating out opera houses and theaters in receipt of a subvention from
those who were not. The former were the responsibility of the newly created
Ministre de la Maison de l’Empereur, which appointed Commissaires for each
of the main organizations.42 The institutions without subvention remained
in the hands of the Ministry of the Interior. When the theaters without
subsidy were brought under the control of the Ministre d’État in 1854, they
effectively fell under the control of the same individual: Achille Fould,
who held the positions of Minister of State and Minister of the Maison de
l’Empereur. And while there had been nothing to equal the Commission
spéciale des théâtres during the first two years of the Second Empire, Fould
established a Commission supérieure permanente institutée pour l’examen des
affaires relatives à la gestion du Théâtre Impérial de l’Opéra on June 30,
1854. The extraordinary seniority of its membership coupled to the fact that
they were now responsible exclusively for the Opéra (now called the Théâtre
Impérial de l’Opéra), and the intrusive nature of their involvement, indicates
the importance the state attached to this institution at this particular mo-
ment. Although Fould was to resign as both Ministre d’État and Ministre de
la Maison de l’Empereur in 1860, the Commission continued its work until
the end of the licensing period in 1864.43
Three subsidiary elements in the network of operatic power are audiences,
the press, and the censor. The analysis of audience in nineteenth-century Paris
is fraught with difficulties, but significantly more productive than is the case in
other European cities. Steven Huebner’s study of this question acknowledged
the scattered nature of the evidence but was able—on the basis of a consider-
ation of surviving subscription lists and ticket prices—to document, and spec-
ulate carefully on, the makeup of the audiences at the Opéra, Opéra-Comique,
Théâtre-Italien, and Théâtre-Lyrique.44 There is, however, little evidence of
the audience having an impact elsewhere in the power network of which it
formed part. Needless to say, the absence of audience—lack of interest—
would play a role in determining the length of a work’s run, but quantifying
41. There is currently very little on Edouard Monnais. See Coudroy-Saghai, “Edouard
Monnais.”
42. The three commissioners with responsibility for single institutions were Arsène Housaye
(Théâtre-Français), Gilbert de Voisins (Théâtre-Italien), Perrot de Renneville (Odéon). Monnais
remained responsible for all the lyric theaters and the Conservatoire. See Almanach imperial,
862–64.
43. The work of the Commission supérieure and its membership is discussed below.
44. Huebner, “Opera Audiences in Paris.”

such a process falls foul of a mismatch between methodological desiderata and

surviving evidence.
Surprisingly, in view of the sheer volume of the press’s activity in
nineteenth-century Paris and the impact of censorship on opera elsewhere
in Europe, neither plays a particularly significant role in the politics of genre
at this point in the history of Parisian stage music. Despite occasional calls
for a state subvention for an unfunded but successful opera house or pointing
to self-evident failings of a manager to fulfill the obligations of his cahier des
charges, the press’s influence was focused primarily on the exercise of creative
power: the domains in which librettists, composers, and interpreters func-
tioned.45 As judge and jury in the cases of singers’ careers, the press was
all-powerful. But it also freely exercised its opportunities to comment on the
quality of work and libretto to the extent that it could not only call for cuts but
also expect to see them carried out. Perhaps the most striking example of this is
Halévy’s La Juive, in which, as a result of pressure from journalists, three
consecutive numbers were excised from the beginning of act 3 after the 1835
premiere; this reduced the dimensions of the role of Eudoxie by about half.46
But these incursions into the creative power of librettists and composers were
subtle and frequently convincing as, for example, when Pier-Angelo Fiorentino,
writing as “A. de Rovray,” suggested that in François-Auguste Gevaert’s
Quentin Durward (an opéra comique from 1858) “it is in the second act
that the largest cuts must be made. Mlle Boulart’s aria is not very striking;
Barrielle’s couplets can be cut without regret. . . . But not a note should
be touched in Faure’s romance; it is charming, and the artist performs it
with perfect taste and an admirable simplicity.” Fiorentino was not just
arguing for shrinking the dimensions of an already very long work, but
carefully pointing to strengths and weaknesses as he engaged with the cre-
ative power of the work’s authors.47
The reason why the censors seem to have had less impact in nineteenth-
century Paris than elsewhere in Europe is that managers and librettists showed
45. This is by no means to minimize the other ways in which the study of all types of the press
contribute to a study of nineteenth-century stage music. The literature is by now large, and the
field is changing from studies that concentrated on such well-known figures as Berlioz (Murphy,
Hector Berlioz) to those that subject individual titles to particular study (Ellis, Music Criticism),
examination of such authors outside the canon as Joseph d’Ortigue (Écrits sur la musique), and
to wider studies of music journalism outside the specialist press (Reibel, L’écriture). The establish-
ment of an online resource to promote the study of writings on music in the nineteenth-century
French press further extends this work (Francophone Music Criticism).
46. Hallman, Opera, Liberalism, and Antisemitism, 228–30.
47. “C’est dans le second acte qu’il faut pratiquer les plus larges coupures. L’air de Mlle
Boulart n’a rien de saillant; les couplets de Barrielle pourraient être supprimés sans regret. . . .
Mais qu’on se garde bien de retrancher une note à la romance de Faure, elle est charmante, et
l’artiste la dit avec un goût parfait et une admirable simplicité” (Le moniteur universel, March 28,
1858). For an overview of Gevaert’s opéras comiques see Everist, “Operas of François-
AugusteGevaert,” especially for Quentin Durward, 34–37.

themselves extremely adept at ensuring that any issues that might interest the
censors were resolved in advance. While the surviving censors’ libretti are a
major source for the reconstruction of the final phase of revision for almost all
Parisian stage music of the period, they usually reveal far more of the libret-
tist’s and occasionally the composer’s creative activity rather than evidence of
state interference.48 The very few occasions when this system went awry
point to the truth of this claim. Eugène Scribe’s libretto of Meyerbeer’s Les
Huguenots is a case in point. Scribe’s establishment of the libretto and
Meyerbeer’s completion of the score fall into a period just after censorship
had been abolished by the July Monarchy in 1830. But censorship was
reintroduced in 1835, before the premiere of Les Huguenots, and at a point
where the libretto placed an harquebus into the hands of the King of
France and closed with a dispassionate Cathérine de Médicis overseeing
the act 5 carnage. The censors came down very hard on these scenes be-
cause Scribe and the management of the Opéra had carefully constructed
the libretto according to the principles of the period 1830–35 and were
temporarily wrong-footed by the change in legislation. Both scenes were ex-
cised from the version that received its premiere in 1836.49 It is therefore
no surprise that studies on censorship in nineteenth-century Paris center on
Victor Hugo and the “legitimate” theater rather than on opera.50
New Theaters and Opera Houses
It was inevitable, after the closure of so many petits spectacles by the Napoleonic
decrees of 1806/7, that there would be attempts to restart theatrical and
operatic enterprises despite the legislation, and this was the most immediately
visible challenge to the technologies represented by the licensing system. In
the first instance, the only means of gaining permission to open was via the
Prefect of Police, which meant that the first reopenings were on a very modest
scale.51 The Théâtre Comte opened as early as 1809, but was permitted only
acts of ventriloquism, magic, and trials of strength; similarly when the Théâtre
de Luxembourg started in 1816, it was exclusively for high-wire acts and mar-
ionettes.52 But when the Panorama-Dramatique began its series of performan-
ces that mixed the well-known landscapes of the Panorama itself with scenes in
dialogue, members of the Conseil du Roi argued strongly that the Prefect of
48. The standard accounts of censorship in nineteenth-century Paris are Krakovitch, Les pièces
de théâtre, and idem, Censure des repertoires. See also idem, “Les Romantiques et la censure,”
33–43.
49. For the sources of the libretto and the changes that the censors forced onto the creative
team for Les Huguenots, see Brooks and Everist, “Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots.”
50. Krakovitch, Hugo censuré.
51. See the countless appeals to the Prefect of Police in F-Pan F21 1045–46.
52. Wild, Dictionnaire (1989), 110–12 and 225–27.

Police had gone beyond the bounds of his jurisdiction, and that authorization
of the Panorama-Dramatique should have been granted (or more probably
refused) only by royal ordinance.53
None of the petits spectacles that opened during the first two decades of
the licensing period represented any threat to the grands théâtres, since their
repertory was so far removed from the music drama promoted elsewhere.
But from 1820 onwards, various pressures resulted in increasing the number
of secondary theaters substantially beyond the four that had been agreed in
the 1806/7 legislation. Some of the most important theaters of the period
from the Restoration to the Second Empire emerged: the Théâtre de la
Porte-Saint-Martin, Gymnase-Dramatique, Théâtre des Nouveautés, and
the Théâtre du Palais Royal. Especially important for opera were the Odéon,
Théâtre de la Renaissance, Opéra-National/Théâtre-Lyrique, and finally the
Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens. All these organizations fell outside the range
of the two principal institutions promoting opera in French—the Opéra-
Comique and the Opéra itself—and became serial candidates for the third
lyric theater in the capital.
Given that the environment created by the Napoleonic legislation was
one that promoted an ideal match between genre and institution, any new
opera house had to make a very special case in order to be given royal per-
mission or—after 1830—ministerial approval to open its doors. Further-
more, it had to be prepared to compromise with the state in maintaining
the equilibrium demanded by the politics of genre to which all changes of
repertory—however slight—were subject after 1806. Claims fell into one of
two categories: either the opera house would support the careers of young
composers, especially Prix de Rome laureates when they returned to Paris
after their sojourn in Italy and other European states, or they would serve as
a training ground for dramatic and lyric artists for the benefit of the grands
théâtres. The Odéon in 1824, the Renaissance in 1838, and the Bouffes-
Parisiens in 1855 all argued that permission to play new opéras comiques, any
music drama, or a new genre that would be called opérette or opéra bouffe,
would enhance the prospects of novice composers, and the series of negotia-
tions and false starts that resulted in the establishment of the Théâtre-
Lyrique in 1851 was entirely predicated on the encouragement for, and
was supported by petitions from, young composers.54 Both the opening
of the Gymnase-Dramatique and extension of the Odéon’s license to in-
clude opera were underpinned by the appreciation of their roles as insti-
tutions that would provide an environment for the development of new artistic
talent.55 Such claims could also be coupled to more obviously opportunistic
53. Lecomte, Les Jeux gymniques, 69–74.

