Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera

Examines the evolving practices in music, librettos, choreographed dance, and staging throughout the history of French Baroque opera.

In this book, Rebecca Harris-Warrick dismantles the prevailing notion that dance in French Baroque opera was merely decorative, and presents compelling evidence that the divertissement is essential to understanding the work. Evolving practices in music, librettos, choreography and staging are brought to bear on sixty years of operatic history.Since its inception, French opera has embraced dance, yet all too often operatic dancing is treated as mere decoration. Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera exposes the multiple and meaningful roles that dance has played, starting from Jean-Baptiste Lully's first opera in 1672. It counters prevailing notions in operatic historiography that dance was parenthetical and presents compelling evidence that the divertissement - present in every act of every opera - is essential to understanding the work. The book considers the operas of Lully - his lighter works as well as his tragedies - and the 46-year period between the death of Lully and the arrival of Rameau, when influences from the commedia dell'arte and other theatres began to inflect French operatic practices. It explores the intersections of musical, textual, choreographic and staging practices at a complex institution - the Académie Royale de Musique - which upheld as a fundamental aesthetic principle the integration of dance into opera.