Abstracts of issue 5-6 (1987)

The Beginnings of French Opera: The “Tragédie Lyrique” as Dramatic Genre in Neoclassical France

The present essay is a historical and critical survey of the operatic and quasi-operatic precedents that led to the formation of a French dramatic musical idiom as well as of a Baroque aesthetic that culminated in the tragédie lyrique of Lully.

1. Part I examines:
   1. the quantitative verses written a l’antique and the revival of Greek prosody;
   2. Beaujoyeux’s Ballet comique de la Royne, and
   3. the Ballet de cour, as it developed in XVIIth-century France.
2. Part II deals with the influence Italian dramatic presentations had on the development of French opera:
   4. of stage works by Rossi and Cavalli mounted in France;
   5. of “machine plays” and pastoral dramas, and
   6. of the transition from comedie-ballet to tragédie lyrique.
3. Part III is an attempt to look at the music itself, i.e., the French vocal tradition of the Renaissance and the early Baroque period:
   7. at the Italian seconda prattica ideals and of their observance or rejection in France;
   8. at the dramatic possibilities in the French monody before Lully, and
   9. at the Franco-Italian synthesis, which Lully achieved in the lyric art of the Baroque.

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