54. For the Odéon, see Everist, Music Drama at the Paris Odéon, 104–5; for the Renaissance,
see idem, “Theatres of Litigation,” 136.
55. See the Gymnase Dramatique’s license, dated February 1, 1820, in F-Pan F21 1137.

motives: the multiple applications to open a second Opéra-Comique in 1829,

none of which was successful, involved a ritual demonstration of support from
younger composers, but had more to do with the disarray in which the Opéra-
Comique found itself at the end of the Restoration and from which it would
not recover until 1834.56
But there could never be enough genres to support the growth in the
number of new opera houses while maintaining the balance of generic power
that the 1806–7 legislation had guaranteed, and the state had to use all its skill
to limit repertories in more exacting ways. The Odéon, in addition to spoken
tragedy and comedy, was restricted to opéra comique that had fallen into the
public domain and to opera in translation, whereas the Gymnase-Dramatique
was only permitted to put on operas, again from the public domain, but
reduced to a single act in the case of operas in more than one act and to a
single scene for one-act works.57 When the Nouveautés was opened with a
license to perform vaudeville in 1827, it quickly moved to replace the couplets
du domaine public with newly composed music—effectively opéra comique—
in a way that clearly breached the terms of its license.58 The consequences of
such a light hand with its repertory immediately brought the Nouveautés into
conflict with the Opéra-Comique itself.59 Unsuccessful bids would occasion-
ally come up with imaginative suggestions for repertory unprompted either by
managers or the state; an attempt to open a second Italian opera house in
1839 offered a draft cahier des charges that restricted its repertory to national
dance (Spanish and Italian) and Italian comic opera (opera buffa and farse),
but was no more successful than any other similarly unprompted proposals.60
One of the consequences of the difficulties in the relationship between vaude-
ville and opéra comique in the late 1820s and 1830s was the immense care that
the state took with the license of the Théâtre de la Renaissance in the 1830s.
56. Four proposals to set up a second Opéra-Comique were presented in September 1829
by André Sourd, Adolphe Bossange, François-Victor-Armand d’Artois de Bourganville, Scribe
and Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier (pseud. Melesville). The Opéra-Comique responded to the
proposals with a printed pamphlet that outlined all possible objections to the scheme which was
not formally abandoned until the publication of a ministerial arrêté on July 5, 1830. All four of
the presentations cited the need to support young composers. See F-Pan F21 1092 for all four
proposals and the Opéra-Comique’s printed response. For this period of the Opéra-Comique
see Bara, Le Théâtre de l’Opéra Comique.
57. Ibid. See the summary of the repertory permitted at the Gymnase in Wild, Dictionnaire
(1989), 184.
58. The Nouveautés’ license, dated December 8, 1825, specifically identified “plays in 1, 2,
or 3 acts, “mêlées de couplets sur des airs du domaine public [emphasis added]” as its central
repertory. F-Pan F21 1141. Still useful is Lecomte, Les Nouveautés.
59. The dispute between the Opéra-Comique and the Nouveautés, much complicated by
the one-sided support of ministers, is one of the earliest sites of genre negotiation in this period,
as will be discussed below.
60. Charles-Auguste Morny de Montfort was a retired cavalry officer when he made this
unsuccessful but imaginative proposal. It was rejected by the Minister on August 20, 1839.
F-Pan F21 1038.

The history of opera at the Théâtre de la Renaissance is colored by the fact

that music drama was never envisaged there: Victor Hugo and Alexandre
Dumas were looking to set up a Second Théâtre Français where—as ever—
there would have been a small orchestra for overtures, entractes, and
incidental music, but no opera. The Renaissance was immediately put under
pressure from its obvious rival, the Théâtre Français (the Comédie Française),
and the state was forced to act. Its initial response was to propose and then
authorize the performance of what it called vaudeville avec airs nouveaux.
Vaudeville, at any point in the nineteenth century depended largely for its
music on the use of timbres—pre-existing musical numbers—and this defined
the genre as a mix of speech and borrowed song. While the idea of inventing a
genre that took the outlines of vaudeville but insisted on the use of new music
must have been seen as a possible solution to competition with the second-
ary theaters where vaudeville was promoted, it threw the Renaissance into
competition with the Opéra-Comique. Finding that it had created an im-
possible situation, the Ministry of the Interior made things significantly
worse by trying to find a third solution to the question of a repertory for
the Renaissance that did not overlap with other opera houses. Its subse-
quent invention of opéra de genre was—had its definitions been adhered to
by the Renaissance—just about workable: at the same time as using con-
tinuous recitative, opéra de genre was broken up into numbers, with clearly
articulated pauses after each, in the fashion of contemporary Italian opera.
But opéra de genre was simply too close to grand opéra in many respects for
the Opéra to ignore, and, like the Opéra-Comique, the Opéra saw a poten-
tial threat and took successful steps in the courts to neutralize it.61
Although the Opéra and Théâtre-Italien had clearly distinct repertories and
personnel, they were further delineated by the fact that, during the winter, the
Opéra performed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the Théâtre-Italien
on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays; when, in the 1840s, Sundays were
brought into the planning frame, they were treated alternately with the Opéra
one week, the Théâtre-Italien the next. This was a system that worked well
for decades, and when the manager of the Théâtre-Italien, Watel, attempted
in 1845 to hire out his building, on the nights he was not allowed to perform
opera, to John Mitchell’s English theater troupe (and therefore allowing the
building to be used in competition with the Opéra), he was arraigned before
the Minister and fined 10,000 francs.62
The most striking exception to this general distinction between institution
and repertory concerns Jacques Offenbach’s attempts to start his Théâtre des
61. For a full account of the state’s creation of vaudeville avec airs nouveaux and opéra de
genre, see Everist, “Theatres of Litigation,” and for the impact of the latter, idem, “Donizetti
and Wagner.”
62. Judgment was passed on January 18, 1845. The matter was raised by the director of the
competing opera house, Léon Pillet, at the Opéra. F-Pan AJ13 1051.

Bouffes-Parisiens in 1855. As usual, the new enterprise was controlled by a

license that attempted to distance it from potential competitors; in this
case Offenbach was allowed to play music drama in a single act with no
more than four singing characters on stage.63 But another theater had
been given an almost identical license. Hervé’s Théâtre des Folies-Nouvelles
had originally been refused permission to have more than two people on stage
at any one time; as soon as the Bouffes-Parisiens were given the right to have
four, so was the Folies-Nouvelles.64 The two theaters were in direct competi-
tion with each other, for the same artists, composers, and librettists. Had they
been in competition for the same audiences, one or the other would have
been likely to collapse, but while Hervé was looking to the traditional
audiences of the boulevard, Offenbach—with tenancies at the Salle Lacaze
on the Champs-Elysées in the summer and on the Salle Choiseul in the
Passage Choiseul in the Winter—was not only setting out his stall in a dif-
ferent part of the city, but was also aiming to amuse a very different type of
audience.65
However agile Offenbach managed to be in finding ways of differentiat-
ing his work from that of Hervé, there was no escaping the radical change in
attitude to the relationship between genre and institution represented by
this state-controlled competition. Whether it was inadvertent or deliberate,
or predicated on the knowledge that the similarity of license would be
balanced by the different geographical and social environments of the two
opera houses is difficult to explain. But this curious set of circumstances
arose less than a decade before the end of the licensing system, and activities
at Offenbach’s opera house represented one of several pressures on the
system that were to bring about its decline and repeal.
Loups-cerviers, Private Enterprise, and the Aristocracy
The July Monarchy gave the appearance of a coherent management of

opera houses and theaters: a system of reporting to the Ministry of the
Interior, of Commissaires royaux, and of the Commission itself. But in
addition to the wide range of challenges to these technologies, much
clandestine power resided in the so-called loups-cerviers, the financiers
and bankers that supported the Opéra in the first instance, and other
63. The earliest version of Offenbach’s license restricted him to three singing characters
(F-Pan F21 1136, June 4, 1855; see Yon, Jacques Offenbach, 137); the loosening of this limita-
tion to four was accomplished in the revision of Offenbach’s contract, October 22, 1855 (Wild,
Dictionnaire [1989], 59).
64. For Florimond Ronger (Hervé) and the Théâtre des Folies-Nouvelles, see Woestyn and
Moreau, Les Folies-Nouvelles, and Lecomte, Les Folies-Nouvelles.
65. For an account of Offenbach’s deft negotiation of the politics of genre during the early
years of the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, see Everist, “Jacques Offenbach.”

theaters subsequently.66 The position arose because every manager of an

operatic enterprise had to put up more caution money than they could ever
raise themselves (managers of the Opéra were required to find 250,000
francs, for example); this could be achieved only by recourse to a financial
backer acceptable to the Ministry of the Interior.67 During the course of the
period, managers of the Opéra turned to Alexandre-Joseph-Marie-Léon-
Pierre-Paul-Raimond-Louis-Gonzague Aguado, Marquis de Las Marismas del
Gaudalquivir (1831–42), Auguste-Jules-Edouard de Saint-Mars (1843–45),
Étienne Jean François d’Aligre (1845–46), and Jean-François-Pierre, Baron
Dudon (1847–48).68
Beyond their formal financial support for the Opéra’s management, little
is known of the involvement in the institution’s affairs of Saint-Mars,
d’Aligre, or Dudon, and it is entirely possible that their participation in the
life of the institution was limited to nothing more than financial backing. By
contrast, Alexandre Aguado, Marquis de Las Marismas, left abundant traces
of his financial support for the Opéra, and other opera houses both in Paris
and elsewhere in Europe, which reveal his intervention in their day-to-day
running and artistic management. Having settled in Paris at the beginning
of the Restoration, by the beginning of the July Monarchy Aguado was
probably one of the wealthiest men in the city. His involvement with opera
formed a large part of his life: he had invited Rossini to his château at Petit-
Bourg to write most of Guillaume Tell and—as the protector of the ballerina
Alexandrine Fitzjames—he was a well-known figure around the Opéra. His
town house was the old Hôtel d’Augny in the rue Grange-Batelière, almost
part of the same block that housed the Opéra itself.69
66. A loup-cervier is, in purely zoological terms, a lynx (Lupus cervarius; but note that the
modern Latin term relates specifically to the Canadian lynx). For nineteenth-century France,
however, the term was also applied to the mandarins of banking, industry, and commerce who
were able to do what they wished with their capital to the disadvantage of their neighbor. See
Cras, “L’exploitation de l’Opéra,” 140, and the sources cited there. For a contemporary defini-
tion, see Proudhon, De la création de l’ordre, 449.
67. The caution money for the Opéra remained the same throughout the July Monarchy
and into the Second Republic. In 1849, the cautionnement for the Théâtre Français was
the same as the Opéra, after which the sums dropped off rapidly: 80,000 francs for the Opéra-
Comique, 60,000 francs for the Théâtre-Italien. Most of the secondary theaters were priced
around 30,000 francs with the petits spectacles at 10,000 francs. See the complete listing in
Conseil d’Etat, 200.
68. The claim made by Second (Les petits mystères de l’Opéra, 233), and repeated by Cras
(“L’exploitation de l’Opéra,” 154) that the librettist Saint-Georges was successful at the Opéra
because of his links with Saint Mars is not supported by an analysis of Saint-Georges’s activity
before, during, and after Saint-Mars’s period as guarantor of the Opéra. In any case, Second’s
book was published only half way through this period and could never therefore be considered
a viable witness.
69. See, for a summary of Aguado’s biography, Tamvaco, Les cancans de l’Opéra, 2:889–90.
There is useful contemporary material in Véron, Mémoires sur l’affaire du Constitutionnel,
33–45. There is disappointingly little on Aguado and opera in Luis, L’ivresse de la fortune.

