Grand opera
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterized by large-scale casts and orchestras. The original productions consisted of spectacular design and stage effects with plots normally based on or around dramatic historic events. The term is particularly applied to certain productions of the Paris Opéra from the late 1820s to around 1860; 'grand opéra' has sometimes been used to denote the Paris Opéra itself.
The term 'grand opera' is also used in a broader application in respect of contemporary or later works of similar monumental proportions from France, Germany, Italy, and other countries.
It may also be used colloquially in an imprecise sense to refer to 'serious opera without spoken dialogue'.
Origins
Paris at the turn of the 19th century was a magnet for composers, both French and foreign, especially those of opera. The term "grand opéra" became current in the early 19th century, with contemporaries like the critic Castil-Blaze defining it as a work that was sung throughout, performed at the prestigious Paris Opéra, and had a noble subject. The librettist Étienne de Jouy further advocated for a five-act structure and plots drawn from heroic historical events. The aesthetic goals of the Empire were exemplified by works like Gaspare Spontini's Fernand Cortez, which combined an exotic setting with melodramatic plots and spectacular tableaux, such as a cavalry charge and the burning of an Aztec temple. These large-scale works were the immediate forerunners of grand opéra. Other factors contributing to Parisian supremacy in operatic spectacle were the Opéra's ability to stage sizeable productions, its long tradition of French ballet, and its skilled staff of innovative designers like Duponchel, Cicéri, and Daguerre. The first theater performance lit by gas, for example, was Aladin ou La lampe merveilleuse at the Opéra in 1823.File:MeyerbeerCrociatoActIScene3.jpg|thumb|285px|Set design by Francesco Bagnara for act 1 of Il crociato in Egitto by Meyerbeer
Several operas by Spontini, Luigi Cherubini, and Gioachino Rossini can be regarded as direct precursors to the genre. These include Spontini's La vestale and Fernand Cortez, Cherubini's Les Abencérages, and Rossini's Le siège de Corinthe and Moïse et Pharaon. All of these have the characteristics of size and spectacle that would become hallmarks of grand opéra. An especially important forerunner was Giacomo Meyerbeer's Il crociato in Egitto. Produced by Rossini in Paris in 1825, this opera successfully blended the Italian vocal style with German orchestral techniques, introducing a wider range of musical-theatrical effects than traditional Italian opera. With its exotic historical setting, on-stage bands, and themes of culture clash, Il crociato exhibited many of the features that would form the basis of grand opera's popularity.
What became the essential features of 'grand opéra' were foreseen by Étienne de Jouy, the librettist of Guillaume Tell, in an essay of 1826:
Division into five acts seems to me the most suitable for any opera that would reunite the elements of the genre: where the dramatic focus was combined with the marvellous: where the nature and majesty of the subject demanded the addition of attractive festivities and splendid civil and religious ceremonies to the natural flow of the action, and consequently needed frequent scene changes.
France
The first grand operas (1828–1829)
The first opera of the grand opera canon is, by common consent, Daniel Auber's La muette de Portici. This tale of a revolution set in Naples in 1647, which culminates in an eruption of Mount Vesuvius into which the heroine throws herself, embodied the musical and scenic sensationalism that would become the genre's hallmark. The libretto for La muette was by Eugène Scribe, a dominant force in French theater who specialized in melodramatic and historical plots. Scribe's first libretto for the Opéra, it was so well-suited to the public taste that he went on to write or be associated with many of the most successful grand operas that followed. La muette's reputation was further cemented by its being the catalyst for a genuine revolution when it was performed in Brussels in 1830.This was followed in 1829 by Gioachino Rossini's swansong, Guillaume Tell. Rossini, a master of Italian opera, recognized the potential of new technology and larger-scale production, including bigger theatres and orchestras. In this undoubted grand opera, he proved he could meet these new demands. However, his comfortable financial position and the change in political climate after the July Revolution persuaded him to quit the field, making Guillaume Tell his last public composition.
The golden age of grand opera: 1830–1850
After the Revolution, the new regime determined to privatize the previously state-run Opéra and the winner of the contract was a businessman who acknowledged that he knew nothing of music, Louis-Désiré Véron. However, he soon showed himself extremely shrewd at discerning public taste by investing heavily in the grand opera formula. His first new production was a work long contracted from Meyerbeer, whose premiere had been delayed by the Revolution. This was fortunate for both Véron and Meyerbeer. As Berlioz commented, Meyerbeer had "not only the luck to be talented, but the talent to be lucky." Meyerbeer's new opera Robert le diable chimed well with the liberal sentiments of 1830s France. Moreover, its potent mixture of melodrama, spectacle, titillation, and dramatic arias and choruses went down extremely well with the new leaders of taste, the affluent bourgeoisie. The success of Robert was as spectacular as its production.Over the next few years, Véron brought on Auber's Gustave III '', and Fromental Halévy's La Juive, and commissioned Meyerbeer's next opera Les Huguenots, whose success was to prove the most enduring of all grand operas during the 19th century. These demanding productions required expensive singers; for example, Les Huguenots was known as 'the night of the seven stars' because it needed seven top-grade artists.
Having made a fortune in his stewardship of the Opéra, Véron cannily handed on his concession to Henri Duponchel, who continued his winning formula, if not to such financial reward. Between 1838 and 1850, the Paris Opéra staged numerous grand operas of which the most notable were Halévy’s ''La reine de Chypre and Charles VI, Donizetti's La favorite and Les martyrs and Dom Sébastien, and Meyerbeer's Le prophète . 1847 saw the premiere of Giuseppe Verdi's first opera for Paris, Jérusalem, an adaptation, meeting the grand opera conventions, of his earlier I Lombardi alla prima crociata''.
For production statistics of grand opera in Paris, see List of performances of French grand operas at the Paris Opéra.
Ballet in grand opera
A notable feature of grand opera as it developed in Paris through the 1830s was the presence of a lavish ballet, to appear at or near the beginning of its second act. This was required, not for aesthetic reasons, but to satisfy the demands of the Opera's wealthy and aristocratic patrons, many of whom were more interested in the dancers themselves than the opera. These individuals also did not want their regular meal-times disturbed. The ballet therefore became an important element in the social prestige of the Opéra. Composers who did not comply with this tradition might suffer as a consequence, as did Richard Wagner with his attempt to stage a revised Tannhäuser as a grand opera in Paris in 1861, which had to be withdrawn after three performances, partly because the ballet was in act 1.Grand operas of the 1850s and 1860s
The most significant development, or transformation, of grand opera after the 1850s was its handling by Giuseppe Verdi, whose Les vêpres siciliennes, proved to be more widely given in Italy and other Italian-language opera houses than in France. The taste for luxury and extravagance at the French theatre declined after the 1848 revolution, and new productions on the previous scale were not so commercially viable. The popular Faust by Charles Gounod started life as an opéra comique and did not become a grand opera until rewritten in the 1860s. Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz, was not given a full performance until nearly a century after Berlioz had died, although portions had been staged before, but the spirit of this work is far removed from the bourgeois taste of the grand opera of the 1830s and 1840s.By the 1860s, taste for the grand style was returning. La reine de Saba by Charles Gounod was rarely given in its entirety, although the big tenor aria, "Inspirez-moi, race divine", was a popular feature of tenor recitals. Meyerbeer died on 2 May 1864; his late opera, L'Africaine, was premiered posthumously in 1865. Giuseppe Verdi returned to Paris for what many see as the greatest French grand opera, Don Carlos. Ambroise Thomas contributed his Hamlet in 1868, and finally, at the end of the decade, the revised Faust was premiered at the Opéra in its grand opera format.