This website is related to the Curtis Institute of Music's 2010–11 all-school study, the Paris Project.

Opera

The Works
The Theatres
More on the Paris Opera Online

The Works

In the 19th century, Paris had been the star of European opera. Thirty theatres overflowed with works of various styles and seriousness. Composers Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer, Offenbach, Verdi, and Wagner could be found in Paris, in person. French composers Berlioz, Debussy, Bizet, Gounod, and Massenet further added to the repertoire.

The period between the wars, however, was not a prolific time for French opera. Audiences dwindled, as conservative tastes overcame composers' and presenters' interest in new music. The sacred, too, drew people to programs inspired by religious themes and ancient Greece or the Baroque era. Some operas added to their sense of spectacle by blending ballet with their productions.

Between the wars, fully staged productions and concert performances of the relatively few new operatic works by French and visiting composers included:

Stravinsky, Mavra (1922)

A Russian tale by Pushkin provides the basis for this one-act opera buffa.

Roussel, Padmâvatî (1923, premiere at the Paris Opéra)

This opera-ballet's tale was inspired by Roussel's travels in India.

Ravel, L'Enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Enchantments, 1925; Paris premiere in 1926 at the Opéra-Comique)

Dance infuses the opera, about a child whose temper tantrum makes animals and objects respond, as the libretto by Colette was originally a ballet scenario.

Stravinsky, Oedipus Rex (1927 concert premiere at Théâtre Sarah Berhardt, Paris)

An opera-oratorio, the work is set to a text by Jean Cocteau is based on the ancient Greek drama by Sophocles


Actor Simon Russell Beale and Professor Jonathan Cross discuss Stravinsky, the opera, and its history, with musical examples (Philharmonia Orchestra, London, 7:09)

Milhaud, Le Pauvre Matelot (1927 premiere at the Opéra-Comique, Paris)

A brief three-act opera, performed without intermission, is a tragedy of mistrust and disguise.

Milhaud, Christophe Colomb (1930; Paris concert performance in 1936)

Milhaud recalls large-scale French opera for his symbolical look at Columbus, creating a work once popular and yet so demanding that it is a rare undertaking.

Milhaud, Maximilien (1932, premiere at the Paris Opéra)

Music from this opera about the downfall of the Mexican dictator Maximilien was recorded as an orchestral suite.

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The Theatres

The Paris Opéra—also called the Académie de Musique, Paris, and Palais Garnier—dated back to 1875. The history of the opera house of that name began in 1671 and, over the centuries, covered a succession buildings in Paris. In 1939 the Opéra, whose income dropped by nearly 40 percent in the 1930s, was taken over by the government and renamed Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Nationaux.

The Opéra-Comique, Paris, was the city's second opera house. In 1902 it housed the premiere of Debussy's sole opera, Pelléas et Méisande, in a building only a few years old.

In 1922 Théâtre des Champs-Elysées brought opera back to its stage, after a period of bankruptcy. An international flavor would mark its interwar productions:

• Wagner operas sung first in Italian and later, by the Bayreuth ensemble, in German
• Mozart cycles by Viennese and French companies
• productions by the Opéra Russe de Monte Carlo and the Opéra Russe de Paris
• the Berlin Staatsoper productions of works by Richard Strauss and Wagner

Among the other theatres in Paris were the Trianon-Lyrique (1887–1934) and several that featured lighter operettas:

• Apollo
• Bobnio
• Casino
• Casino de Paris
• Empire
• Montparnasse
• Européen
• Mogador

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More on Paris Opera Online

Opéra Comique, the building's history (company website)

Ravel's L'Enfant et les sortilèges, history and recording (Classical Archives)

Stravinsky's Mavra, history and recording (Classical Archives)

Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, history and recordings (Classical Archives)

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PRINT AND ELECTRONIC RESOURCES ON INTERWAR PARIS AND THE ARTS

Grove Music Online, The Oxford Companion to Music, and The Oxford Dictionary of Music

Jackson, Jeffrey H., Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris (Durham: Duke UP, 2003)

Mann, Carol, Paris: Artistic Life in the Twenties and Thirties (London: Laurence King, 1996)

Nichols, Roger, The Harlequin Years: Music in Paris 1917–1929 (Berkeley: UCalifornia P, 2002)

Shack, William A., Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story between the Great Wars (Berkeley: UCalifornia P, 2001)