From the moment the Opéra was opened up to private enterprise in

1831, Aguado was ready with the caution money that Véron so urgently
needed to start the business. Aguado had already established an alliance with
Domenico Barbaja in Naples, and shortly after underwriting the Opéra he
created a similar relationship with Thomas Monck-Mason in London; by
1832 he therefore had interests in three major opera houses: the Opéra,
Teatro San Carlo in Naples, and the King’s Theatre.70 Much of his activity
during the 1830s may be viewed as an attempt to build a pan-European op-
eratic power base centered on Paris. This was to be achieved first and fore-
most by the reestablishment of a joint management of the Opéra and
Théâtre-Italien; there were two formal attempts in 1834 and 1836 which
were rebuffed by the state, rejections in which the Commission played a key
role.71 In the second half of the 1830s, Aguado became progressively dissat-
isfied with Duponchel’s financial performance as manager of the Opéra, and
it was claimed that although Duponchel was the titular head of the institu-
tion, Aguado was effectively in control. When Severini died in the 1838 fire
at the Théâtre-Italien, Aguado was in a sufficiently strong position to sum-
mon Duponchel and the new manager of the Théâtre-Italien, Louis Viardot,
to his holiday retreat in Dieppe to instruct them in his plans to merge
the two institutions with Her Majesty’s theater in London.72 Although
Duponchel was in Aguado’s pocket, Viardot was a much tougher adver-
sary, and while the fate of both institutions remained in the balance during
the first half of 1839, the Commission stepped in and stopped the merger
in its tracks.73 Aguado was, however, responsible for the appointment of
Édouard Monnais as Duponchel’s assistant in December 1839, and he
also received permission from the incoming Minister of the Interior,
Duchâtel, to appoint Duponchel’s successor. Incredibly, and in a move that
shows just how far-reaching was Aguado’s control over the higher echelons
of government, the Commissaire royal, Léon Pillet, was appointed to the
management of the Opéra as both Aguado’s creature and puppet while
Monnais found himself neatly swapped with Pillet as Commissaire royal, a
position that he was to hold for a quarter of a century.74
70. Cras, “L’exploitation de l’Opéra,” 144. Aguado was well known as the individual be-
hind the managerial soubriquet “Robert,” as evidenced by a letter from the Prefect of Police
(Henri-Joseph Gisquet) to the Minister of the Interior (Montalivet), “Renseignements sur le
théâtre royal italien,” May 1836. F-Pan F21 1113.
71. Cras, “L’exploitation de l’Opéra,” 146–47.
72. See the account from Louis Gentil given in Tamvaco, Les cancans de l’Opéra, 1:441 and
2:822.
73. The plans were however sufficiently advanced for the preparation of a draft arrêté in
September 1839 (F-Pan F21 1113).
74. Commission des Théâtres. Registre des Procès-Verbaux des délibérations, (June 19,
1839; F-Pan F21 4633 (6)). See Cras’s finely textured account of this affair (“L’exploitation de
l’Opéra,” 149–51).

At certain points during the July Monarchy, Aguado wielded as much

power in Parisian operatic circles as he did on the international financial
stage (he was the European agent for the Spanish Crown). His interests,
however, were not confined to the purely financial security of the institu-
tions he backed. He certainly ensured that Fitzjames was well placed in the
corps de ballet, at least until he broke with her in 1838,75 but his more gen-
eral influence on artistic policy at the Opéra was recognized by Meyerbeer,
Halévy, Donizetti, and the Commission itself.76 His power was expressed
in the selection of artists and in the commissioning of new works: when
Donizetti reported that Aguado specifically wanted a four-act opera from
him in addition to Le Duc d’Albe, the former was clearly looking to repeat
the success of Les martyrs and La favorite, both in four acts.77 And when
Cathinka Heinefetter was auditioned at the Opéra, Monnais reported to
Meyerbeer that Aguado was enthusiastic about her for the role of Fidès in
Le prophète, an extraordinary and ill-conceived suggestion, since this was
the role that would eventually be given to the totally different voice of the
mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot.78
The changes to the administration of the imperial theaters 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 direct-
ly under the financial control of the state, a return—in effect—to the situation
before 1830. It was, however, placed under the supervision of a Commission
supérieure permanente . . . du théâtre impérial de l’Opéra from June 30, 1854.
Although the title of the Commission recalled that of the July Monarchy and
Second Republic, its membership was strikingly different. Whereas its prede-
cessor had been largely made up of those with a professional interest in the
arts, and theater and opera in particular, the Second Empire’s Commission
supérieure was made up of some of the most powerful men in the country.79
75. Tamvaco, Les cancans de l’Opéra, 1:278–79.

76. Commission des Théâtres. Registre des Procès-Verbaux des délibérations, October 11,
1839 (F-Pan F21 4633 (6)).
77. Letter from Donizetti to Giovanni Ricordi, May 23, 1841 (Zavadini, Donizetti, 540–41).
Les martyrs, with a successful first run and an abortive 1843 revival, could never match La
favorite’s sustained success up to the end of the century, however.
78. “I should add confidentially that when we heard [Kathinka Heinefetter] in the opéra
house, M. Aguado, who was present at the audition, immediately said ‘I hope that we have here
the woman that we need for Meyerbeer’s opera’ ” (“Je dois ajouter confidentiellement que
lorsqu’elle [Kathinka Heinefetter] s’est fait entendre chez nous, au théâtre, M. Agouado, qui
assistait à l’audition, a dit aussitôt: ‘J’espère que voilà la femme, qu’il fallait pour l’opéra de
Meyerbeer’ ”). Letter from Edouard Monnais to Meyerbeer, May 11, 1840. See Meyerbeer,
Giacomo Meyerbeer: Briefwechsel und Tagebücher, 3:711, cited in Cras, “L’exploitation de
l’Opéra,” 154n110. For Heinefetter’s career, see Kutsch and Riemens, Großes Sängerlexikon,
3:2014–15. Although she sang Valentine in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, she never sang, nor
could have sung, the role of Fidès in Le prophète.
79. As has already been seen, the Commission’s president was Fould, again succeeded by
Alexandre Florian Joseph, Count Colonna-Walewski, and they were assisted by Eugène Rohrer,
Minister for Agriculture, Commerce, and Public Works (who in previous regimes would have

The Opéra had not been under such centralized power for a century, and
no signal could have been stronger: it was as important to Napoléon III’s
government as the railways, the military, and probably the Church. This
would even have been the case if the power the Commission gave itself had
been delegated to others. Fould and his colleagues, however, took im-
mense trouble themselves with the most routine of matters relating to the
Opéra. The Commission’s remit was wider than that of its predecessor and
more relentlessly exploited: its members read libretti, attended rehearsals,
arbitrated in cases of dispute, and undertook detailed monitoring of indi-
vidual performances while at the same time arguing in the various seats of
government the merits of universal suffrage or war with the Austrians in
Italy.80 The members of the Commission could manipulate the institution
in order to support initiatives in international relations—with England,
Russia, Austria, and Italy. Furthermore, the Commission was directly
involved in both the day-to-day and longer-term programming of the
Opéra, frequently under the direct instructions of the Emperor.
During the 1850s and 1860s, the Commission both regularly made gen-
eral recommendations concerning repertory81 to the Opéra and insisted on
been called the Minister of the Interior); Raymond-Théodore Troplong, President of the Senate;
Charles-Auguste, Comte de Morny, President of the Corps législatif ; Jules Baroche, President of
the Conseil d’État; Félix, Comte Baciocchi, First chamberlain, superintendent of court entertain-
ments and of the chapel and chamber music; Gustave-Louis-Adolphe-Victor-Charles Chaix
d’Est-Ange, Vice-President of the Conseil d’État. The Commission’s Secretary was Alphonse
Gautier, Secretary General to the Imperial Household.
80. See the range of activities documented in F-Pan F21 1053. On April 12, 1856, Troplong
circulated members of the entire Commission noting that Gilbert Duprez’s opera Samson
was to be rehearsed in Duprez’s home (11 rue Turgot) on the following day. Troplong consid-
ered the work “worthy of the administration’s [the choice of the term “administration” rather
than “Commission” is emblematic of the central position the Opéra now held for government
(administration)] attention” (“digne de l’attention de l’administration”) and invited members
of the committee to attend the rehearsal; Samson received a concert performance on October 1
the following year, and the rest of the Commission clearly disagreed with Troplong’s view, hard-
ly surprising given the work’s generic designation as opérette, although he might be forgiven his
enthusiasm on the basis of the work’s title. An undated memorandum from Crosnier (between
November 11, 1854 and June 30, 1856 therefore) makes clear that the Commission was respon-
sible for reading libretti, and a further letter from Crosnier, January 10, 1855, asked the Minister
to allow Mme Miolon to leave the Opéra-Comique and move to the Opéra. This entirely routine
request was apparently rejected (the document is incomplete) because of the organization’s bud-
getary position. A final example of the Commission’s work is a complaint from the Minister of the
Interior (Persigny, replacing Rohrer on the Commission) to Royer, February 6, 1862, about the
performance of Guillaume Tell the previous Sunday, commenting on the lack of discipline in the
chorus, and the poor selection of artists for the divertissemenents. Royer’s very full response (ibid.)
demonstrates not only the poverty of Persigny’s understanding of the Opéra’s management but
also the levels of power entrusted to such ignorance.
81. In 1854, Fould had written to Louis-Victor-Nestor Roqueplan, the manager of the
Opéra, complaining about the breadth of the repertory at the Opéra and suggesting works
that might be revived. His recommendations would have seemed breathtakingly conservative
to his contemporaries. See the letter from Fould to the manager of the Opéra [Roqueplan],
September 27, 1854 (F-Pan AJ13 451 (I)).

