¹ ‘Après le finale du trio des masques, on rappela les chanteurs, on fit une ovation à la Ludkof. Tout à coup, du milieu de la foule très montée, des voix réclamèrent “l’hymne russe!” Le rideau à demi baissé déjà se releva, les artistes et les chœurs reparurent sur la scène, puis l’orchestre attaqua les premières mesures de l’air national russe. En un clin d’œil la salle entière fut debout, et c’était d’un effet saisissant, l’aspect de ces trois étages de loges garnies de jeunes femmes aux épaules nues applaudissant avec exaltation. A mesure que se succédaient les paroles de l’hymne, la manifestation grandissait, les spectateurs de l’orchestre criaient des vivats et trépignaient. Une émotion électrique secouait toutes ces âmes. Les bouches s’ouvraient pour jeter des acclamations, les femmes arrachaient les fleurs de leur corsage et les lançaient sur la scène, les homes agitaient frénétiquement leurs chapeaux. Jacques regarda la loge du premier étage; l’inconnue en blanc, les yeux illuminés, la poitrine soulevée, avait déchiré ses gants et frappait l’une contre l’autre, à les meurtrir, les paumes de ses petites mains nues.’ Theuriet, André, Charme dangereux (Paris, 1891), 66–67Google Scholar. ‘Ludkof’ is a fictional Russian singer playing Zerlina. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

² The date of A Life for the Tsar’s French premiere is frequently given as February 1899, following the incorrect information given in Ellis, LeRoy, La Colonie russe dans les Alpes-Maritimes: des origines à 1939 (Nice, 1988), 161Google Scholar.

³ See, for example, the report in Le Petit Niçois, 31 January 1890: ‘The whole theatre rose to its feet trembling and applauded the hymn … Cries of Vive la Russie! Vive la France! sounded out from around the auditorium … A new cry rang out from every breast: La Marseillaise! And all of a sudden … among this enthused, sparkling, vibrant, enflamed crowd, came the opening bars of our national anthem’ (‘La salle toute entière se lève frémissante et applaudit l’hymne … Des cris de Vive la Russie! Vive la France! partent de diverse points de la salle … un nouveau cri s’échappe de toutes poitrines: La Marseillaise! Et tout à coup … au milieu de ce public enthousiasmé, éclatent, vibrantes, enflammées, les premières mesures de notre chant national’).

⁴ Le Cosmopolite (Nice), 4 February 1890, quoted in Druilhe, Paule, ‘Une Originale figure de directeur de Théâtre lyrique: Raoul Gunsbourg à Nice (1889–1891)’, Nice historique 62 (1978), 108Google Scholar.

⁵ On French nervousness over German and Italian influence in this period, see, for example, Christophe Charle, ‘Opera in France, 1870–1914: Between Nationalism and Foreign Imports’, trans. Jennifer Boittin, in Opera and Society in Italy and France from Monteverdi to Bourdieu, ed. Victoria Johnson, Jane Fulcher and Thomas Ertman (Cambridge, 2007), 243–66; Pasler, Jann, ‘Paris: Conflicting Notions of Progress’, in The Late Romantic Era: From the Mid-Nineteenth Century to World War I, ed. Jim Samson (Basingstoke, 1991)Google Scholar, especially 392–400; and Clair Rowden, ‘Werther, La Navarraise and verismo: A Matter of Taste’, Franco-British Studies 37 (2006–7), 6–17.

⁶ See, for instance Schaeffner, André, ‘Debussy et ses rapports avec la musique russe’, in Pierre Souvtchinsky et al., Musique russe; études réunies (Paris, 1953), 95–138Google Scholar; Brody, Elaine, ‘Russians in Paris (1889–1914)’, in Russian and Soviet Music: Essays for Boris Schwarz, ed. Malcolm Hamrick Brown (Ann Arbor, 1984), 157–183Google Scholar; Fauser, Annegret, Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair (Rochester, NY, 2005), 43–47Google Scholar; and Haine, Malou, ‘Paris à l’heure musicale russe: le rôle des expositions universelles de 1867 à 1900’, Musique, images, instruments: Revue française d’organologie et d’iconographie musicale 13 (2012), 15–28Google Scholar. One study that has taken a more political approach is Helena Tyrväinen’s ‘Helsinki – Saint Petersburg – Paris: The Franco-Russian Alliance and Finnish French Musical Relations’, Finnish Music Quarterly 1 (2003), 51–9.

