Book Reviews
is not centralized and work-specific are
characterized as “sloppy” and “lazy” and
singers are almost invariably “temperamen-
tal” and out for their own glory rather
than the more noble cause of drama (e.g.,
“Weber tolerated no sloppiness or tempera-
mental displays” [p. 113], or “The [house]
poet needed to instill some order or
discipline . . . otherwise, petty disputes
and jealousies among the performers could
easily distract” [p. 61]).
But didn’t the showboating antics of cas-
trati become part of the show? The ends of
this discipline remain frustratingly vague,
never gaining greater resonance than the
“fascination of ‘backstage at the opera’ ”
with which Baker opens his book or tran-
scending the scare quotes he places around
this truism. Descriptions of staging “advanc-
ing the drama” are never further eluci-
dated, and modes of representation like
“naturalism,” “realism,” and “psychological”
are mentioned without being unpacked.
The exclusion of costume design is also
telling. While it was a late entry into the
centralized stage-design process, costuming
is where the visuals of production literally
meet the body of the performer. This live-
ness and presence seems to be a missing el-
ement in Baker’s narrative, evoked only
through conventional images of backstage
hustle and bustle.
Perhaps this is asking too much of a pop-
ular and essentially technocratic study, and
one that, despite these criticisms, makes a
major contribution—as well as a handsome
addition to any coffee table. Yet Baker’s
ideal of a univalent signifying system seems
to do little justice to such a complex genre
as opera. Operatic staging is a challenge
and an opportunity not solely because of
the forces and expense involved but also
because of operas’ richness as texts. Of a
flamboyant late-seventeenth-century li-
bretto, Baker writes that “opera was in dan-
ger of becoming a caricature of itself ”
(p. 40), but this opera was still an opera,
whatever its distance from Baker’s unified
ideals. A study of this breadth would bene-
fit from a more broad-minded approach to
meaning and representation. This might
get us closer to why opera is not only excit-
ing but also magical.
Micaela Baranello
Swarthmore College
701
Opera in the Age of Rousseau: Music,
Confrontation, Realism. By David
Charlton. (Cambridge Studies in
Opera.) Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2013. [xxi, 413 p.
ISBN 9780521887601 (hardcover),
$124.99; ISBN 9781139786065 (e-
book), $100.] Music examples, illustra-
tions, portraits, charts, diagrams, bibli-
ography, index.
David Charlton’s Opera in the Age of
Rousseau appears on the heels of Jean-
Jacques Rousseau’s tercentenary, in a year
that also saw the publication of an insight-
ful colloquy in the Journal of the American
Musicological Society. In its introduction,
Jacqueline Waeber comments on the per-
petual historiographical chasm between
Rousseau’s intellectual and musical output
which, as she claims, inevitably fuels
the cliché of Rousseau the “dabbler”
( Jacqueline Waeber, convenor, “Rousseau
in 2013: Afterthoughts on a Tercentenary,”
Journal of the American Musicological Society
66, no. 1 [Spring 2013]: 253). From André
Grétry’s Mémoires through nineteenth-
century criticism and into our post-
Derridean musicological present, critics
have concentrated their evaluations of
Rousseau’s musical thought on his individ-
ualism and his personality, focusing almost
exclusively on his prose writings. Rejecting
the “Great Man” model, Charlton offers a
thorough reexamination of Rousseau’s mu-
sical milieu. His book, then, is not as much
about as it is around Rousseau. By examining
Rousseau’s famous one-act Le devin du vil-
lage alongside Eustachio Bambini’s bouffons
troupe, as well as little-known contempo-
raries, Charlton presents a comprehensive
study of musical life in and around Paris
between the years 1739 and 1774, “roughly
between Rameau’s zenith and Gluck’s
advent” (p. xi). In short, Opera in the Age of
Rousseau is a massive achievement in its
comprehensive reexamination of a critical
period in French musical history.