specific changes.82 Even the pattern of new works at the Opéra changed
radically, as a result of the involvement of Fould and the Commission. While
the major works each year in the first half of the 1850s had been the product
of such well-known names as Meyerbeer, Auber, Gounod, Niedermeyer,
Halévy and Verdi,83 the repertory of the second half of the decade—by
which time the Commission had been able to intervene—consisted of
reworkings of Bellini, Verdi, Rossini, and Auber,84 alongside grands opéras
from the pens of Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg Gotha (Sainte Claire,
1855), Joseph-Michel-François-Xavier-Jean, Prince Poniatowski (Pierre de
Médicis, 1860) and Richard Wagner (Le Tannhauser, 1861), that showed all
the signs of government intervention.85
Both the members of the Commission supérieure de l’Opéra in the decade
after 1854, and Aguado throughout the first decade of the July Monarchy,
were able to exercise their power over the production, consumption, and re-
ception of stage music in Paris, particularly at its most prestigious venue; the
exercise of this power was however in the context of the administrative
framework that they had inherited. Aguado could no more change the
generic profile of the Opéra than he could change the currency in use in his
native Spain. But although Fould and his colleagues had to work within the
existing technologies of power, they had also been instrumental in setting
them up. As has been seen with the conflicting licenses given to Offenbach
and his colleagues in the 1850s, the Commission’s actions paradoxically
served to weaken the share of the network of power enjoyed by the state
for nearly half a century.
The Politics of Genre
While the Napoleonic legislation of 1806/7 went as far as it could to map

genre onto institution, the emergence of new opera houses and the more
82. On Wednesday, March 5, 1862, for example, Gautier wrote to the administrator of
the Opéra that “the Minister, whom I have just consulted, wishes in no way in the world for Lucie
de Lammermoor to be played on Sunday. Replace it with either Le philtre or Le comte Ory.” (“Le
Ministre que je viens de voir ne veut pour rien au monde qu’on joue Lucie dimanche. Remplacez
Lucie par Le philtre ou Le comte Ory.”) (F-Pan AJ13 443 (III)).
83. Meyerbeer, Le prophète (1849); Auber, L’enfant prodigue (1850); Gounod, Sapho
1854!!!!!!!! (1851) and La nonne sanglante (1853); Halévy, Le juif errant (1852); Niedermeyer, La fronde
(1854); Verdi, Les vêpres siciliennes (1855).
84. Verdi, Le trouvère (1857); Auber, Le cheval de bronze (1858); Bellini, Roméo et Juliette
(1859); Rossini, Sémiramis (1860).
85. The period did not entirely see the eclipse of grand opéra by established composers:
David’s Herculanum was premiered in 1859 and Gounod returned with La reine de Saba, but
not until 1862. This account of the involvement of central government with the repertory of the
Opéra cannot take account of the vast literature, for example, on Le Tannhauser. It forms the
basis, however, of a forthcoming study that brings together government control, repertory and
Gluck-reception in the period 1855–62.

generous rewriting of licenses meant that the concept of genre became a

central site for dispute, negotiation, and resolution. The inadequacy of the
top-down model of power embodied in this imperial legislation cannot sim-
ply be countered by stressing the bottom-up power of individual opera
houses; such a move reveals only part of the picture, and risks failing to re-
flect the constant renegotiation of power within the polity.86 Alongside the
legislation that set up the licensing system came an understanding of genres
as property, certainly as far as the grands théâtres were concerned: opéra
comique, continuous opera in French, and Italian opera being regarded as
the property of the Opéra-Comique, Opéra, and Théâtre-Italien, respectively.
For one institution to lay claim to what was thought of as a genre that
belonged to another, either by simply attempting to mount performances or
to request permission through government agency, was thought of, and
indeed termed, trespass (empiètement).
In some cases, modifications to institutional arrangements could result
in genres passing from one institution to another. The joint management
of the Théâtre Royal Italien and Académie Royale de Musique during
the Restoration, for example, meant that works that were the property of
the former could appear on the stage of the latter; this was of importance
for three key works by Rossini. Mosè in Egitto was reworked as Moïse,
Maometto II as Le siège de Corinthe, and Il viaggio a Reims transferred in
part from the Théâtre-Italien to the Opéra as Le comte Ory. None of these
transformations represented an immediate threat to the Théâtre-Italien from
the Opéra, since no trespass could exist within the same institution.87 Such
other cases as the 1834 production of Don Giovanni appear at first sight
to trespass on the rights of the Théâtre-Italien, which was now back under
separate management and had been playing Don Giovanni in Italian since
1811.88 But the Opéra had mounted a performance of the work as long ago
as 1805, and could therefore claim its ownership of Don Giovanni at least to
the extent of fending off any possible complaint from the Théâtre-Italien.89
The latter was by 1834 involved in an initiative of its own—bringing Italians
to write new operas for the house (Donizetti’s Marino Faliero and Bellini’s
86. The association of a polity and the arts has a pedigree going back to the middle of the
eighteenth century. See Brown, Dissertation on the Rise, Union, and Power, 40.
87. See, for the former, Isotta, “Da Mosè a Moïse”; Isotta’s ed. of Mosè in Egitto; Conati,
“Between Past and Future”; Osborne, Rossini, 208–13 and 237–42; Ierolli, “Mosè e Maometto.”
For Le Siège de Corinthe, see Gerhard, Die Verstädterung der Oper, 68–84 [page numbers refer to
English translation]. For the detail of the relationship between the music of Le comte Ory and Il
viaggio a Reims, see Johnson, “A Lost Rossini Opera Recovered”; and her edition of Il viaggio
a Reims, 1:xliv–xlvii.
88. The 1834 production was influential and has elicited much comment. See Henze-
Döhring, “E. T. A. Hoffmann-‘Kult’ ”; and Ellis, “Rewriting Don Giovanni.”
89. Marty, 1805: La création de Don Juan.

I Puritani both premiered the following year; Mercadante’s I briganti the

next)—and was therefore less likely to object in any case.
Other instances where works passed from one institution to another reflect
the direct imposition of political power over the opera houses themselves.
Perhaps the most remarkable history is that of the opéra comique by Scribe and
Auber entitled Le cheval de Bronze, premiered in 1835 with limited success,90
which was brought back to life at the Opéra in 1857 with the spoken dialogue
replaced with recitative, and the insertion of dance music and other musical
numbers including an octet parlante which was much praised by Meyerbeer.91
This was the first time that an opéra comique had ever found its way onto the
stage of the Opéra and, given the Opéra-Comique’s redoubtable track record
in attacking any possible challenge to its right to opéra comique, this is remark-
able. Little evidence survives of any challenge, nor is there any explanation for
where the idea came from for such a striking move. Some clues come from cor-
respondence between the Minister of State, Walewski, and the director of the
Opéra, Royer, dating from five years later. In the context of a search for shorter
operas that could be performed alongside ballets to complete an evening’s
entertainment—which had resulted in a revival of Rossini’s Le comte Ory and
two new works, Alary’s La voix humaine and Massé’s La mule de Pedro—the
minister himself suggested that a revival of an opéra comique by Hérold from
1829, L’illusion, “could usefully take its place in the Opéra’s repertory which
includes so few works in one act, to accompany large ballets.”92 Walewski had
already approached Jules-Henry Vernoy, comte de Saint-George, one of the
two coauthors of the libretto, to make the necessary changes, and invited
Royer to think about the casting with a view to performance in the following
season. The fact that he failed to mention the musical changes might not
be unconnected with the fact that Hérold, unlike Auber, had been dead for
thirty years and could not undertake the essential changes in the music. This
may well explain why the project came to nothing. It demonstrates that the
Ministre de l’État had no need to refer to the Opéra-Comique in appropriat-
ing what earlier would have been considered its intellectual property,
and could then order the execution of the plan by the manager. Although
L’illusion was an opéra comique in a single act, the story strongly suggests
the sort of power that was exercised in the case of the three-act Cheval de
Bronze five years earlier.93
90. Premiered on March 23, 1835, it received 84 performances that year, and 22 the next.
There were no more performances until it transferred to the Opéra in 1857. See Soubies,
Soixante-neuf ans à l’Opéra-Comique.
91. Meyerbeer, Giacomo Meyerbeer: Briefwechsel und Tagebücher, 7:618.
92. “pouvait prendre utilement sa place dans le répertoire de l’Opéra qui compte si peu
d’ouvrages en un acte, pour accompagner les grands ballets.” Ministre d’État (Waleski) to
Royer, November 11, 1862 (F-Pan AJ13 443 (III)).
93. This instance of the possible use of an adaptation of a one-act opéra comique to occupy
an evening with a ballet is a remarkable perspective on the tradition of petit opéra. Most petits

One of the principal ways in which the state intervened in networks of

power was in the arbitration in matters of dispute between opera houses
concerning repertory, and this is one of the ways in which the politics of
genre is most clearly negotiated. All the major opera houses were involved
in some sort of dispute, either as plaintiff or defendant, and frequently their
actions involved the secondary theaters as well. Inevitably, the secondary
theaters, when they in turn saw their repertorial rights (particularly the right
to employ music in the public domain within vaudeville) under threat from
the so-called petits spectacles, acted swiftly and decisively.
Many new opera houses and theaters that had opened during the Restora-
tion and July Monarchy, because their repertory was based on opéra comique
or a close cognate such as vaudeville, came into direct competition with the
Opéra-Comique itself, and, as has been seen, this institution was vociferous
in its challenges to their very existence. When the Théâtre Royal de l’Odéon
opened in 1824, like most theaters its first night included a pièce de cir-
constance, an occasional work, that alluded to its repertory and acted as a sort
of cultural manifesto (and bears comparison with the Opéra-National’s 1847
Les premiers pas). As it was allowed to play comedy, tragedy, and opera, the
Odéon’s opening piece was Les trois genres, which included an opera scene to
a libretto by Scribe and music by Boïeldieu and Auber. Such a work as Les trois
genres might seem to be breaking a condition of the license of the theater that
it should not mount productions of new opéras comiques. The ministre de
la Maison du Roi, Jacques-Alexandre-Bernard Law, Marquis de Lauriston,
accepted the argument that this was a unique event not to be repeated. A
precedent had however been set, although not the one the state anticipated.
If new music was permitted in an occasional work such as Les trois genres,
other occasional works could also include new music, and the Odéon assidu-
ously promoted occasional works for the coronation of Charles X and for the
monarch’s name days, all the time taking the opportunity to present new
stage music in contravention of its license. It was never challenged.94
Simultaneously, however, the Odéon was attempting to win the right to
play new opéras comiques. Given that these new works were not in the
Opéra-Comique’s repertory, but belonged to the genre of which it thought
it had a monopoly, the royal theaters, led by the Opéra, contested the prin-
ciple by recourse to the 1806/7 legislation and to the example set by the
Gymnase-Dramatique: that each opera house and theater should have its
own genre. The Gymnase was restricted to lyric works in one act, the Odéon
opéras—designed to accompany ballet after grands opéras had increased in size so they made
such a pairing impractical—were in two acts; the idea that a one-act work would be suitable for
accompanying longer ballets is imaginative, but not unknown. See Marliani, La xacarilla
(1839); Adam, La bouquétiaire (1847); Membrée, François Villon (1857). See Everist, “Grand
opéra—petit opéra,” 216–17.
94. For the history of Les trois genres and subsequent smuggling of new composition into
occasional works at the Odéon, see Everist, Music Drama at the Paris Odéon, 143–70.

