Tea at Trianon: The Comedians of the King

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

The Comedians of the King

Marie-Antoinette's theater at Trianon

Marie-Antoinette having a harp lesson

Theater at Trianon

From Columbia News:

Lyric theater in ancien régime France was a political art, tied to the demands of court spectacle. This was true not only of tragic opera (tragédie lyrique), but also its comic counterpart, opéra comique, a form tracing its roots to the seasonal trade fairs of Paris. While historians have long privileged the genre’s popular origins, opéra comique was brought under the protection of the French crown in 1762, thus consolidating a new venue where national music might be debated and defined.

In her new book, The Comedians of the King, Julia Doe, professor of music, traces the impact of Bourbon patronage on the development of opéra comique in the turbulent pre-revolutionary years. Drawing on both musical and archival evidence, the book presents the history of this understudied genre and unpacks the material structures that supported its rapid evolution. Doe demonstrates how comic theater was exploited in, and worked against, the monarchy’s carefully cultivated public image—a negotiation that became especially fraught after the accession of the music-loving queen, Marie Antoinette.

Doe shared her thoughts on the book with Columbia News, along with what events she’s anticipating in New York’s fall cultural season, what she’s teaching, and what it might have been like to hear the 10-year-old Mozart play the keyboard at an 18^th-century Parisian salon.

Q. Why did you write this book?

A. I’m a cultural historian, and my research examines the ways that opera shapes and is shaped by politics. There are few musical repertories more rewarding for this type of study than those produced in pre-revolutionary France. The political implications of tragédie lyrique in this period are fairly self-evident. Grand, heroic, and spectacular, the genre originated under the auspices of Louis XIV and transparently allegorized the achievements of the monarchy. (One musicologist has cheekily described such works as the “courtliest court operas” ever written.)

I was curious, however, to explore the meanings inherent in tragédie lyrique’s long-neglected comic counterpart, opéra comique. The latter genre has a reputation for being popularly inflected and politically subversive; it originated at the suburban fairs of Paris, and incorporated the progressive ideals of the philosophes. But over the course of the 18th century, opéra comique also became a favorite of the French aristocracy and was increasingly showcased at Versailles.

My book explores the tensions that arose as this ostensibly “lowbrow” musical form was appropriated as an emblematic courtly art. It turns out that comic theater might also serve absolutist political ends, but not without complications for the crown.
Q. How does Marie Antoinette fit into this story?

A. Marie Antoinette’s musical pursuits have attracted less scholarly attention than her other artistic activities, but she was remarkably active as a performer and patron. She supported composers like Christoph Willibald Gluck and Niccolò Piccinni, frequently attended concerts in Paris, and took regular lessons in voice and in harp. When she gave birth to her children, she even had a temporary stage constructed in her private apartments, so that opera could continue unabated as she convalesced!

My research in the archives of the French royal household indicates that the queen’s musical preferences were impressively forward-looking. She forcefully advocated for opéra comique and Italianate comedy at a time when those genres stood in antithesis to the courtly status quo. But not everyone was pleased when the monarch transformed the conservative theaters of Versailles into bastions of musical modernity. For opponents of the regime, Marie Antoinette’s newfangled operatic tastes marked an affront to dramatic, and by extension, to social propriety; this was interpreted as improper conduct from a “frivolous,” foreign-born queen. (Read more.)