Popular Opera in Eighteenth-Century France - Music and Entertainment Before the Revolution

A major re-orientation in understanding opera, exploring musical comedies with spoken dialogue previously excluded from historical accounts.

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. Music and spoken theatre; 3. Music in Gherardi's company; 4. Singing and acting at home; 5. Opéra-comique en vaudevilles; 6. Experiences of popular theatre; 7. Comic and serious themes; 8. Performance as history; 9. Musical expansion; 10. Italian inroads: the King's company; 11. Six methods of synthesis; 12. A 'Musico-dramatic art'; 13. Conclusions.

About the author

David Charlton is Emeritus Professor of Music History at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has published on topics in opera between Bizet and Purcell. He is author of Grétry and the Growth of Opera-Comique (Cambridge University Press, 1986) and Opera in the Age of Rousseau (Cambridge University Press, 2012), editor of The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and also of The Music of Simon Holt (The Boydell Press, 2017).

Product details

• Authors: David Charlton, Charlton David
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 21.12.2023
• EAN: 9781009011754
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0901175-4
• No. of pages: 392
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Music > General, dictionaries; France, MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Opera, Opera, 18th century, c 1700 to c 1799, C 1700 To C 1800