to those in the public domain, and that was the way the Opéra-Comique
thought it should stay. To its credit, the Odéon came up with a number of
solutions to the problem—reducing the moving wall for entry into the pub-
lic domain from ten to five years, for example—and at one point looked like
it might just succeed when a change of government took the entire set of
negotiations back to the beginning.95
The Opéra-Comique’s relationship with the Odéon was problematic be-
cause both were royal theaters and both in receipt of a subvention. The bro-
kering of power was therefore finely nuanced within the Maison du Roi and
its replacement structures. The same was not true with other institutions that
were allowed to perform comédies mêlées de musique/ariettes (the terminology
varies) and that sprang up during the period: the Gymnase-Dramatique, Nou-
veautés, Renaissance, Opéra-National, and Théâtre des Variétés. In two cases,
those of the Nouveautés and the Renaissance, the Opéra-Comique launched
guerrilla campaigns that forced suspensions of performances and temporary clo-
sures as the managers of the two institutions tried to fight off the claims being
made against their opera houses in the Maison du Roi, the Ministry of the In-
terior, and even in the courts. The case against each of the rival opera houses
was subtly different in its context and claims, but ultimately the Opéra-Comique
was pursuing a policy of protecting what it saw—until the emergence of the
Théâtre-Lyrique in the early 1850s—as its exclusive rights to opéra comique.
During the Restoration, matters were complicated by direct Royal and
political patronage. The Gymnase-Dramatique was set up in 1820 on the
Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, but the theater gained the support of the
Duchesse de Berry in 1824 after it had played for her in Dieppe that sum-
mer. It was then entitled to change its name to the Théâtre de S.A.R.,
Madame la duchesse de Berry, and was known until the fall of the Bourbons
in 1830 as the Théâtre de Madame.96 Concomitant with this support was
protection from the challenges from the Opéra-Comique as the Théâtre
de Madame developed its repertory.97 Here, although the mechanisms of
the state had been circumvented—liberated even, by royal patronage—
creative power could dominate as Charles-Gaspard Delestre-Poirson and
Scribe maneuvered within institutional structures to evolve a completely
new genre, the comédie-vaudeville; although also permitted to play opéra
comique, the Gymnase saw greater possibilities in purely artistic develop-
ments of comédie-vaudeville, and was able to distance itself from challenges
from other theaters.98
95. Ibid., 64–65.

96. Delestre-Poirson made his announcement of this patronage to the Minister on
September 7, 1824. It may be read very clearly as a response to threats to the Gymnase-
Dramatique posed by the Minister eighteen months early (February 20, 1823). F-Pan F21 1137.
97. See the dossier of complaints about the founding of the Gymnase Dramatique in
November 1819–March 1820 (F21 4673(1)).
98. Discussed in Wild, Dictionnaire (1989), 184, and Yon, Eugène Scribe, 57–95.

The story at the Théâtre des Nouveautés unfolded differently. The the-
ater was set up in March 1827 with the direct support of the Minster of the
Interior, Jacques-Joseph-Guillaume-Pierre, comte de Corbière, acting on
the orders of the King.99 Until the beginning of 1828, it was able to make
substantial inroads into repertories banned by its license, performing more
and more new music in the context of vaudeville to louder and louder com-
plaints from the Opéra-Comique.100 With the support of Corbière, it was
able to ride out these calls of protest, but the moment Corbière left office in
January 1828 the climate changed and hostile reports found their way to the
new minister’s desk. The head of the Bureau des théâtres, Antoine-Marie
Coupart, drew up a long list of the Nouveautés’ sins within days of
Corbière’s departure.101 Exactly how Corbière was able to continue his sup-
port for the theater in the eighteen months after leaving office is not clear,
but his refusal to sign the oath of allegiance to Louis-Philippe after the July
Revolution in 1830 and his retirement to Brittany sealed the fate of the
Nouveautés, and it closed at the end of 1831.
If the temporary success of the Théâtre des Nouveautés was a result of the
patronage of a single individual, disputes between the Opéra-Comique and
the Opéra-National two decades later were the result of the imprecise draft-
ing of cahiers des charges.102 The Opéra-National was given permission to
play opéra comique but limited in a way that would protect the interests of the
Opéra-Comique itself and its current manager, André-Alexandre Basset.103
Accordingly, the Opéra-National was permitted to play opéra comique that
99. See Lecomte, Les Nouveautés, 1–5.

100. For example, the Minister of the Interior, Corbière, wrote to Duc d’Aumont in re-
sponse to his complaints about the Nouveautés, December 17, 1827 (F-Pan F21 1141).
101. “Théâtre de Nouveautés,” January 29, 1828 (ibid.).
102. The account of the history of the Opéra-National in Walsh, Second Empire Opera, 1–12
is an accurate chronicle of the events based on nineteenth-century printed sources and the press.
For a full account of the Théâtre-Lyrique which skillfully diagnoses systemic problems with
the organisation, see Ellis, “Systems Failure in Operatic Paris” (the rest of Walsh, Second Empire
Opera is still useful, however). The summary of activity at the Théâtre-Lyrique in Di Profio, “Le
Théâtre-Lyrique,” has little control of the primary sources, and even less of the secondary sources
(it does not even cite Walsh, Second Empire Opera).
103. Negotiations towards the Opéra-National’s licence were complex and tense, as Adam
attempted to gain access to the modern repertory. The relevant documents are preserved in
Commission des Théâtres. Registre des Procès-Verbaux des délibérations (F-Pan F21 4634
(1)). He argued that he should be allowed to perform such works if they had not been per-
formed for three years, whereas Basset insisted on a period of ten years before they could be
taken up by the Opéra-National; a draft of Adam’s cahier des charges presented a third possibil-
ity: that he could mount productions of works played before 1840 (a seven-year delay) but only
if they had not been performed since then by the Opéra-Comique. The final recommendation
from the Commission was clear however, and represented an exercise of state power rather than
an attempt at legislation. The Opéra-National “shall not produce any work performed for the
first time under the management of MM. Crosnier and Basset without the special authorization
of the Minister, the Commission des théâtres royaux having been consulted” (“ne pourra faire
représenter aucun ouvrage joué pour la 1ère fois sous la direction de MM. Crosnier et Basset

had fallen into the public domain but had not been played either by Basset or
his predecessor, Crosnier; in other words, the Opéra-National could play only
public-domain opéra comique that had been off the stage since at least 1834.
There remained a category of work—not in the public domain and not part of
either Basset’s or Crosnier’s repertory—that was not addressed in the Opéra-
National’s cahiers des charges. Not surprisingly, a work that fell into this
category—Berton’s classic Aline, reine de Golconde of 1803—was one of the
first works to be programed by the Opéra-National. The two librettists, Jean-
Baptiste-Charles Vial and Edmond de Favières, had both died in 1837, but
Berton had died only in 1844; so while the libretto was just in the public do-
main, the music was not. Although the opéra comique had not been performed
since 1830, it was so close to the public domain and otherwise within limits
that Mirecour and Adam clearly thought it was worth trying to program.
When the matter came to the Commission des théâtres after Basset had indeed
complained, the situation turned out to be even more complex, since both
the Opéra-Comique and Opéra-National had individually contracted with
the heirs of the composer and librettists respectively. The final paragraph of the
committee’s report made it clear: “The Commission especially sees again with
some regret that between the Opéra-Comique and the Opéra-National
there is a perpetual conflict of ambition resulting in court cases, such as the
disagreement to which the revival of the opera Aline will probably lead.”104
The Opéra-National’s requests to mount performances of Adam’s Le
brasseur de Preston and Donizetti’s La fille du régiment seem to have met
with responses that betray attempts to permit breaches to its license in order
to ensure the survival of the “third lyric theater,” the establishment of which
had cost the state and the Commission so much effort. Both works had been
premiered during the period of Crosnier’s management (1838 and 1840
respectively), were therefore not in the public domain, and under no circum-
stances could have formed part of the Opéra-National’s repertory according
to its license. Why the Commission should have felt it necessary to compro-
mise, and allow the Opéra-National to perform the two works if Basset
had not mounted his own performances by October 1, 1848, is far from
clear.105 Even more remarkable are the series of performances of Le brasseur
de Preston that took place from January 22, 1848—in advance of Basset’s
sans l’autorisation spéciale du Ministre, la Commission des théâtres royaux consultée”); ibid. In
other words, the state could rule on each and every case separately.
104. “Ce que la Commission revoit surtout avec peine, c’est qu’il s’établit entre l’Opéra-
Comique et l’Opéra-National, un conflit perpétuel de prétentions aboutissant à des procès, tels,
par exemple, que celui qu’amènera probablement la reprise de l’opéra d’Aline.” Commission
des Théâtres. Registre des Procès-Verbaux des délibérations, September 27, 1847 (F-Pan F21
4634 (1)). This document identifies—in the use of the phrase “conflit perpétuel”—the conse-
quences of institutional competition about as clearly as it is possible to be.
105. Commission des Théâtres. Registre des Procès-Verbaux des délibérations, December 21
and 25, 1847 (F-Pan F21 4634 (1)).

deadline—and in blatant defiance of the Commission’s ruling. Whether this

laissez-faire attitude on the part of the Commission was a desire to allow the
Opéra-National more repertorial room for maneuver than its license allowed
or whether it was merely a consequence of the political instability at the end of
the 1840s is an open question. Whatever the answer, this is a critical moment
in the negotiation of power in nineteenth-century Parisian stage music
where—having spent nearly half a century attempting to avoid it—the
state allowed the development of a clear competition between the Opéra-
Comique and the Opéra-National by allowing both to mount productions
of opéra comique. It is not difficult—given the subsequent history of the
Opéra-National as the Théâtre-Lyrique—to regard the 1847–48 season as
a tipping-point in the fortunes of the licensing system.
In the light of these—at best inconsistent—defenses of the Opéra-
Comique’s repertory, the extraordinary permission granted the Théâtre-Lyrique
to produce opéra comique seems all the less remarkable, and the complex
history of the Théâtre-Lyrique’s license makes clear the Opéra-Comique’s
impossible position in dealing with the predecessors of the Théâtre-Lyrique
from the late 1840s onwards. But other organizations that promoted stage
works with less ambitious musical establishments were watching events at
the Théâtre-Lyrique with interest. In the summer of 1853, for example, the
manager of the Théâtre des Variétés, Aimé Carpier, began a surreptitious cam-
paign to enlarge his repertory of “petites pièces dans le genre grivois, poissard ou
villageois, quelquefois mêlées de couplets également sur des airs connus” by
gently testing the waters with opéra comique.106 In late June, he requested per-
mission from the Ministry of the Interior to put on a production of Favart’s Les
trois sultanes. Although the work originated in 1762 and existed in a variety of
forms with various musical configurations, it was undoubtedly the property of
the Opéra-Comique, and the Minister of the Interior—who at this point in
the Second Empire was responsible for the Variétés but not for the Opéra-
Comique—asked the advice of the Minister of State, then responsible for the
imperial theaters of which the Opéra-Comique was one. While there was no
objection to the appropriation of Favart’s libretto at the Variétés, the author of
the report written for the Minister of State had heard a rumor that Carpier was
planning on including musical scenes in the work, possibly using artists from the
Opéra-Comique and Opéra.107 Authorization was given later in June, but
Carpier came back to the Minister in August to request permission—as the
author of the earlier ministerial report had anticipated—to include in the work
“Les adieux de Marie Stuart” from Niedermeyer’s Marie Stuart and the
Tyrolienne from Donizetti’s Betly, ossia La capanna svizzera.108 The Minister
106. F-Pan F21 1133.

