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French opera is one of Europe's most important operatic traditions, containing works by composers of the stature of Lully, Rameau, Berlioz, Bizet, Debussy, Poulenc and Messiaen. Many foreign-born composers have played a part in the French tradition as well, including Gluck, Salieri, Cherubini, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Offenbach and Verdi. French opera began at the court of Louis XIV of France with Jean-Baptiste Lully's ''Cadmus et Hermione'' (1673), although there had been various experiments with the form before that, most notably ''Pomone'' by Robert Cambert. Lully and his librettist Quinault created ''tragédie en musique'', a form in which dance music and choral writing were particularly prominent.〔Orrey p.34〕 Lully's most important successor was Rameau. After Rameau's death, the German Gluck was persuaded to produce six operas for the Parisian stage in the 1770s. They show the influence of Rameau, but simplified and with greater focus on the drama. At the same time, by the middle of the 18th century another genre was gaining popularity in France: ''opéra comique'', in which arias alternated with spoken dialogue.〔Orrey p.45〕 By the 1820s, Gluckian influence in France had given way to a taste for the operas of Rossini. Rossini's ''Guillaume Tell'' helped found the new genre of Grand opera, a form whose most famous exponent was Giacomo Meyerbeer.〔Orrey p. 153〕 Lighter ''opéra comique'' also enjoyed tremendous success in the hands of Boïeldieu, Auber and others. In this climate, the operas of the French-born composer Hector Berlioz struggled to gain a hearing. Berlioz's epic masterpiece ''Les Troyens'', the culmination of the Gluckian tradition, was not given a full performance for almost a hundred years after it was written. In the second half of the 19th century, Jacques Offenbach dominated the new genre of operetta with witty and cynical works such as ''Orphée aux enfers'';〔Orrey p.204〕 Charles Gounod scored a massive success with ''Faust'';〔Orrey p.154〕 and Bizet composed ''Carmen'', probably the most famous French opera of all. At the same time, the influence of Richard Wagner was felt as a challenge to the French tradition. Perhaps the most interesting response to Wagnerian influence was Claude Debussy's unique operatic masterpiece ''Pelléas et Mélisande'' (1902).〔See Orrey, p.216: "A unique distillation of the essence of Wagner".〕 Other notable 20th century names include Ravel, Poulenc and Messiaen. ==The birth of French opera: Lully== The first operas to be staged in France were imported from Italy, beginning with Francesco Sacrati's ''La finta pazza'' in 1645. French audiences gave them a lukewarm reception. This was partly for political reasons, since these operas were promoted by the Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin, who was then first minister during the regency of the young King Louis XIV and a deeply unpopular figure with large sections of French society. Musical considerations also played a role, since the French court already had a firmly established genre of stage music, ''ballet de cour'', which included sung elements as well as dance and lavish spectacle.〔''Oxford Illustrated'' p.33-35〕 When two Italian operas, Francesco Cavalli's ''Xerse'' and ''Ercole amante'', proved failures in Paris in 1660 and 1662, the prospects of opera flourishing in France looked remote.〔"Francesco Cavalli" in ''Viking Opera Guide'', pp.189-94〕 Yet Italian opera would stimulate the French to make their own experiments at the genre and, paradoxically, it would be an Italian-born composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully, who would found a lasting French operatic tradition. In 1669, Pierre Perrin founded the Académie d'Opéra and, in collaboration with the composer Robert Cambert, tried his hand at composing operatic works in French. Their first effort, ''Pomone'', appeared on stage on 3 March 1671 and was followed a year later by ''Les peines et plaisirs de l'amour''. At this point King Louis XIV transferred the privilege of producing operas from Perrin to Jean-Baptiste Lully.〔Grout p.134〕〔''Viking'' p.180〕 Lully, a Florentine, was already the favourite musician of the king, who had assumed full royal powers in 1661 and was intent on refashioning French culture in his image. Lully had a sure instinct for knowing exactly what would satisfy the taste of his master and the French public in general. He had already composed music for extravagant court entertainments as well as for the theatre, most notably the ''comédies-ballets'' inserted into plays by Molière. Yet Molière and Lully had quarrelled bitterly and the composer found a new and more pliable collaborator in Philippe Quinault, who would write the libretti for all but two of Lully's operas. On 27 April 1673, Lully's ''Cadmus et Hermione'' - often regarded as the first French opera in the full sense of the term — appeared in Paris.〔''Viking Opera Guide'' p.589〕 It was a work in a new genre, which its creators Lully and Quinault baptised ''tragédie en musique'',〔Also known as ''tragédie lyrique''〕 a form of opera specially adapted for French taste. Lully went on to produce ''tragédies en musique'' at the rate of at least one a year until his death in 1687 and they formed the bedrock of the French national operatic tradition for almost a century. As the name suggests, ''tragédie en musique'' was modelled on the French Classical tragedy of Corneille and Racine. Lully and Quinault replaced the confusingly elaborate Baroque plots favoured by the Italians with a much clearer five-act structure. Each of the five acts generally followed a regular pattern. An aria in which one of the protagonists expresses their inner feelings is followed by recitative mixed with short arias (''petits airs'') which move the action forward. Acts end with a ''divertissement'', the most striking feature of French Baroque opera, which allowed the composer to satisfy the public's love of dance, huge choruses and gorgeous visual spectacle. The recitative, too, was adapted and moulded to the unique rhythms of the French language and was often singled out for special praise by critics, a famous example occurring in Act Two of Lully's ''Armide''. The five acts of the main opera were preceded by an allegorical prologue, another feature Lully took from the Italians, which he generally used to sing the praises of Louis XIV. Indeed, the entire opera was often thinly disguised flattery of the French monarch, who was represented by the noble heroes drawn from Classical myth or Mediaeval romance. The ''tragédie en musique'' was a form in which all the arts, not just music, played a crucial role. Quinault's verse combined with the set designs of Carlo Vigarani or Jean Bérain and the choreography of Beauchamp and Olivet, as well as the elaborate stage effects known as the ''machinery''.〔''French Baroque Masters'' p.27〕 As one of its detractors, Melchior Grimm, was forced to admit: "To judge of it, it is not enough to see it on paper and read the score; one must have seen the picture on the stage".〔Girdlestone, p.111〕〔General references for this section: chapter on Lully in ''French Baroque Masters'' by James R. Anthony; the chapter "Lulli's ''Tragédie en musique'' in Girdlestone, p.104ff.; article on Lully in ''Viking''.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「French opera」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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