⁷ For a recent discussion of this problem, see Richard Taruskin, ‘Non-Nationalists and Other Nationalists’, 19 ^th-Century Music, 35 (2011), especially 143.

⁸ One study that has already made forays in this direction is Philip Bullock’s Rosa Newmarch and Russian Music in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Britain (Farnham, 2009).

⁹ On operatic decentralisation in nineteenth-century France, see in particular Rowden, Clair, ‘Decentralisation and Regeneration at the Théâtre des Arts, Rouen, 1889–1891’, Revue de musicologie 94 (2008), 139–180Google Scholar; and a number of important chapters and articles by Katharine Ellis: ‘Unintended Consequences: Theatre Deregulation and Opera in France, 1864–1878’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 22 (2010), 327–52; ‘Funding Opera in Regional France: Ideologies of the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, in Art and Ideology in European Opera: Essays in Honour of Julian Rushton, ed. Clive Brown, David Cooper and Rachel Cowgill (Woodbridge, 2010), 67–84; ‘Mireille’s Homecoming? Gounod, Mistral and the Midi’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 65 (2012), 463–509; and ‘How to Make Wagner Normal: Lohengrin’s “tour de France” of 1891–92’, Cambridge Opera Journal 25 (2013), 121–37.

¹⁰ Gunsbourg, Raoul, Cent ans de souvenirs … ou presque (Monaco, 1959), 25–27Google Scholar.

¹¹ See Frame, Murray, ‘“Freedom of the Theatres”: The Abolition of the Russian Imperial Theatre Monopoly’, Slavonic and Eastern European Review 83 (2005), 254–289Google Scholar.

¹² In 1882, Gunsbourg was invited to direct a French open-air summer theatre in St Petersburg, and later established the Théâtre de la Renaissance there, dedicated to French operetta. His first French-language operas were for Alexander III at Peterhof and Krasnoe-Selo, where he gave Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila and Gounod’s Faust. See Gunsbourg, Cent ans, 33–5.

¹³ In his (somewhat unreliable) memoir, Gunsbourg recalled that he was advised to make the change for his health. He also reported that he was sent as a personal envoy for the Tsar to help smooth the Franco-Russian alliance, though there is scant evidence to support this claim. Gunsbourg, Cent ans, 70.

¹⁴ The minutes of the meeting show that Gunsbourg was chosen on the basis of his excellent references and his ambitious list of proposed singers. Recorded in council meeting minutes of 10 April 1889, Nice Archives Municipales [hereafter NAM], ‘Délibérations du conseil municipal de la ville de Nice’, Vol. 19, 325–7.

¹⁵ ‘Cette question, on le sait, est des plus importantes et peut avoir une influence sérieuse sur la réussite de notre saison d’hiver, dont les représentations données à la magnifique salle de la rue St-François-de-Paule constituent un des attraits principaux.’ Le Petit Niçois, 10 April 1889.

¹⁶ See Laure Baretge, ‘L’Évolution de la vie musicale à Nice de 1860 à 1914’, MA diss., Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis (1998), résumé available at www.cg06.fr/documents/Import/decouvrir-les-am/rr163-musique.pdf (accessed 18 November 2014).

¹⁷ The title of the paper played aptly on Verdi’s ‘Va pensiero’ – Garibaldi was born in Nice and campaigned against its return to France in 1860. The newspaper was closed in 1895 in the clampdown on separatism. For more on the separatists and the integration of Nice into France in these years, see Massot, Mireille, ‘L’intégration de Nice à la république française à travers le Pensiero di Nizza, 1870–1895’, in Les Alpes-Maritimes. Intégration et particularismes. 1860–1914 (Nice, 1988), 347–357Google Scholar.