107. Undated report [shortly after June 23, 1853] for the Minister of State (ibid.).
108. Request from the Minister of the Interior to the Minister of State, August 17, 1853
(ibid.).

of State could simply have asked the question whether or not these were airs
connus, and therefore within the remit of the Variétés, to which the answer
would have been that “Les adieux de Marie Stuart” fell into this category
(Marie Stuart had been premiered at the Opéra in 1844, and the individual aria
had been frequently reprinted),109 but the case of the Tyrolienne from Betly was
not so clear.110 But rather than invoke what had until the early 1850s been
routine checks, Fould was perfectly happy to disallow the latter borrowing be-
cause a performance of Betly was planned at the Opéra and indeed took place in
December the same year.111
The instance of the Variétés is important for three reasons: it is evidence
of a secondary theater successfully broadening its repertory by appropriating
a libretto from the Opéra-Comique and—within certain constraints—music
from the Opéra. More important is that it shows the Minister of State
turning his back on the mechanics of licenses and repertory—the technolo-
gies of power—and acting ad hoc, while it was clear that he still understood
the question of genre as a central issue in the politics of Parisian theaters; he
wrote “Given the exceptional generosity of which Les trois sultanes has been
the beneficiary, I have not the slightest intention of opening up the question
of genre again [emphasis added].”112 And finally, the exchange demon-
strates the difficulty of authoritative decision—arbitration within the politics
of genre—when secondary theaters, under the control of one ministry, were
in competition with imperial theaters, under the control of another.
Later in 1853, the Minister of State heard about a performance of
Offenbach’s first opérette, Pépito, at the Variétés (premiered October 28,
1853). He wrote to his colleague at the Ministry of the Interior in terms that
precisely focused many of the issues in the relationship between operatic
genre and power during the Second Empire:
The conservation of genres being of an equal interest to the prosperity of all

Parisian theaters, whether they depend on your administration or whether they
109. It is possible that Fould’s generosity in allowing “Les adieux de Marie Stuart” was
prompted by a confusion with settings of the romance of the same name (by Beranger and
others) in circulation by 1853: Apolline Barrière wrote a setting of her own version of the poem
in 1843 and Gabriel de Galembert set Beranger’s poem in 1845. Richard Wagner’s 1840 setting
was not published until 1913 and was therefore unknown in 1853.
110. Betly had been premiered at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples on August 21, 1836, but there
is no evidence that it was ever performed in Italian at Paris’s Théâtre-Italien. See Loewenberg,
Annals of Opera: 1597–1940, 781–82. See also Soubies, Le Théâtre-Italien, v. There had however
been four performances at the Opéra, in French, in early 1847.
111. Response from the Minister of State to the Minister of the Interior, August 18, 1853
(F-Pan F21 1133). Fould seemed unaware of the 1847 performances, or—at least—he did not
mention then in his response. Two performances took place in December 1853 and two in
January 1854, both in the context as a petit opéra supporting ballet.
112. “attendu la faveur exceptionnelle dont la représentation des Trois sultanes a été l’objet,
je n’ai nullement l’intention de soulever de nouveaux la question du genre” (ibid.).

are attached to mine, I would be grateful, for my part, if you could, in the
name of this common interest, ensure that managers are in future restrained
within the limits imposed by their cahiers de charges, as a reciprocal guarantee,
on each dramatic enterprise.113
Although Fould was asking Jean-Gilbert Victor Fialin, comte de Persigny, only
to ensure that “in the future” managers of secondary theaters should be kept
within the limits imposed by their cahiers des charges, the latter ensured that
Carpier withdrew Pépito forthwith. Again important in this extract from
Fould’s request to Persigny is the very clear understanding that the organiza-
tion of operatic power in Second Empire Paris required two separate ministries
to work in concert, a cooperation that could not always be guaranteed, and
one that always left open the opportunity for an ingenious manager to profit
from the sort of ad hoc arrangements put in place for Les trois sultanes. Offen-
bach, who had seen these arrangements at work at the Variétés in 1853, has
already been seen to have been the most ambitious and wily entrepreneur on
the operatic stage in the late 1850s, and his manipulation of the politics of
genre at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens in the late 1850s was to have great
consequences.
Within the domain of the grands théâtres, the most public exposure of the
politics of genre related to the question of opera in translation and largely con-
cerned attempts by the Opéra to mount French translations of Rossini and
Verdi, works that the Théâtre-Italien considered its exclusive repertory. From
1844 until the end of the licensing period, successive managers of the
Théâtre-Italien attempted to stop the inexorable migration of their repertory
to the Opéra. The Théâtre-Italien had gotten used to the idea that its repertory
could not be appropriated by others during the previous two decades. An
otherwise legal translation of La gazza ladra at the Odéon in 1826 as La pie
voleuse attempted to smuggle in a duet from Semiramide, which had yet to
appear at the Théâtre-Italien; immediate complaints resulted in the prompt
removal of the duet from the work which—purged of its illegal elements—was
allowed to continue its run.114 But later attempts to keep the Théâtre-Italien’s
repertory to itself—Othello in 1844, Lucie de Lammermoor in 1846, Robert
Bruce in 1846, Louise Miller in 1853, Le trouvère in 1857, and Sémiramis in
1860—were all destined to failure, and the Opéra, for different reasons in
almost every case, was able to triumph over the rights of its competitor.
The question of Otello was critical, since this was the first time that the
Opéra had attempted to mount a production of a work that had been central
113. “Le maintien des genres intéressant à un égal degré la prospérité de tous les théâtres de
Paris, soit qu’ils dépendent de votre administration, soit qu’ils se rattachent à la mienne, je vous
serais reconnaissant, pour ma part, de vouloir bien, au nom de cet intérêt commun, faire en sorte
que les directeurs de spectacle soient retenus à l’avenir dans les limites que les cahiers de charges
imposent, comme une garantie réciproque, à chacune des entreprises dramatiques.” Minister of
State to the Minister of the Interior, November 3, 1853 (F-Pan F21 1133).
114. See Everist, Music Drama at the Paris Odéon, 239–41.

to the Théâtre-Italien’s repertory; Otello had been a mainstay of its repertory

since 1821.115 The difficulty was rooted in the fact that since 1840, the two
opera houses, the Théâtre-Italien and the Opéra, had licenses that very
slightly overlapped, and this overlap could only be separated by a strict—and
modern—differentiation between “Italian model” and “French translation”
that was completely foreign to Parisian operatic mores of the July Monarchy.
In general, such an opera as Lucie de Lammermoor (the French translation of
Lucia di Lammermoor, premiered at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in 1839)
was considered within the domain of the Parisian politics of genre to be the
same work as Lucia di Lammermoor itself, Le trouvère the same as Il trovatore,
Othello the same as Otello. In all cases, both the question of translation and the
nature of any changes, omissions, or substitutions that the translation may
have entailed were irrelevant to this fundamental question of identity, which
depended effectively on the literary source of the libretto.
In this context, the arguments surrounding Otello and Othello in 1844
were close to specious. Pillet’s 1840 cahier des charges, in addition to stipulat-
ing the number of grands opéras and ballets he was required to put on each
season required “a second opera in two acts, or two operas in one act, of
which one could be replaced by a translated work with foreign music
[un ouvrage traduit avec de la musique étrangère].”116 To many at the time,
this would have seemed to run counter to the clause in Eugène Watel’s cahier
des charges which guaranteed that the state “promises not to authorize at any
Parisian or suburban opera house the performance of lyric works in a foreign
language.”117 The decision as to where the ownership of the work lay,
resided in the hands of the Commission des théâtres, in whose report the key
words were:
Indeed, if on the one hand, the manager of the Théâtre-Italien is granted by
his cahier des charges the exclusive license of lyric works in a foreign language,
on the other, it is no less certain that the cahier des charges of the Académie
Royale de Musique enshrines . . . past usage in the right of playing translations
of foreign lyric works, and according to current knowledge, it is a question of a
translation.118
115. From 1821 to 1844, Otello had been off the boards of the Théâtre-Italien for a single
year only, in 1842. Soubies, Le Théâtre-Italien, v.
116. “un second opéra en deux actes, ou deux opéras en un acte dont l’un pourrait rem-
placé par un ouvrage traduit avec de la musique étrangère.” Pillet’s cahier de charges, June 1,
1840 (F-Pan F21 4655 (5)).
117. “s’engage à n’autoriser sur aucun Théâtre de Paris ou de la banlieue de Paris, la repré-
sentation d’ouvrages lyriques en langue étrangère.” This was exactly what Watel cited in his let-
ter to the Minister of the Interior, May 25, 1844, noting incidentally the fact that this cahier des
charges was less than a month old (F-Pan AJ13 183).
118. En effet, si, d’un côté, le directeur du Théâtre-Italien est investi par son cahier des
charges du privilège exclusif de représenter des ouvrages lyriques en langue étrangère, de l’autre,
il n’est pas moins certain que le cahier des charges de l’Académie Royale de Musique consacre . . .
l’usage passé en force de droit de jouer des traductions d’ouvrages lyriques étrangers, et, dans la

