Libretto – Partitur – Szene. Studien zum Musiktheater

The following perspectives of research in opera draw on an unfamiliar area of what may be called ‘popular opera’. Because, from various points of view, it is an anomaly in Charles-Simon Favart’s œuvre, Les nymphes de Diane (1747) raises more questions than usual about the evolution of opéra-comique. In the following survey I hope to draw together its points of interest, not excluding questions of further study. A performance on stage could certainly be given: only then would experience bear out, or contradict, impressions made from historical sources.

At the present time there is, it seems, no secondary literature on this work – hardly an exceptional fact for this period of comic opera, neglected for so long by comparison with the later eighteenth century. Even the monograph by August Font, his doctoral thesis on Favart, makes no special mention that a complete musical source of Les nymphes de Diane (hereafter Les nymphes) was issued in 1748¹. To be sure, it consists only of vocal lines without accompaniment, but it offers the most complete and accessible musical picture of any Favart work stemming from his first two decades of production: normally there are grave difficulties in identifying certain vaudevilles². We shall mention later a perhaps unique example of a manuscript source with complete music for Favart’s La chercheuse d’esprit (1741) at the Bibliothèque Municipale de Versailles; but its online presence on that collection’s website has unfortunately come to an end³. For Les nymphes one finds no manuscript trace in either of the main Parisian archives, but many others should be searched⁴.

Les nymphes was first performed and published in Brussels, its libretto containing an excellent frontispiece designed by C. N. Cochin and engraved ←17 | 18→by P. Q. Chedel⁵. Its forty-page musical supplement contains eighty-six numbered items, these vaudevilles bearing their timbres for easy co-ordination with the libretto. Just before the closing vaudeville is actually a new composition in the form of a sectional duet, “Cruelle Sévérine”, which constitutes another unusual facet of this source: only from other evidence do we know that this duet was by Michel Corrette. In 1995 his authorship was noticed by Elisabeth Cook, who remembered the same duet in Corrette’s fourth issue of Vaudevilles et ariettes de l’Opera Comique⁶. Here (and not in the 1748 Table des airs for Les nymphes) we find these words above the duet’s music: “Représenté sur le grand Théâtre de Bruxelles par les Comédiens de S.A.S. M^r Le Mar[éch]al de Saxe”. The last fifty-three bars of this piece were edited and discussed by Cook in her pioneering study⁷.

Two further aspects of new information must be mentioned here. The first concerns the work’s premiere in Paris. Because the seemingly earliest Paris libretto reports that Les nymphes was “représenté pour la premiere fois tout en Vaudevilles sur le Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique de la Foire S. Laurent le 22 Septembre 1755”⁸, modern authorities have adopted this as the date of the Paris premiere. In fact, it was first seen in Paris on 25 September 1753, presumably at this time still being in possession of its spoken dialogue⁹. The second aspect concerns an important general question: the survival of popular operas en vaudevilles beyond the year 1762 when the Opéra Comique was amalgamated with the Comédie-Italienne. As were several others, Les nymphes was indeed revived here between 1774 and 1782 with accompaniments arranged by Jean-Baptiste Moulinghen: but only one set of his unpublished material has been so far located, and this awaits investigation¹⁰.

The Brussels connection was an accident of politics. Les nymphes was originally intended to be given during the Foire Saint-Laurent season of ←18 | 19→1741, but was prohibited: “L’Entrepreneur de L’Opéra Comique avoit fait même beaucoup de dépense, mais le tout inutilement, par la mauvaise humeur d’un Commis de la Police”¹¹. It could be that the police acted after having read a copy of the libretto: manuscript librettos were normally submitted to the censor’s office at a late stage of preparation or rehearsal. This ‘entrepreneur’ was Florimond Boizard de Pontau, whose wasted expenditures on Les nymphes regrettably fell at a disastrous time for his finances. In 1741 he already owed nearly 8.500 livres to Henry Delamain, an English dancer and manager whose troupe he had hired; and by 1743, when Pontau finally retired, he owed the Paris Opéra some 33.600 livres¹².

Why should the police have taken this attitude? Because Les nymphes derives from one of the obscene tales (Contes) by Jean de La Fontaine, entitled Les lunettes (The Spectacles). Almost nothing of the Tale remains in the opera, of course, but a tiny overt link is made through the motif of the spectacles, which are worn in the opera by the elderly nymph Gangan (played by a man), whose task is to supervise the younger nymphs. Gangan and the spectacles are visible on the right of Cochin’s frontispiece engraving.

