Grand opera

The term 'grand opera' is also used in a broader application in respect of contemporary or later works of similar monumental proportions from France, Germany, Italy, and other countries.

Other factors which led to Parisian supremacy at operatic spectacle were the ability of the large Paris Opéra to stage sizeable works and recruit leading stage-painters, designers and technicians, the long tradition of French ballet, and the art of stagecraft.

These include Spontini's La vestale (1807) and Fernand Cortez (1809, revised 1817), Cherubini's Les Abencérages (1813), and Rossini's Le siège de Corinthe (1827) and Moïse et Pharaon (1828).

Moreover, Il crociato with its exotic historical setting, onstage bands, spectacular costumes and themes of culture clash, exhibited many of the features on which the popularity of grand opera would be based.

What became the essential features of 'grand opéra' were foreseen by Étienne de Jouy, the librettist of Guillaume Tell, in an essay of 1826: Division into five acts seems to me the most suitable for any opera that would reunite the elements of the genre: [...] where the dramatic focus was combined with the marvellous: where the nature and majesty of the subject [...] demanded the addition of attractive festivities and splendid civil and religious ceremonies to the natural flow of the action, and consequently needed frequent scene changes.

This tale of revolution set in Naples in 1647, ending with an eruption of Mount Vesuvius into which the heroine precipitates herself, embodied the musical and scenic sensationalism which were to be grand opera's hallmark.

After the Revolution, the new regime determined to privatize the previously state-run Opéra and the winner of the contract was a businessman who acknowledged that he knew nothing of music, Louis-Désiré Véron.

Moreover, its potent mixture of melodrama, spectacle, titillation (including a ballet of the ghosts of debauched nuns), and dramatic arias and choruses went down extremely well with the new leaders of taste, the affluent bourgeoisie.

Having made a fortune in his stewardship of the Opéra, Véron cannily handed on his concession to Henri Duponchel, who continued his winning formula, if not to such financial reward.

[6] Composers who did not comply with this tradition might suffer as a consequence, as did Richard Wagner with his attempt to stage a revised Tannhäuser as a grand opera in Paris in 1861, which had to be withdrawn after three performances, partly because the ballet was in act 1 (when the dancers' admirers were still at dinner).

Ambroise Thomas contributed his Hamlet in 1868, and finally, at the end of the decade, the revised Faust was premiered at the Opéra in its grand opera format.

Jules Massenet had at least two large scale historical works to his credit, Le roi de Lahore (Paris, 1877, assessed by Grove as "the last grand opera to have a great and widespread success".

Ernest Reyer had started to compose his Sigurd years earlier, but, unable to get it premiered in Paris, settled for La Monnaie in Brussels (1884).

Some of these works – Guillaume Tell, La favorite, Les vêpres siciliennes and Don Carlos, for instance – continue to have a place in the operatic repertoire.

[8][9][10][11][12] Even the pieces that are rarely staged are increasingly being resuscitated for compact disc recordings, and many are revived at opera festivals and by companies such as Palazetto Bru Zane.

Wagner was at that time a sincere admirer of the older composer, who assisted him in arranging performances of Rienzi and Der fliegende Holländer in Dresden and Berlin.

Götterdämmerung, as noted by George Bernard Shaw,[18] shows clear traces of some return by Wagner to the grand opera tradition, and a case could also be argued for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

In many German-language houses, especially in Vienna, where Eduard Hanslick and later Gustav Mahler championed Meyerbeer and Halévy respectively, the operas continued to be performed well into the 20th century.

The growth of anti-Semitism in Germany, especially after the Nazi Party obtained political power in 1933, spelled the end of the works of these composers on German stages until modern times when La Juive, Les Huguenots, Le prophète and L'Africaine have been revived.