Charlton draws on a dizzying array of pri-
mary source material, and touches on is-
sues of patronage, comic and tragic con-
ventions, the politics of repertory choice,
modes of historical and pastoral represen-
tation, discourses of opera reform, and the
mobility of operatic works between Parisian
702
theaters. In chapter 1, entitled “Palaces and
Patronage: Le Devin and the 1754 Alceste,”
Charlton discusses the theater group of
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de
Pompadour, the official chief mis-
tress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death in
1764. Scholars of the period, Charlton ar-
gues, have hitherto focused on luxury and
image-making as the principles driving
Pompadour’s selection of theater works for
her court. But published accounts, Charlton
writes, “have rarely assessed the musical and
operatic achievement of the woman who
commissioned twelve new operas, eight of
which reached the Paris stage in largely au-
thentic form, many circulating in the public
domain through printed scores and libret-
tos; who trained, rehearsed, sang and acted
the female (or male) leading role in all of
them; and who oversaw the running of a
group whose decisions were taken exclu-
sively by women” (p. 15). In support of this
claim, Charlton includes a useful table that
provides an overview of theater works spon-
sored by Pompadour (Rousseau’s Devin was
performed there in 1752, a year before its
public premiere at the Théâtre du Palais-
Royal).
Charlton’s discussions of staging, acting,
costuming, and singing conventions offer
valuable insights into the technologies of
operatic production in eighteenth-century
France, a severely understudied area of
scholarship. Charlton identifies two pri-
mary types of comedic movement: haut
(high) and bas (low), represented by styl-
ized gesture and realistic movement, re-
spectively. Such distinctions are found in
Opéra librettos that record the practices of
earlier revivals and also record the stage di-
rections for the use of subsequent genera-
tions (p. 36). Two examples of such libret-
tos are M. Favart’s Don Quichotte, set by
Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (see table 2.1,
p. 37) and Jacques Autreau’s Platée, set by
Jean-Philippe Rameau (see table 2.2, p.
30). Charlton then discusses the use of ges-
ture in representing tragedy, and shares
useful archival findings that elucidate how
actors were expected to move. Yet, at times
these sources are presented at face value,
when they could have benefitted from a
broader philosophical context.
One especially revealing source is Abbé
Blanchet’s eighteen-page section on oper-
atic acting within L’art, ou les principes
philosophiques du chant (later discussed in
Notes, June 2015
Part II, chapter 8). Blanchet ordered
singers to be faithful to the conventions of
gesture, and to develop an individual inter-
pretation based on gestural convention.
For example, Blanchet noted that move-
ments should be briefer for lively emotions,
and slower and smoother for tranquil ones.
As Blanchet writes, “The action can be re-
duced to arm, eye and facial movements,
which can be either slow or quick, sus-
tained or disjointed, various or maintained
. . . variety of gesture is a new source of
pleasure in opera . . . the duration of all
these movements just analyzed must vary
accordingly to the emotions . . .” (p. 44). As
Charlton argues, Blanchet’s ideas on ges-
ture are grounded in Enlightenment aes-
thetics: Blanchet urges singers to read the
classics, emulate the sculptures of Edmé
Bouchardon, analyze paintings, and study
the best professional actors. Although
Blanchet seems to imply that the arts speak
to one another, at this point Charlton
thwarts a potentially revelatory discussion
of ekphrasis—and Enlightenment aesthet-
ics more generally—by reducing Blanchet’s
aesthetics to the word “Diderotian.” In-
deed, throughout his book Charlton
chooses to engage with Enlightenment
thought strictly by way of dramaturgical
context: a section entitled “galant meta-
physics,” for instance, is dominated by a dis-
cussion of two little-known theater works:
Zélie, a divertissement, and Les caractères de
la folie, an opéra-ballet (pp. 118–24).
While many chapters in Opera in the Age
of Rousseau focus on the contexts surround-
ing the composition, performance, and re-
ception of Le devin du village, chapter 5 (“Le
Devin du Village: a contextual inquiry”) en-
gages with the work directly. Charlton re-
jects the commonplace reading of Le devin
as simply Rousseau’s response to the
Querelle des Bouffons, and instead ex-
plains how Rousseau absorbed a range of
operas and prose texts by Parisian reform-
ers predating the bouffons’ arrival. The
chapter, then, narrates a teleological shift
from appropriation to synthesis. One likely
model for Le devin was P. Laujon’s and
Boismortier’s Daphnis et Chloé, which, like
Le devin, was a “bourgeois comedy in pas-
toral guise” (p. 130). Both Rousseau’s and
Boismortier’s scores place the divertisse-
ments at the ends of each act, organize
tonal patterns according to dramatic ac-
tion, and use an obbligato solo violin in
Book Reviews
recitative passages. Yet Daphnis’s failure,
Charlton argues, was due to its over-
reliance on antiquated da capo arias,
whereas Le devin’s success was due to its use
of the more fashionable romances.