Faced with an obvious overlap in the terms of the two licenses, the Commis-
sion found a way out that tried to distinguish, for perhaps the first and last
time during the licensing period, between “ouvrages lyriques en langue
étrangère” and “traductions d’ouvrages lyriques étrangers.”
After Pillet had succeeded in mounting Lucie de Lammermoor at the
Opéra, translations of foreign operas were restricted in the cahier des charges
given to the new team established in 1847 to works that had not yet been
performed in France.119 Had this stipulation been in place a decade earlier,
neither Otello nor Lucia di Lammermoor could have transferred from the
Théâtre-Italien to the Opéra. But this new situation created its own difficul-
ties. In late 1852, both institutions were racing to mount performances of
Verdi’s Luisa Miller; if the Théâtre-Italien managed to mount the work first,
then this would effectively have prevented the Opéra from profiting from
its own performances of the opera in translation. Within a week of each
other, both managers had written to the Minister of the Interior to com-
plain about his rival’s plans to mount the opera. Arguments were finely
balanced: although Luisa Miller had been approved by the Minister
for performance at the Théâtre-Italien on November 2, 1852, the Opéra
had obtained the score in 1851 and contracted with the translator on
September 20, 1852, and with the soprano Rita Basso Borio, expressly for
the production.120 While performances at the Théâtre-Italien had begun
on December 7, 1852, rehearsals had started at the Opéra a month earlier.
And finally, the Théâtre-Italien—as a result of misunderstanding—had
submitted the libretto to the ministry only on December 3, 1852, whereas
the Opéra had submitted theirs 48 hours earlier. Both organizations had
already spent significant amounts of the Empire’s money on productions
of the same work, and the only solution for the Minister of the Interior
was to allow both productions to proceed, even though he knew that the
experienced manager of the Opéra, Roqueplan, had gotten the better of
the very inexperienced manager of the Théâtre-Italien, Alexandre Corti
(only appointed eight weeks previously) at the expense of the licensing
system itself.121 The minister almost admitted as much when he told Corti
that “exceptional circumstances have forced a decision on me that, how-
ever, appears just; but your repertory will not otherwise suffer because of
connaissance actuelle, c’est d’une traduction qu’il s’agit. Report from Commission spéciale des
théâtres royaux, July 8, 1844 (F-Pan AJ13 183).
119. See the cahier des charges granted to Pillet, Duponchel, and Roqueplan, August 1,
1847 (F-Pan F21 4655 (5)).
120. The biographical account in Kutsch and Riemens, Großes Sängerlexikon (4th ed.),
1:276–77, mentions no activity in Paris.
121. The relevant documents are dated December 10, 17, and 28 (the formal report from
the Minister to the Commissaire Impérial près des Théâtres lyriques [Édouard Monnais]), 1852
(F-Pan AJ13 183).

it, and I shall watch out in the future for what should be reserved for
you alone.”122
The Théâtre-Italien’s plans to produce Donizetti’s Poliuto in 1858 ought
not to have become embroiled in the sorts of struggles experienced with
Otello and Luisa Miller, but Royer at the Opéra, however, was able to ma-
nipulate the situation to his advantage. He wanted to mount a production
of Semiramide in French translation, but since the work had been part of the
repertory of the Théâtre-Italien since 1826, was prevented from doing so by
his cahier des charges. To overcome this difficulty, he objected to the produc-
tion of Poliuto and forced a compromise that permitted the Théâtre-Italien
to put on Poliuto in return for permission to perform Semiramide. He was
able to do this by claiming—and he most likely knew that this was false—
that Poliuto (originally composed in 1838) was an Italian version of the orig-
inal French Les martyrs (reworked by Donizetti from his music for Poliuto in
1840), based in turn on Corneille’s Polyeucte, and that the Théâtre-Italien
was therefore trespassing on the artistic property of the Opéra.123 His ability
to carry off this subterfuge (since it neatly avoided the reality of Poliuto being
the musical source for most of Les martyrs) raises further questions about the
integrity of a work when it existed in an Italian and a French version; here, it
suited Royer’s purposes to claim that Poliuto and Les martyrs were identical
whereas it had suited his predecessor, Pillet, to argue that the French and
Italian version of Rossini’s Otello were effectively different.124 In comparison
with Royer’s virtuosic management of a set of power structures to his own
ends (both Poliuto and Sémiramis, as the French version of Semiramide was
known, found their way to the stage), the attempts in 1863 by the manager
of the Théâtre-Italien, Prosper Bagier, to stop the Théâtre-Lyrique putting
on Rigoletto in French translation seem positively infantile. In making his
argument to the ministry that the Théâtre-Lyrique had to wait ten years
after the Parisian premiere of a work, he was correctly quoting its original
1851 cahier des charges, but had failed to recognize the key changes granted
to Carvalho in his 1856 revision which made Rigoletto an entirely permissible
production.125
122. “des considérations exceptionnelles m’ont déterminé à une mesure qui, d’ailleurs, me
paraissait juste; mais votre répertoire n’en suffira autrement et je veillerai dans l’avenir à ce qu’il
vous soit conservé.” Minister of the Interior to Corti, January 6, 1853 (F-Pan F21 1116).
123. Poliuto was not performed in Italian until 1848, well after Italian translations of Les
martyrs had been circulating in Italy for some time.
124. See the letter from Royer to Ministry (Gautier), September 13, 1858, (F-Pan AJ13
451 (I)), and the series of well-documented negotiations between September 1858 and March
1859 (F-Pan F21 1116). For Royer’s successful attempt to use the affair to permit him to play
Semiramide in 1860, see the letters between Royer and Torribio Calzada at the Théâtre-Italien,
October 13 and 27, 1859 (F-Pan AJ13 501).
125. Bagier’s letter to the Superintendent of Theaters, December 16, 1863 and the latter’s
response, December 23, 1863, are preserved in F-Pan F21 1116.

The Opéra usually got its own way, especially after it received special stat-
us during the central part of the Second Empire. Exceptions arose when the
licenses and cahiers de charges were stretched to their limits. Dance, espe-
cially ballets du genre noble et gracieux, was a prized monopoly for the Opéra
that it protected with care. When the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin
opened in 1814 with a license that permitted mélodrames and pantomimes
with dance, there was always a risk that it would attempt repertory that fell
into the category of dance promoted at the Opéra; by 1822, this was such
a problem that the Minister of the Interior, under pressure from the Maison
du Roi undertook to purge the secondary theaters and the Porte Saint-
Martin in particular of this particular abuse, with clear success.126 Thirty
years later, however, the Opéra would still be fighting to protect its mono-
poly over dance. Halévy had written his Italian opera La tempesta for a perfor-
mance at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London in June 1850; given the venue
for the performance, it included a substantial divertissement. In October
1850, Benjamin Lumley, the manager of Her Majesty’s from 1842 to
1858, took over the simultaneous management of the Théâtre-Italien (he re-
mained for exactly two years).127 It was no surprise that he should want to
bring back an Italian opera by Halévy which would put one of the most im-
portant composers of grand opéra on the stage of its biggest rival for the first
time since 1828. There was nothing the Opéra could do to stop this except to
stress, in similar terms to those used in 1822, its monopoly on “noble and
gracious ballets,” and to argue that the ballets in La tempesta should be
removed.128 Jules Baroche replied, without any reference to the Commission,
that dance would be formally forbidden in the new cahier des charges negoti-
ated with Lumley; Baroche also promised that there would be a clause that
forbade the Théâtre-Italien from taking an artist from the Opéra unless they
had already been discharged for at least two years.129 Almost none of these
promises was kept, and the episode reveals a critical dislocation between the
Minister of the Interior and the Commission that was typical of the republican
period. Baroche assumed powers that were technically his, but the detail of
which were beyond his competence. This difficulty resulted in the members
of the Commission des théâtres attending a dress rehearsal in order to arbitrate
126. The prompt attention to this matter by the Maison du Roi is both impressive and un-
surprising. See the correspondence between the Maison du Roi, the Minister of the Interior and
the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, June 13–29, 1822 (F-Pan F21 1128).
127. The episode is discussed in Lumley’s entry in the DNB: Middleton, “Lumley,
Benjamin (1811/12–1875).”
128. Roqueplan wrote to the Minister of the Interior (Jules Baroche), copied to the man-
ager of the Théâtre-Italien (Lumley) on October 3, 1850. The problem was complicated by the
fact that Lumley’s cahier des charges was still under negotiation (F-Pan AJ13 180 (X)), and that
Baroche would leave the Ministry of the Interior for less than a year at the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs on January 24, 1851.
129. Baroche’s reply was sent the day Roqueplan’s letter was received (October 4, 1850;
(F-Pan AJ13 180 (X)).

between the Opéra’s claims that the work breached the Théâtre-Italien’s
cahier des charges and Lumley’s argument that La tempesta could not be
mounted without dance. The solution was to permit a single dancer to act in
La tempesta, but to forbid the participation of any corps de ballet; this satisfied
the regulatory impulses of the Commission des théâtres and apparently both
Lumley and Roqueplan.130
The negotiation of the politics of genre was a central concern for every
Parisian operatic and theatrical enterprise from the unpretentiously modest
to those with pan-European ambitions. The state’s attempts to control the
matrix of power ran the complete gamut from inflexibility to caprice, from
incompetence to closely argued compromise. Experienced managers could
outmaneuver their rivals and in some cases circumvent state regulation en-
tirely, renegotiating the balance of power and ensuring that it was as perva-
sive as Foucault was later to claim. For the state, the licensing system meant
that it could ensure that overlapping activities that could sap the partially
state-funded resources of the grands théâtres were avoided, and that those
resources were not threatened by secondary theaters. Predictably, the man-
agers of established opera houses were by and large happy with the arrange-
ments, and fought hard to protect their interests; even the managers of new
opera houses, or theaters trying to break into the lyric repertory, never felt
inclined to challenge the efficacy of the licensing system. But its cost to them
could be great: it could be argued that the failure of the Odéon’s opera
troupe in 1828 was a result of its failure to gain permission to mount pro-
ductions of new opéra comique, a failure that could be staved off only by
the—admittedly very successful—exploitation of Italian and German stage
music. Even more starkly, the exploitation of the licensing system and courts
by the Opéra-Comique and Opéra brought about a similar collapse of the
opera troupe at the Renaissance in 1840, and the institution’s demise.
When Napoléon III announced to the Chamber of Deputies on
November 5, 1864, that the licensing system for the theaters was to end, and
the legislation finally promulgated, he was bowing to the inevitable but only in
the knowledge that the impact of the “liberty of the theaters” had already been
vitiated.131 Part of the transformation of the city of Paris undertaken by Baron
Georges-Eugène Haussmann, Prefect of the Seine from 1853 to 1870, was
the construction of the Boulevard du Prince-Eugène (now Boulevard
Voltaire)132 that involved the demolition of the northern part of the existing
Boulevard du Temple, and destroyed all the theaters that had been housed
130. Commission des Théâtres. Registre des Procès-Verbaux des délibérations, February 18
and 21, 1851 (Pan F21 4634 (2)).
131. Hostein, Liberté des théâtres, 8. The Imperial decree was promulgated on January 6,
1864; ibid., 10–11.
132. The literature on Haussmann and the renovation (or destruction, depending on intel-
lectual and artistic perspective) of Paris is extensive. See, for a changing view over three decades,
Malet, Le Baron Haussmann; Olsen, City as a Work of Art; Jordan, Transforming Paris.

