Chapter 11 concerns the reform of opéra-comique. It reconstructs the inner logic of musical processes in comedies that were all written in reaction to Italian intermezzi. ‘Hybrid Popular Operas’ discusses the first French adaptations of intermezzi: in no case was there a simple process of translation. Pierre Baurans conceived a new genre, comédie mêlée d’ariettes. These adaptations of La serva padrona and Il maestro di musica added new music, and spoken dialogue in verse. C.-S. Favart developed this approach in La Bohémienne and Ninette à la cour, creating dialogued ensembles from solo-voice originals. Rousseau’s Le Devin du village, albeit a court work, innovated through its melodic style, its unconventional forms and its stage directions that were connected to popular practice. Les Troqueurs by Vadé and Dauvergne is then compared and contrasted with Le Devin du village. Egidio Duni’s final opera for Italy, Le Retour au village, is compared with his first for Paris, Le Peintre amoureux de son modèle: their melodic style demonstrably followed Rousseau’s example. Élie Fréron’s published review of Le Peintre amoureux proves that it was understood as a sophisticated exploration of comedic approaches. Using music, aspects of multivocality, orchestration, envoiced memory and stage co-ordination broke new ground.

Chapter 6 brings together evidence of all kinds from the whole period to create a vivid picture of popular opera and its audience in the theatre. ‘Theatre Size and Ambience’ correlates detailed historical information to produce a systematic overview of many theatre buildings, together with interior details and size of musical ensembles. Ticket admission prices at the Opéra, Comédie-Italienne and the Fair theatres are compared and assessed. Descriptions by a number of eyewitnesses (French, Italian, English, Irish and German observers) combine to give an impression of activity in popular theatre seen from the audience’s point of view. In a survey of staging, the evidence is both visual and textual: engraved and painted illustrations are analysed and ‘corrected’ so that the proportions of stage sets can be understood. Then a synopsis of stage directions suggests the material range of experience in popular opera. A survey of lighting effects is discussed in relation to stage context, showing how some comedies combined lighting effects with music.

Chapter 9 documents the varied dramatic roles given to newly written music in popular opera before the 1750s; it also illustrates exceptional and virtuosic vocal music that was increasingly brought in. An initial overview names fifteen Fair theatre composers, including Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, then documents musical commissions made during the first period (1714 to 1718) such as cantatas and set pieces. Louis de Lacoste’s musical depiction of the Prince’s mental disturbance in La Princesse de Carizme is explained. ‘Corrette and Modern Dance’ turns to innovations in the 1730s, the era of enthusiasm for dance. Corrette’s ‘concertos comiques’, Italian in inspiration, were sometimes linked structurally with specific opéras-comiques, whether through dance sequences or musical connections with recurring vaudevilles. ‘Beyond vaudevilles’ focuses on the continually expanding range of borrowed music. ‘Showpiece’ vaudevilles requiring vocal dexterity are compared and quoted, their origins in recent dances by Mouret, Blamont, Rebel and Francœur; but Favart also made vocal pieces from keyboard music by Couperin and an instrumental menuet by Derochet, whose lengths exceeded 100 bars. In Les Nymphes de Diane Favart treated vaudevilles as a heterogeneous musical collage; this mock-pastoral incorporated quasi-operatic group scenes.

Chapter 3 is devoted to music and innovation within the commedia troupe of Louis XIV. Mixing traditional improvisation with scripted French scenes, the plays involved many forms and styles of music, made possible in part by the ability of Italian actors to sing and play instruments. An overview, ‘Repertory and Musical Resources’, includes evidence for the international reputation earned by the Italians, much enhanced by the 1700 publication of their texts and music in Le Théâtre Italien de Gherardi. These plays, revived in following decades, were notorious for their veiled social critiques. In ‘Social Themes’ eight specific topic areas are set out, all with continuing relevance for popular opera. ‘Music and Musical Roles’ considers (i) a dialogue duet sung in an early commedia play; (ii) musical variety and function in one-act comedies; (iii) the incorporation of Italian music, some taken from Venetian opera. ‘Vaudevilles and Vaudeville-finales’ takes forward the discoveries of Donald J. Grout in ‘The Origins of the Opéra-comique’ (1939). In ‘Towards Pasquin et Marforio’, ambitious musical elements in larger-scale plays are described, including parodies of Lully opera scenes. The integral musical planning of Pasquin et Marforio is seen as containing uniquely operatic features.

With quotations from Phiip Gossett, Rebecca Harris-Warrick and Tom Christensen, the argument is reiterated for an ‘integrative model for French opera’ that includes opera with spoken dialogue. The importance of the independent, commercial theatre and the cultural value it commanded in Paris are summarised. Knowledge of French popular opera is demonstrable elsewhere, with London the obvious example shown in research by Vanessa Rogers and Erica Levenson. The nature of John Gay’s musical integrations in The Beggar’s Opera is compared with Paris practice and with Brecht’s in Die Dreigroschenoper. Key discoveries in the book are reviewed, especially the ‘new’ manuscript for La Chercheuse d’esprit. Opéra-comique research by Thomas Betzwieser and Ruth Müller is summarised and related to the current project, ending with further quotations from Tom Sutcliffe, Thomas Bauman and Alfred Roller.

