Lindsay Weaver and Professor David A. Day, Harold B. Lee Library Music & Dance Special Collections

In our modern day, the Hollywood film industry is arguably the most popular source of entertainment available to our society. For the well-to-do Parisian of the nineteenth-century, his equivalent was the strange business of opera.

When purchasing tickets for the season, the subscribing public generally expected that certain favorites would be performed from time to time, but they also expected to see new works periodically gracing the stages as well. However, financially concerned opera house directors often viewed untested operas as risky liabilities. To prevent stagnation of French opera, the government drafted legal imperative into the constitutions of state theatres ensuring that “young composers” were heard. As a result, any opera intended for performance on a public stage became a fluid construct. Such works were invariably subjected to constant, extensive revisions to cater precisely to current tastes and to secure a profit. These changes were primarily penned by the theatre directors and the individualized, personal demands made by the performers. Alterations were relentless—even an official premiere set nothing in stone because criticism published in the first reviews could inspire a floury of revision. If a work was popular, its revival invited more.

Unless he happened to be a secured favorite whose name alone guaranteed success, the composer helplessly resided more often at the bottom of the revision chain. Any complaint potentially qualified one for dismissal and replacement, offering him few options. The easiest was to do as Hector Berlioz, who vehemently resented such meddling and abandoned the theatre altogether. As for the composer whose desire for exposure superseded artistic pride, he quiescently submitted to the creative hijacking. Because what a theatre eventually staged was often very different from what the composer originally wrote, the study of an era’s repertoire offers a fascinating glimpse into the general musical and dramatic trends of the contemporary public.

Victor Massé was one such composer who thickened his skin and tolerated the process, which is why I chose to investigate the genesis of his opera, La Reine Topaze, which premiered at the Théâtre-Lyrique in 1856 and ran for 233 performances. Like a firework, it was extremely popular at the time and soon dissipated in modern obscurity, which made it a prime candidate for studying the mid-nineteenth-century’s appetite for operatic entertainment.

To accomplish this, I hoped to examine substantial elements contributing to an opera’s genesis: the music by Massé; the libretto by Lockroy and Battu; the reputation of the Théâtre-Lyrique; the already-established tastes of the time period; the director, Léon Carvalho; the performers, particularly the reigning diva and Mme le directeur herself, Caroline Miolan-Carvalho; the contemporary reviews, and letters between members of the creative team dating between 1850 and 1871.

When I first began my research, I intended to examine La Reine Topaze primarily with respect to the composer’s musical intent; but the nature of available materials relating to this opera necessitated significant adjustments to my approach.

The crux of my research hinged upon the existence of two “manuscripts” in the National Archives of France. When I traveled to Paris to compare them with the manuscript owned by BYU, I discovered these manuscripts were libretti and not the anticipated musical scores. This meant I now had seven version of the libretto (three manuscript, four published), and only three versions of music (one manuscript, two published). Even more unexpectedly, the department of archives I wished to explore was closed during my two-week stay. Had I lacked the foresight to reserve these most important documents beforehand, I would not have seen them at all. This closure limited the number of auxiliary sources I wished to consult.

My visits to la Bibliothèque Nationale de France bore more fruit. I consulted microfilms of letters and rifled through the dossiers of reviews and newspaper clippings pertaining to Victor Massé, Léon Carvalho, and Caroline Mirolan-Carvalho. Equally interesting were published memoirs and other such first-hand documents I was previously unaware of, full of character sketches and personal descriptions of the individuals I was researching. I was also able to make copies of one published libretto and request reproductions of another. The most essential item found was a published copy of the opera’s full score, which I had not been able to acquire in the United States. From my place in Provo, the closest copy belonged to the British Library. Currently I am waiting on a reproduction of that score in order to compare it to our manuscript.

From my research thus far, I have been able to make the following conclusions: First, the Harold B. Lee Library owns the only manuscript score of this opera I have been able to find. I welcome evidence disproving this statement because it is common for there to be many manuscripts of one opera from this time period. The existence of more or none for La Reine Topaze will be revelatory of its history; either way, my research will benefit. Secondly, the opera’s plot tells of a gypsy queen who falls in love with a dashing Spanish captain whom she is permitted to marry only after discovering her true heritage as a Venetian princess kidnapped as an infant by gypsies (by means of a childhood medallion). Such contrived excesses titillated the nineteenth-century’s palate for Romantic exoticism, which confirms an obvious leaning towards financial security over artistic vision.

As of today, I still have much work to do on Victor Massé and La Reine Topaze. I am in the process of collecting my reproductions and sorting through the materials I acquired in France. The process consists of transcribing the manuscript libretti and carefully comparing the differences between each version, then comparing them with the versions included in the scores. Comparisons of the same nature will occur between the manuscript score and its published editions, all of which will allow me to estimate when changes were made and interpret the justification. The research continues in the form of my Honors Thesis and after its completion, I intend to write an article for publication in the scholarly journal Nineteenth-Century Music.

References

• Lacombe, Hervé. The Keys to French Opera in the Nineteenth-Century, trans. Edward Schneider (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 14.
• Soubies, Albert. Histoire du Théâtre-Lyrique 1851-1870 (Paris: Fischbacher, 1899), 19.
• Lacombe, Hervé. The Keys to French Opera in the Nineteenth-Century, trans. Edward Schneider (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 179.