More than a history, this is a handbook for scholars and performers alike in comprehending the complex thought and dynamic visions that informed seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French opera.This Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome hotel review is an update of my prior Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome review from 2013.
… Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera: A History constitutes a seminal contribution to the field of scholarship in French baroque opera and dance. 'Harris-Warrick, a leading scholar of the music of the French baroque, demonstrates an encyclopaedic command of the vast repertoire of the Académie Royale de Musique, drawing on the libretti and scores of well over 100 operas and related genres, including the opéra-ballet, the pastorale héroïque and the little-studied genre of ‘fragments’. 'An indispensable resource for those reconstructing this repertoire for the stage, Harris-Warrick’s book also offers much of interest to scholars in many subspecialties of early modern European history who are willing to do the work of connecting her impressive study to the world beyond the stage.' It explores the intersections of musical, textual, choreographic and staging practices at a complex institution - the Académie Royale de Musique - which upheld as a fundamental aesthetic principle the integration of dance into opera. The book considers the operas of Lully - his lighter works as well as his tragedies - and the 46-year period between the death of Lully and the arrival of Rameau, when influences from the commedia dell'arte and other theatres began to inflect French operatic practices. It counters prevailing notions in operatic historiography that dance was parenthetical and presents compelling evidence that the divertissement - present in every act of every opera - is essential to understanding the work. Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera exposes the multiple and meaningful roles that dance has played, starting from Jean-Baptiste Lully's first opera in 1672.
Since its inception, French opera has embraced dance, yet all too often operatic dancing is treated as mere decoration.
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