Chapter 10 explains many ways in which Italian music in particular was cultivated at the new Comédie-Italienne from 1716, directed by Luigi Riccoboni. Arias in Italian by Mouret contributed to divertissements of plays. Research into the company’s principal singers introduces an account of Le Joueur, written in-house as a response to Giuseppe Orlandini’s Serpilla e Baiocco at the Opéra in 1729. An edition of Le Joueur specially made for this book is referred to, accessible from its online space. Evidence then shows that different French singers were influenced by performing Italian, or Italianate, music: Pierre Théveneau, Charles Rochard, Joseph Caillot. ‘Il soldato valoroso’ focuses on a descriptive aria by Mouret (1729) presaging comic narratives in the French repertory. ‘Towards La Servante maîtresse’ explains the special nature of the 1746 performances of Pergolesi’s La serva padrona, then discusses French acting skills in relation to the requirements of Italian musical comedy. The repertory of Eustachio Bambini’s visiting troupe at the Opéra (1752–54) is discussed in relation to French cultural experience. The early career of Marie-Justine Favart is described, and her singing. French experience of intermezzi is assessed using a 1954 recording of Il maestro de musica, sung and spoken in German.

Chapter 2 continues the introductory process (1) by surveying the large part played by music in seventeenth-century plays; (2) by scrutinising the functions of music in plays; (3) by discussing perceptions of speech and music in dramatic alternation. ‘Recent Research’ introduces John S. Powell’s study of 153 plays with music and isolates key elements for popular opera: the presence of borrowed songs and vaudevilles; their dramatic functions; performative demands, especially when main actors have to sing as well as speak; and manuscripts proving that music occupied far more stage time, relative to spoken material, than appears likely from other written sources. The historical origins of ‘opera’ are problematised by juxtaposing the growth of forms that contained speech. A personal account of hearing songs in contemporary drama provides ideas that are used later in the book. ‘Molière and Music’ describes evolution in this playwright’s musical practice through Le Sicilien and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, culminating in Le Malade imaginaire. Their types of dramatic integration are discussed. ‘After Molière’ is a case-study illustrating important increases in musical diversity: Poisson’s Les Foux divertissans, whose extensive musical score was composed by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Various parodies of Lully foreshadow opéra-comique, as does the commonplace working milieu.

Chapter 1 introduces the book in three ways: (1) by explaining the way French theatre life was organised; (2) by selected cultural overviews; (3) by comparing past and present attitudes to popular opera. After a preamble that defines genre terms used in the book, the institutional context is sketched out with reference to legal frameworks governing the ‘official’ stage, contrasted with the difficulties of popular opera. This was independent and commercial, active during the winter Fair (Saint Germain) and summer Fair (Saint Laurent) in Paris. In ‘Structures, Events and Systems’ popular theatre forms, including parodies, vaudevilles and marionette pieces, are related to legal imperatives. ‘Reflections of Society’ links popular opera to cultural contexts: events in French society; prose fiction; the tableau in theatre; and critical debates in the public sphere. ‘Chamfort’s Overview’ is an account of the most sophisticated generic definition of popular opera as it was understood before the Revolution. ‘Defending Popular Opera’ re-examines Pierre Nougaret’s problematic book De l’art du théâtre. ‘Conceptual Problems’ takes Sedaine and Monsigny’s Le Déserteur, once famous across Europe, as a case study in reception history of opéra-comique. Evidence suggests that understanding is more sought after than satisfied.

Euridice had a poetic text by Ottavio Rinuccini, and music by Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini; its performers included Florentine singers plus others from Mantua and Rome; and its sponsor, Jacopo Corsi, was one of the four instrumentalists who provided the accompaniment. Although it is the “first” opera to have survived complete, it has tended to be treated as an academic exercise, and as a mere forerunner of the seemingly more successful early operas by the likes of Claudio Monteverdi. But having reconstructed the stage, it is now possible to read Euridice in a much more practical light, as something of and for the theatre. Both the text and the music make much more sense in these pragmatic terms, especially given the hitherto unrecognized revisions made to the libretto as decisions needed to be made during the rehearsals leading up to the premiere. Matters of casting, stage movement, costumes, and gesture all come into play, often cued by explicit or implicit directions in the surviving sources. This also offers a more careful way of reading poetic librettos and musical scores that are too often viewed in the abstract without grasping their performative functions.

Cigoli’s sets for Euridice continued to be used in the Sala delle Commedie in the Palazzo Pitti, although by 1608 they were being replaced by a more complex stage and scenery intended for different kinds of entertainments (often involving dancing) that were better suited to princely tastes. Opera briefly gained a stronger foothold in different spaces, often in patrician residences (as with Marco da Gagliano’s new setting of Rinuccini’s first libretto, Dafne, performed in 1611 in the palace occupied by Don Giovanni de’ Medici). However, the genre’s history was patchy until the establishment of the first “public” opera houses in Venice from 1637 on. But this, in turn, raises questions about how “early” operas might best be staged today. So-called Historically Informed Performance – using the resources and techniques to create music as it might have sounded in the past – is now well established in musical circles, but less so in their theatrical equivalent. The search for relevance on the part of modern directors also makes opera production a fraught site of contest between the sources and what to do with them. Is any historical reconstruction of Euridice a mere archeological curiosity, or an opportunity to give it new life?