¹⁸ ‘In the plans for the long-term campaign that Le Rabelais has waged against Italianisms, there are four objectives that have been pursued relentlessly: 1) The implantation of the Opéra Français at the municipal theatre, 2) The defence of the south-east frontier, 3) The expulsion of those papers published in a certain foreign language, which have the special mission of spreading separatist ideas, 4) The dissolution of Italian Societies which masquerade as charitable groups in order to conceal their dangerous political associations’ (‘Dans le plan de campagne que depuis longtemps, Le Rabelais s’est tracé contre les italienneries, il est quatre objectifs qui ont été poursuivis sans relâche: 1° L’implantation de l’Opéra Français du Théâtre subventionné de la ville. 2° La défense de la frontière du Sud-Est. 3° L’expulsion de certaines feuilles publiées en langue étrangère et qui ont pour mission spéciale d’entretenir ici des idées de Séparatisme. 4° La dissolution des Sociétés italiennes qui sous masque de Charité par Secours mutuels cachent de dangereuses associations politiques.’) ‘Italienneries’, Le Rabelais, 17 April 1892, 49–50.

¹⁹ ‘Grand Théâtre de l’Opéra de Nice [Document d’archives]: tableaux de la troupe et journal des recettes’, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Musique [hereafter BNMus], VM DOS-5 (1). This new figure was much closer to that found at leading opera houses in the provinces. Rouen’s Théâtre des Arts, for instance, at that time received a subsidy of 130,000 francs.

²⁰ This was proposed by ‘M. Iaort’ according to the council meeting minutes of 10 April 1889, NAM, ‘Délibérations du conseil municipal de la ville de Nice’, vol. 19, 325–7.

²¹ Reports about the riots can be found, among others, in Le Petit Niçois, 14 April 1889, 1. The news even spread to the national papers, including Gil Blas on 13 April, where it was related by the somewhat impartial correspondent Hardy-Polday.

²² See Arrigo-Schwartz, Martine, Âme slave au pays bleu (Nice, 2008), 57–62Google Scholar. For more on the Russian presence in Nice, see Fricero, Emmanuel, ‘Les Russes à Nice au siècle passé’, Nice historique 116 (1952), 55–82Google Scholar; Augier, Paul, Quand les grands ducs valsaient à Nice (Paris, 1981), 14–19Google Scholar; and Ellis, LeRoy, Les Russes sur la Côte d’Azur (Nice, 2004)Google Scholar.

²³ See Ollivier, Sophie, ‘L’Orthodoxie dans le Sud-Est de la France’, Eastern Christian Studies 3 (2003), 463–464Google Scholar.

²⁴ See Arrigo-Schwartz, Âme slave au pays bleu, 26.

²⁵ A Life was announced when Gunsbourg applied for the post (Le Monde élégant, 24 April 1889) and Zucchi’s appearance was confirmed as early as July (Le Monde élégant, 10 July 1889). See Druilhe, ‘Une Originale figure’, 97–98.

²⁶ Le Cosmopolite, 10 October 1889, quoted in Druilhe, ‘Une Originale figure’, 98.

²⁷ ‘Le trajet est court, mais la route délicieuse, le long de ce ruban de côtes à la frange moirée … Venez! nous dirons adieu aux brumes de la Seine. Nous oublierons, pour un temps, les lâchetés des hommes, les tristesses des choses.’ Stéphen Liégeard, Côte d’Azur (Paris, 1887), 2. Côte d’Azur was a best-selling travel guide and rebranded the area, replacing the Italian term ‘Riviera’ with the French ‘Côte d’Azur’.

²⁸ See Ellis, ‘Unintended Consequences’, 334–43 and 351–2.

²⁹ Operatic decentralisation had been under discussion since the 1830s, but it was in this period that the matter gained in urgency. See Rowden, ‘Decentralisation and Regeneration’, 141–144Google Scholar.

³⁰ Beyond France, a major alternative to Paris became the rival French-speaking capital, Brussels. Its Théâtre de la Monnaie saw the premieres of Massenet’s Hériodade in 1881, Chabrier’s Gwendoline in 1886 and Ernest Reyer’s Sigurd in 1884 and Salammbô in 1890. Composers also looked beyond French-speaking theatres to cities such as Vienna (Jules Massenet’s Werther, 16 February 1892), St Petersburg (Gaston Salvayre’s Riccardo III, 21 December 1884) and Weimar (Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila, 2 December 1877).