there. The Délassements-Comiques, Folies-Dramatiques, Gaîté, Funambules,

Petit-Lazari, Théâtre-Lyrique, and the Cirque Olympique were removed from
the map.133 While the Théâtre-Lyrique, Gaîté, and Cirque-Olympique were
rehoused at the expense of the City, the others simply lost their buildings. And
these institutions were exactly those which might have benefitted from a gen-
uine freedom to develop whatever sort of stage music they wanted, and might
have gained much from what many thought would be a step-change in the
dispersal of operatic power.
Napoléon III might well have been thought to be acting more liberally in
1863–64 when he announced the freedom of the theaters, and this would
certainly accord with the rest of his domestic policy, finely gauged to attract
more and more supporters to the principles espoused by the Second Empire.
But the 1850s had seen a progressive loosening of state control over the en-
tire network of operatic institutions. The close, almost suffocating, attention
given the Opéra at the expense of other institutions worked to the latters’
advantage: the Théâtre-Lyrique carefully profited from the fruits of a de-
cade’s negotiation, and the consequence for the Opéra-Comique of having to
share generic power with another institution was to allow the creative power
of its librettists and composers to inflate the genre well beyond its traditional
limits, which also had a later effect on the ambitions of opéra comique at the
Théâtre-Lyrique. The creation of opéras comiques on such an unprecedented
scale as Thomas’s Le songe d’un nuit d’été, Adam’s Giralda, or Halévy’s La
dame de pique134 paved the way for Meyerbeer’s move into this generic field
with L’étoile du Nord in 1854.135 And this in turn gave space for Hervé and
Offenbach to claim that there was now a generic gap—opéra comique of the
lighter sort—that needing filling. The fact that Offenbach’s ambitions lay in
much larger works, and his stunning ability to circumvent his license in the
late 1850s, meant that within the space of a few months could been seen such
works as Gounod’s Faust at the Théâtre-Lyrique, Offenbach’s Orphée aux
enfers at the Bouffes-Parisiens, and Meyerbeer’s Le pardon de Ploërmel at the
Opéra-Comique.136 All were works of ambition, and all merged spoken dia-
logue and music, as had been the traditional monopoly only a decade earlier
of the Opéra-Comique. Older commentators would have been hard pressed
133. See the chronological diagram of the closure of Parisian theaters in Wild’s 1989
Dictionnaire, fig. 3, pp. 438–39. For an account of the end of the licensing system, which for the
first time attempts to assess its consequences both negative and positive, see Ellis, “Unintended
Consequences.”
134. Premiered at the Opéra-Comique on April 20, 1850, July 20, 1850, and December 28,
1850.
135. L’étoile du nord received its premiere at the Opéra-Comique on February 16, 1854.
136. See above for Offenbach, and for the original version of Faust; Huebner, Operas of
Charles Gounod, 107–29. Although the version of Faust with recitatives was prepared for other
opera houses as early as 1860, the Théâtre-Lyrique continued to perform the work in its original
form with spoken dialogue as late as 1866; ibid., 129.

to separate out these three works in generic terms as they were understood
before the 1848 revolution, and the implicit breach of fundamental generic
principles that had held sway since the Empire rendered those principles im-
possible to sustain. A single document is emblematic of the demise of the
licensing system: the manuscript libretto to Georges Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de
perles betrays a curious mixture of opéra comique and continuous opera, and
in the months during which Napoléon III was considering the legislation that
would end the licensing period, Bizet rewrote all the dialogue as recitative to
create the first continuous opera at the Théâtre-Lyrique.137 He was in flagrant
breach of the opera house’s license, but with such a gesture, the politics of
genre that had dominated the capital of the nineteenth-century became as
much part of the past as the debris of the demolished theaters on the Boule-
vard du Temple.
Networks of operatic power contained and disciplined the creative ener-
gies expended by librettists, composers, stage designers, and managers in
nineteenth-century Paris. The relationship between state bureaucracies,
managers, creative artists, and the Commissions designed to broker various
interests rendered the negotiation of the politics of genre as much a part of
the operatic culture of the period as the Opéra’s use of continuous recitative
and ballet or the Théâtre-Italien’s concern for musical events beyond the
Alps. The underpinning technologies of power were no guarantee, however,
against the involvement of such plutocrats as Aguado or such ambitious and
cunning politicians as Fould or Walewski, nor of the adroit management of
individual opera houses and theaters.
When the state came close to the superstructure of operatic creation—
when it attempted to invent genres to solve particular problems—it was a
striking failure. While the support for the Théâtre de la Renaissance in the late
1830s may be viewed as part of the response to the creation of the third lyric
theater that would eventually result in the creation of the Théâtre-Lyrique,
the generic fabrications—vaudeville avec airs nouveaux and opéra de genre—
merely threw the opera house into conflict with others. And the greatest con-
tinual problem at the Opéra was finding petits opéras in two acts to accompany
a ballet; while creative energies were being expended elsewhere, it was the leg-
islative requirement of the state that meant that, now that the preferred form
137. On the basis of the libretti (censors’ libretto, F-Pan F18 737, deposited August 11,
1863; and two others in F-Pan AJ13 1158), the Choudens 1863 piano-vocal score and the man-
uscript violin conductor score (F-Po Mat. 19. 1863), Hervé Lacombe has been able to show
how the original form of the work consisted of a first act in the form of traditional opéra comique
(four numbers alternating with dialogue) followed by two acts in which all the libretto is set as
continuous music. Whether the document is interpreted correctly, and whether there might not
have existed an earlier version of the entire work in the shape of an opéra comique, is impossible
to tell from the surviving material. See Lacombe, “Les pêcheurs de perles de Bizet,” 46–52. The
tabular material is reprinted in idem, Les voies de l’opéra, 316–17. See also Wright, “Les pêcheurs
de perles.”

of operatic creation was the five-act work on a historical libretto, ballet still had
to be promoted, an unchanging orthodoxy that posed problems that the
Opéra itself never really resolved.
Even when enmeshed in the complexities of the politics of genre, the
institutional structures of French opera—their governing technologies of
power—served as a context for the exercise of creative power. The decade-
long emergence of grand opéra hurdled the July Revolution of 1830 as
Scribe, Auber, Meyerbeer, and Halévy forged what would constitute the
center of European music drama for the middle third of the nineteenth cen-
tury. And while it is unlikely that anyone sitting on the revolutionary com-
mittee discussing new theatrical law in 1849 could have envisaged opérette,
the expansion of opéra comique, or Gounod’s Faust, the creation of the
Théâtre-Lyrique was an institutional catalyst for the creation of works as dif-
ferent as Meyerbeer’s Le pardon de Ploërmel, Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles,
and Offenbach’s La grande-duchesse de Gérolstein. As we move away from
nineteenth-century Paris, the politics of genre remains close to our critical
practice. Technologies of power are as easily deployed by municipalities, free
cities, commercial and charitable bodies as they are by constitutional monar-
chies or empires. But however it is manifested, power and opera are as
negotiable in seventeenth-century Italy or twenty-first-century Hanoi as
they are in nineteenth-century Paris. And Foucault’s view of power relations
remains a central framework for their understanding.
Whether the headline judgment on Parisian operatic history in the first
two-thirds of the nineteenth century is one that identifies the coercive or
creative is likely to be colored by the critic’s ability to make sense of what
little of the past is recoverable. It is certainly true that the pan-European
success of grand opéra, opéra comique, and comédie-vaudeville was a result of
the perceived quality of the works being exported, not of the context in
which they were created; but it is equally the case that the dispersal of power
outlined in this article created the environment that enabled those works to
succeed. The politics of genre described here underpinned not only the
production of work of transcontinental significance but also the reception of
foreign works in Paris, from Il barbiere di Siviglia to Tannhäuser. This
cultural exchange marks out Parisian stage music as the catalyst for the
expansion of musical culture in the nineteenth century.
An analysis of the politics of genre and of the ways in which technologies
of power were negotiated suggests a view—largely as Foucault described—
of power dispersed across the field ready to be seized by any agent willing to
engage with, or work around, its technologies. And while it was clearly the
grands opéras, opéras comiques, and comédies-vaudevilles themselves that took
Europe by storm in the middle third of the nineteenth century and beyond,
the attraction of Parisian operatic culture to foreigners from Spontini to
Wagner depended at least in part on the networks of power described here,
and the resources and prestige they underpinned. A perspective on the

relationship between creative and institutional power recognizes the need

for an organizational framework that could keep an operatic culture that
promoted continuous opera in French, opéra comique, and Italian opera in
equilibrium. At the same time, it also accepts that ad hoc arrangements, es-
pecially in the 1840s and 1850s, created opportunities for those that the
technologies of power were supposed to discipline. To acknowledge both
the limitations imposed, and the opportunities created, by the functioning
of this institutional framework is key to reconstructing a regime of truth that
promotes a fuller understanding of the position of Parisian stage music at the
center of European nineteenth-century experience.
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Abstract
Music for the stage has always been embedded in a network of power
relationships between states, impresarios, librettists, artists, entrepreneurs,
and composers. This article seeks to understand and explain how these
relationships functioned in the period when French music drama was
subject to a system of licenses, 1806–64. At the center of the inquiry are

institutional structures and their relationship to those responsible for both the
creation and the cultivation of stage music in the period. They explain the
context for the cultural agents and products not only of the main opera
houses in nineteenth-century Paris—the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique,
and the Théâtre-Italien—but also of the host of smaller, shorter-lived
institutions that supported and promoted opera during the period.
Keywords: opera, Paris, stage, power, politics


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The Music of Power: Parisian Opera and the Politics of Genre, 1806–1864

Author(s): Mark Everist

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retelling of modern postrevolutionary history.1 Other examples of similar

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development of opérette in the 1850s, for example—may be better understood

The imperial rationalization of Parisian opera houses and theaters, undertaken

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18. Ibid., 3–4.

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31. Wild, Dictionnaire (1989), 198.

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responsibility to inform the government of such transgressions of license

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such a process falls foul of a mismatch between methodological desiderata and

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New Theaters and Opera Houses

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53. Lecomte, Les Jeux gymniques, 69–74.

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motives: the multiple applications to open a second Opéra-Comique in 1829,

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The history of opera at the Théâtre de la Renaissance is colored by the fact

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Bouffes-Parisiens in 1855. As usual, the new enterprise was controlled by a

Loups-cerviers, Private Enterprise, and the Aristocracy

The July Monarchy gave the appearance of a coherent management of

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theaters subsequently.66 The position arose because every manager of an

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From the moment the Opéra was opened up to private enterprise in

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At certain points during the July Monarchy, Aguado wielded as much

75. Tamvaco, Les cancans de l’Opéra, 1:278–79.

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The Politics of Genre

While the Napoleonic legislation of 1806/7 went as far as it could to map

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generous rewriting of licenses meant that the concept of genre became a

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I Puritani both premiered the following year; Mercadante’s I briganti the

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One of the principal ways in which the state intervened in networks of

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95. Ibid., 64–65.

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99. See Lecomte, Les Nouveautés, 1–5.

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deadline—and in blatant defiance of the Commission’s ruling. Whether this

106. F-Pan F21 1133.

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The conservation of genres being of an equal interest to the prosperity of all

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