Opéra-National
The goals of the new company were to "foster new compositional talent,"[1] revive opéras comiques from an earlier period, and produce opera at a lower ticket price for a wider public.
[2] The company first performed in the relatively large Cirque Olympique on the Boulevard du Temple, in a working class district of Paris.
Any theatre wanting to stage a work in the repertory of the state-supported Opéra, the Comédie-Française, or the Opéra-Comique had to pay a fee to the management of the appropriate company.
In addition, only the Opéra could perform particular historical and mythological ballets, thus burdening several companies, particularly the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin.
[9] As early as 14 May 1842, several composers, including Hector Berlioz, Ambroise Thomas, and Adolphe Adam, petitioned administrative authorities to create a permanent third opera house in Paris.
In September 1844 a second petition was submitted by winners of the Prix de Rome, requesting the establishment of a new lyric theatre dedicated to works of younger, lesser known composers and librettists.
[10] In 1847 Adolphe Adam, with the help of his friend François Louis Crosnier—a former director of the Opéra-Comique and current manager of the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin—obtained a license to open the Opéra-National.
The prologue, a pastiche with music by Adam, Daniel Auber, Fromental Halévy, and Michele Carafa, and a libretto by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz, was highly topical, with references to the new railway from Paris to Tours (a technical wonder of the time) and the Boulevard du Crime (nickname of the Boulevard du Temple, for the numerous melodramas about sensational crimes performed in many of the theatres located there).
The Musical World of 22 January 1848 wrote that one performance "obtained but a mediocre success owing to the detestable style in which it was executed," adding that "the singers were frightful, the chorus almost as bad as those at the Italiens, and worse than those at the Opéra Comique; the orchestra weak and coarse.
On 6 March Adam's company premiered the 1-act Les Barricades de 1848 (libretto by Édouard Brisebarre and Saint-Yves; music by Pilati and Eugène Gautier).
All the theatres were presenting similar patriotic occasional pieces, and although the program also included Hervé's 1-act Don Quichotte et Sancho Pança, later described by Reynaldo Hahn as "irresistible buffoonery",[14] audiences were sparse.
Structural alterations were made to some ancillary spaces, including the conversion of stables used for horses in Dumas's historical dramas, into the musicians' green room.
It called for new French operas with spoken dialogue (opéra comique) or sung recitative, prose or verse librettos, and with or without ballets.
[16] The new opera house opened on 27 September 1851 with the premiere of a 3-act opéra-comique with music by Xavier Boisselot called Mosquita la sorcière.
[22] In fact this was to become the pattern later in the history of the company: occasional new operas among numerous French language revivals of popular foreign works.
[23] Perhaps the most successful new French work that first season was Felicien David's La perle du Brésil, first performed on 22 November.
Although the production was apparently not up to snuff (Berlioz reported that it was "sometimes good, often bad and in all, of little advantage to the composer"),[24] it nevertheless received 17 performances before the end of that year, 47 the next, and a total of 144 by the company.
His brother Jules Seveste became temporary director and was officially appointed to the post on 1 May from a field of 20 applicants that included the tenor Gilbert Duprez.
The very next new production was Duprez's 3-act opera Joanita (a revision of his earlier L'abime de la maladetta), which opened on 11 March and starred his daughter, soprano Caroline Duprez, who had already created the lead soprano role of the first version in Brussels on 19 November 1851 and would go on to create the role of Catherine in Meyerbeer's L'étoile du nord at the Opéra-Comique in 1854.