The mobility of operatic works between
theaters is an understudied topic in
eighteenth-century music studies and in
opera studies in general. Charlton’s book
reports on the travels of Eustachio
Bambini’s bouffons troupe to Paris in 1752,
presenting information previously unavail-
able to Anglophone scholars. In chapter 10
(“ ‘A real kick in the backside’: Bambini’s
performances and their effect”), Charlton
uncovers archival evidence suggesting that
the bouffons did not “invade” Paris, but
rather “worked within a policy of semi-
integration within the Opéra’s production
process” (p. 264). Thanks to their modest
set designs, smaller intermezzi such as La
serva padrona were more mobile and thus
more amenable to trial performances
(Charlton itemizes the stage settings in the
Paris bouffons repertory in table 10.5 on
p. 266). During this “trial period,” only two
or three singers were sent at a time. In
November 1752, the prévôt des marchands
Louis Bazile de Bernage signed the troupe
to a twelve-month deal, which allowed the
bouffons to present larger operas (a com-
plete list of the bouffons’ repertory is pre-
sented in table 10.2 on p. 254). Charlton
thus interprets the progression of repertory
presented by the bouffons at the Opéra as a
process of gradual assimilation. He sup-
ports this claim by drawing conclusions
from the bouffons’ gradual expansion of
repertory presented at the Opéra. For one,
after the nameless interior of La serva pa-
drona, subsequent bouffon dramas featured
stronger senses of place, thanks to larger
and more realistic sets. For another, the
increase in the number of singer-actors
allowed for more dramatic variety. And fi-
nally, this increase in dramatic variety made
room for a broader palette of musical
styles, such as the récitatif obligé, the “devil-
dance,” and the use of local color in choral
numbers (an example of the latter is
Rinaldo da Capua’s La zingara, which was
first performed in 1753). Charlton’s read-
ing of the bouffons’ arrival in Paris thus
shifts away from the common dichotomy of
“Italian” versus “French” styles, and instead
narrates the episode as a gradual accep-
tance based on financial limitations.
703
Despite the book’s many attributes, some
presentation-related issues may hinder
readability. Chapters generally lack intro-
ductions and conclusions, making it diffi-
cult to extract underlying themes or argu-
ments that cut across the book’s thirteen
chapters. For instance, the opening para-
graph of chapter 2 starts the reader off on
unstable footing by claiming that there is
“no balanced thesis to offer” (p. 31). Many
block quotations from primary sources are
not fully attributed, while those from sec-
ondary sources are neither straightfor-
wardly endorsed nor directly challenged.
An idiosyncratic bibliographic format, in
which the titles of books and articles are
abbreviated, makes quick glances at the
footnotes impossible without consulting
the bibliography. Important texts that are
quoted in the book (such as James
Anthony’s dissertation on André Campra,
quoted on p. 92) are not included as biblio-
graphic entries. Given the book’s breadth,
the eleven-page index seems meager, and
does not adequately represent the sec-
ondary scholarship cited within Charlton’s
text ( James H. Johnson appears in the in-
dex for his brief cameo on p. 187, but
Charles Dill and Daniel Heartz, among oth-
ers, are absent).
Despite these issues in presentation,
Opera in the Age of Rousseau is a substantial
and much-needed reexamination of a pe-
riod of history that Richard Taruskin iden-
tified as “until recently the most systemati-
cally neglected span of years in the whole
history of European ‘fine-art’ music”
(Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of
Western Music, vol. 2 [New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005], 401). The book will
serve as an essential resource for scholars
and graduate students interested in
Rousseau, Bambini’s bouffons troupe, and
operatic practice during the Ancien
Régime.
Jacek Blaszkiewicz
Eastman School of Music
Falling Up: The Days and Nights of
Carlisle Floyd: The Authorized Biogra-
phy. By Thomas Holliday, with a fore-
word by Plácido Domingo. Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press, 2013.
[xxiii, 509 p. ISBN 9780815610038.
$45.] Photographs, bibliographic ref-
erences, appendix, index.