³¹ See Ellis, ‘How to make Wagner Normal’, and Rowden, ‘Decentralisation and Regeneration’, 149–155Google Scholar and 172. The early months of 1890 indicate just how strong competition was becoming. As well as these two performances in Rouen in 1890, and following shortly after Nice’s A Life for the Tsar on 30 January, Reyer’s Salammbô premiered on 10 February in Brussels and Saint-Saëns’s Ascanio premiered at the Opéra in Paris on 21 March.

³² Cities better known for opera at the time included Lyon, Rouen, Bordeaux, Marseille, Lille, Toulouse and Nantes. See Rowden, ‘Decentralisation and Regeneration’, 139.

³³ See Arrigo-Schwartz, Martine, ‘Les Littérateurs parisiens entre 1860 et 1914 à la recherche d’une spécificité niçoise’, in Le Comté de Nice de la Savoie à Europe: identité, mémoire et devenir (Nice, 2006), 303–308Google Scholar. Palm trees, brought over from Egypt, were a particular source of novelty.

³⁴ ‘Ici c’est le soleil, le plaisir de vivre dans l’air frais et doux, devant l’eau bleue; c’est une revanche de la brume et de la boue où vous barbotez en ce moment, chers Parisiens, mes frères, coutumiers en géhenne hivernale. Ah! le lénitif séjour que ce coin de terre fleuri, béni des caresses du soleil.’ L’Echo de Paris, 3 February 1890.

³⁵ The journey, once the direct railway line connecting Paris to Nice opened in 1864, took around 15 hours.

³⁶ See Haug, C. James, Leisure and Urbanism in Nineteenth-Century Nice (Lawrence, 1982), 23–26Google Scholar and 48–9; and Nash, Dennison, ‘The Rise and Fall of an Aristocratic Tourist Culture, Nice: 1763–1936’, Annals of Tourism Research 6 (1979), 65–67Google Scholar.

³⁷ ‘Ah! Les millionnaires sont d’heureuses gens! Ce doit être une perpétuelle fête de pouvoir passer dans ces climats bénis trois mois d’hiver!’ Le Temps, 3 February 1890.

³⁸ See Michel Foussard, ‘Nice’, Dictionnaire de la musique en France au XIX ^esiècle (Paris, 2003), 863; and Paulette Lèques, ‘Tourisme hivernal et vie mondaine à Nice de 1860 à 1881: cercles et salons’, in Aspects de Nice du XVIII ^eau XX ^esiècle (Paris, 1973), 98–101.

³⁹ See Ruggiero, Alain, Nouvelle histoire de Nice (Toulouse, 2006), 192–197Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ The casinos were not just gambling halls, but also theatres in which family entertainments, operetta and ballet were staged. See Baretge, ‘L’Evolution de la vie musicale’, 9.

⁴¹ In this respect, musical culture in Nice was comparable to that of the spa town, another tourist-centred environment perceived at the time as non-conducive to serious music-making. See Lesure, François, ‘La Villégiature lyrique, ou la musique dans les casinos au XIXe siècle’, in D’Un Opéra l’autre: hommage à Jean Mongrédien, ed. Jean Gribenski (Paris, 1996), 389–398Google Scholar.

⁴² For more on the Cruvelli premiere, see Favre, Georges, La Villa Valrose: 1870–1881: un haut-lieu musical niçois au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1977), 79–82Google Scholar and 114–15; and La Vicomtesse Vigier: Sophie Cruvelli: 1826–1907: une grande cantatrice niçoise (Paris, 1979), 71–82.

⁴³ See Foussard, ‘Nice’, 862.

⁴⁴ The four groups of abonnés were labelled A, B, C and D; announcements in the papers then informed patrons of the list in use for the evening’s performance.

⁴⁵ ‘La salle était vraiment belle … Toute garnie de jolies femmes en grande toilette, toute étincelante de diamants! Bigre! On ne doit pas s’ennuyer à Nice’. Le Temps, 3 February 1890.

⁴⁶ See Myriam Chimènes, ‘Le Budget de la musique sous la III^e République’, in La Musique: du théorique au politique, ed. Hughes Dufourt and Joël-Marie Fauquet (Paris, 1991), 269–71.

⁴⁷ For more on Parisian perspectives on the musical situation in the south, see François Lesure, ‘La Musique dans le Midi, vue de Paris’, in Lesure, La Musique de la Midi de la France. Tome II, XIX ^esiècle: actes des rencontres de Villecroze, 16 au 18 mai 1996 (Paris, 1998), 7–21.