La Fontaine’s Tale was first issued in 1674 in his Nouveaux contes, a collection particularly satirising nuns, priests and devout persons. In Les lunettes a beardless youth disguises himself within a convent and fathers a child by a nun. When the baby arrives, an intimate search of the nuns is carried out by the spectacle-wearing Superior, so that the ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ is discovered¹³: he is condemned to be punished by being tied to a tree and flogged. While he awaits this chastisement he contrives to be released by a stranger, a miller passing by, who agrees to change places with him in the hope of proving his virility.

In reconceiving other La Fontaine sources for the public stage Favart had recently created ingenious, realistic comedies in a French village setting. Both La servante justifiée (1740) and La chercheuse d’esprit (1741) avoid the predatory central male figures of their original Tales¹⁴, but offer instead the central figure of a wealthy widow who desires remarriage, partly to help her to continue running the family business¹⁵. Young love, in both comedies, triumphs over the aspirations of middle age, and only the most ←19 | 20→general structural connection with La Fontaine remains in each case. But Les nymphes de Diane has even less to do with French rural life than it does with La Fontaine’s Les lunettes: it is in effect a pastoral set in the Forest of Diana, where the goddess’s statue is seen within a circular temple upstage, while an altar for sacrifices is placed downstage. Its pastoral setting affords further reasons why Les nymphes occupies a transitional place in this genre. Few if any previous opéra-comique texts had sought to remove all reference to everyday French life, including satirical reference, or sought to remove all urban characters and all Italian commedia characters.

Favart’s model was obviously Alexis Piron’s opéra-comique Les jardins de l’hymen, ou La rose (1744), first called Le P[ucelage] ou La rose (1726, but prohibited by the police), and published in 1752 as La roze ou Les festes de l’hymen. Rameau was Piron’s collaborator: “Rameau’s music, now lost, included a Da Capo air, ‘Le jour ne luit qu’à peine encore’, a representation of the dawn chorus featuring the song of the nightingale; a musette; and several ‘danses légères et galantes’”¹⁶. Piron had imagined

a true allegory, in which the whole action may be seen as a symbolic equivalent of something else. It clearly takes its inspiration from the Roman de la rose, but, whereas in that work the rose represents the beloved, in Piron’s the content is more overtly erotic, with the rose belonging to the central character Rosette clearly symbolising her virginity, and the action dramatizing the pubescent girl’s efforts to rid herself of it as quickly as possible, while her mother rushes to get her married first.¹⁷

Les nymphes de Diane, it seems, has taken Les lunettes and transformed it similarly, adding the theme of initiation, thereby making the result not just a pretty entertainment but perhaps also an argument (by implication) which questions the practice of religious confinement. When we look at the fashionable costumes in Cochin’s frontispiece the possibility of allegory increases. Favart kept his politics private, but he was not a naïve artist: he studied at the Collège Louis-le-Grand and was a prize-winner in poetry at the Jeux Floraux at Toulouse¹⁸. Les nymphes invites those who know that Les lunettes concerned nuns in a convent to imagine the circumstances whereby nuns might – as for Diana’s nymphs in the opera – be given the chance to withdraw from their ceremonial vows, and to act with some autonomy. It need hardly be pointed out that these same issues would be treated in fiction by ←20 | 21→Denis Diderot in La religieuse: his novel was written in 1760 but not issued in print until 1796. Under the ancien régime, religious vows by girls could be taken at the age of sixteen,

and release from them could only be granted by the state. […] When it is remembered that the legal majority for disposing of one’s own money was twenty-five, the anomaly is seen to be absurd. Thus in the novel, Suzanne, under irresistible pressure, could legally dispose of herself, body and soul, for ever at the age of sixteen, but have no say in her money affairs.¹⁹

In Scene 2 of Les nymphes, Sévérine, the “Grande Prêtresse de Diane”, is told by her confidante Cyane that Thémire – the central figure – is in fact fifteen years old. The action of Les nymphes de Diane takes place over nineteen scenes, and may be summarised as follows:

Agénor (‘Amant de Thémire’) and his valet Cliton meet by chance near Diana’s Temple: Agénor explains how a chance encounter with Thémire has inspired his love; but it is today that she is due to take her vows of chastity; she is preparing for the traditional ritual. Cliton describes his own encounters with sundry nymphs. They exit as the High Priestess Sévérine enters with Cyane, explaining the forthcoming ritual: the threatening lover is, by tradition, ceremonially rejected by the aspiring nymphe before she is initiated into the cult of Diana. Thémire appears, and rehearses the words with which she must perform this rejection. But she wants Sévérine to explain Love to her; Sévérine duly seeks to scare Thémire with talk of a horrible monster, whose dangers are difficult to explain exactly.

