French Opera Between Lully and Rameau

By Lully's death, French opera was now established as a distinct genre. Though influenced by Italian models, tragédie en musique increasingly diverged from the form then dominating Italy, opera seria.  French audiences disliked the castrato singers who were extremely popular in the rest of Europe, preferring their male heroes to be sung by the haute-contre, a particularly high tenor voice.   Dramatic recitative was at the heart of Lullian opera, whereas in Italy recitative had dwindled to a perfunctory form known as secco, where the voice was accompanied only by the continuo.  Likewise, the choruses and dances that were such a feature of French works played little or no part in opera seria.  Arguments over the respective merits of French and Italian music dominated criticism throughout the following century, until Gluck arrived in Paris and effectively fused the two traditions in a new synthesis.

Lully had not guaranteed his supremacy as the leading French opera composer through his musical talents alone. In fact, he had used his friendship with King Louis to secure a virtual monopoly on the public performance of stage music.  It was only after Lully's death that other opera composers emerged from his shadow.  The most noteworthy was probably Marc-Antoine Charpentier, whose sole tragédie en musique, Médée, appeared in Paris in 1693 to a decidedly mixed reception.  Lully's supporters were dismayed at Charpentier's inclusion of Italian elements in his opera, particularly the rich and dissonant harmony the composer had learned from his teacher Carissimi in Rome.  Nevertheless, Médée has been acclaimed as "arguably the finest French opera of the 17th century".


Other composers tried their hand at tragédie en musique in the years following Lully's death, including Marin Marais (Alcyone, 1703), and André Campra (Tancrède, 1702; Idomenée, 1712). Campra also invented a new, lighter genre: the opéra-ballet.  As the name suggests, opéra-ballet contained even more dance music than the tragédie en musique.  The subject matter was generally far less elevated too; the plots were not necessarily derived from Classical mythology and even allowed for the comic elements which Lully had excluded from the tragédie en musique after Thésée (1675).  The opéra-ballet consisted of a prologue followed by a number of self-contained acts (also known as entrées), often loosely grouped round a single theme. The individual acts could also be performed independently, in which case they were known as actes de ballet. Campra's first work in the form, L'Europe galante ("Europe in Love") of 1697, is a good example of the genre. Each of its four acts is set in a different European country (France, Spain, Italy and Turkey) and features ordinary middle-class characters.  Opéra-ballet continued to be a tremendously popular form for the rest of the Baroque period. Another popular genre of the era was the pastorale héroïque, the first example of which was Lully's last completed opera Acis et Galatée (1686).  The pastorale héroïque usually drew on Classical subject matter associated with pastoral poetry and was in three acts, rather than the five of the tragédie en musique.m Around this time, some composers also experimented at writing the first French comic operas, a good example being Mouret's Les amours de Ragonde (1714).