The nymph Églé runs in to report an intruder: the disguised Cliton, discovered by old Gangan. Sévérine orders him to be brought in and chained to the altar, which is done in pantomime to Air 37, twenty-seven bars in 6/4 metre. The nymphs then leave, but suddenly a Satyr appears. Cliton converses with him, claiming to be a prudish lover, and the Satyr fearlessly exchanges places with him, subsequently hiding his face from view. In a danced episode (with music taken from Rameau and Montéclair) the nymphs return for the ceremony and line up near the altar²⁰. Sévérine’s following Da Capo solo of forty bars’ length (Air 46) urges the nymphs to resist any lover, however tempting.

Accompanied by a ‘simphonie de flutes’, Agénor enters, followed by two slaves carrying a large basket of flowers which they place by the altar. Agénor takes a bouquet and presents it to Thémire; overcome with emotion she is unable to finish her speech, but still rejects Agénor, who therefore leaves. Sévérine consoles Thémire with a promise of female friendship, then urges the nymphs to exert punishment on the Satyr (a cue for his amusing protestations). As he is about to be sacrificed, Églé enters to the sound of horns: Cupid ←21 | 22→has been spotted in the forest and the nymphs must take up arms against him; Thémire and Cyane release the Satyr, who chases them offstage. From the basket of flowers a small Cupid emerges, wearing coloured wings: he gives an arrow to Thémire, who pricks herself accidentally. She abandons herself to Love; then Agénor appears and a love-scene ensues. Offstage, Diana’s forces are defeated. Cupid brings on the captured nymphs: even Sévérine must now concede victory. A divertissement concludes the proceedings, as Cupid unites the nymphs with various lovers.

Les nymphes stands chronologically between the initial Théâtre de la Foire period and the freely cosmopolitan opéras-comiques that stemmed from the Bouffon intermezzi in the 1750s, of which Le caprice amoureux, ou Ninette à la cour is the best-known example from Favart’s pen. The marquis d’Argenson noted of Les nymphes that “ce sujet est noble, mythologique, tendre et favorable aux plaisirs et à la nature; mais les mœurs, contraints par la loy, crient à la licence. Le jeu de théâtre y fait tout, le spectacle y charme, et la lecture n’en est que supportable et amusante pour un moment”²¹. He must have seen and read the comedy following the work’s belated Paris premiere and publication. But as we shall see, this was not identical to what had been shown in Brussels. D’Argenson’s reference to immorality refers partly to the work’s undoubted use of sexual innuendo, but the author surely recalled La Fontaine’s original Tale alongside Favart’s transformation of it: he specifically mentions elsewhere this kind of double-impression in parallel cases²².

Favart’s presence in Brussels is quickly explained. In June 1745 the Opéra Comique succumbed to pressure on the government exerted by the Comédiens Français: the government closed the Opéra Comique for an initial period of three years, extended later to six years²³. Immediately, Favart’s services were sought by Maréchal Maurice de Saxe, then active in the War of Austrian Succession. He led an invasion of the United Provinces and entered Brussels in January 1746. During that year Favart travelled on campaign, in charge of theatre entertainments for Saxe’s French army (sometimes however performing for the enemy side!) then from 1747 to 1748 he became initially co-Director, then sole Director, of the Théâtre de la Monnaie. Thus ←22 | 23→it was that Les nymphes was premiered on 1 June 1747²⁴; the libretto title-page describes the company as “les Comédiens de S. A. S. Monseigneur le Comte de Saxe, Maréchal Général des Camps et Armées du ROY, & Commandant général des Pays-Bas”.

This was a well-appointed company, although the number of choral singers and orchestral players remains unknown at present. But there certainly were dancers, as there were at the Fair theatres, and we have seen in Les nymphes that ensemble scenes and dances played a role. Malou Haine concluded that “à l’époque de Favart, le Théâtre de la Monnaie acquiert une réputation de qualité et de faste dans ses spectacles”²⁵. Favart had improved the quality of the existing company by selectively introducing some of his own star performers as substitutes for lesser talents²⁶. Sévérine was acted by Mme Durancy, formerly Mlle d’Arimath; Thémire was acted by Marie-Justine Favart under the name Mlle Chantilly²⁷. Agénor was acted by Sr Durancy²⁸ and Cliton by the veteran actor and dentist, Louis Lécluze. Cyane’s role was taken by Mlle “Danctaire” but this must be “D’Hannetaire”, one of the Brussels artists already in place, as was Mlle Jacmont (Églé) and the ten-year-old Mlle Evrard, to whom the role of Cupid was given²⁹.