⁴⁸ Previews appeared, for instance, in Le Petit Niçois, L’Eclaireur, Le Phare du littoral, La Colonie étrangère, La Saison de Nice and Nice-Monte-Carlo. A review in Le Petit Niçois on 31 January 1890 reported that the box office had been sold out for six days before the performance, that people were paying vast prices for last-minute tickets (5 to 10 louis – 1 louis being worth 20 francs – for a seat in the stalls and a baron offering 3,000 francs for a box), and that there was a queue of 200 people lined up outside the opera house at 6pm on the evening of the premiere.

⁴⁹ These figures come from the lists of receipts for the theatre recorded in ‘Grand Théâtre de l’Opéra de Nice [Document d’archives]: tableaux de la troupe et journal des recettes’, BNMus, VM DOS-5 (1).

⁵⁰ ‘Lui [Gunsboug] seul pouvait faire ce miracle d’arracher à leurs travaux, en pleine saison d’hiver, une quinzaine de journalistes parisiens, et des plus en vue, et de leur persuader que le “mouvement” était, non à Paris, mais à Nice.’ Le Figaro, 1 February 1890. The critics and editors who attended (many with their wives in tow) included: Francisque Sarcey (Le Temps), Aurélien Scholl (Le Matin), Louis Besson (L’Événement), Adolphe Brisson (Le Parti national), Edmond Stoullig, Lieutard (Le Petit Marseillais), Emile Blavet (Le Figaro and Le Gaulois), Maurice Lefèbvre (Le Figaro), Léon Kerst (Le Petit Journal), Louis de Fourcaud (Le Gaulois), Victor Wilder (Gil Blas), Henri Bauer (L’Echo de Paris), Juliette Adam (director of La Nouvelle Revue), Octave Mirbeau (La France), Valentin Simond (founder of L’Echo de Paris), Francis Magnard (editor of Le Figaro).

⁵¹ Victor Wilder (1835–92) was not only a Wagner enthusiast but played a significant role in promulgating Wagner in France by translating every opera from Lohengrin onwards and assisting Lamoureux with his staging of Lohengrin in Paris in 1887.

⁵² ‘a déjà eu pour premier résultat d’amener à Nice quelques-uns des plus éminents parmi nos confrères parisiens et de leur rappeler que les frontières de la France ne s’arrêtent pas précisément aux fortifications de Paris’, Le Petit Niçois, 28 January 1890.

⁵³ ‘Comment un œuvre, si populaire en Russie qu’on n’en peut compter … le nombre de représentations, est-il obstinément resté ignoré chez nous? On ne le saura jamais. Vingt fois il a été question de le traduire et de le monter sur l’une ou l’autre de nos scènes lyriques; toujours le projet a été abandonné, aussitôt que conçu.’ Gil Blas, 1 February 1890.

⁵⁴ For reports on these plans, see Le Ménestrel, 9 July 1876, 254. The announcement also indicated that Dargomїzhsky’s Stone Guest would be performed. Extracts from A Life appeared in all four of the 1878 Exposition concerts, with the first including the opening chorus and Antonida’s Cavatina, the second including another unnamed ‘air’, and the third and fourth, the Overture and final chorus.

⁵⁵ See, for example, Le Ménestrel, 24 July 1887, 268–9, which included a translation of a lengthy review by The Times critic Francis Hueffer.

⁵⁶ Le Figaro, on 15 November 1887, reported that the librettist Paul-Armand Silvestre and author Jehan Soudan were planning a French adaptation of A Life for the Opéra. Two days later, however, a letter from Jules Ruelle was printed stating that he was currently under contract with Durdilly to make a translation for his upcoming vocal score, making it impossible for Silvestre and Soudan to do the same.

⁵⁷ It was published in vocal score with a French text as La Vie pour le Tsar (Paris, 1888).

⁵⁸ See Alexander, Tamsin, ‘An “Extraordinary Engagement”: A Russian Opera Company in Victorian Britain’, in A People Passing Rude: British Responses to Russian Culture, ed. Anthony Cross (Cambridge, 2012), 97–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁹ In Le Ménestrel, reports were still appearing on 29 April 1888 (142) that the company might stop in France. It may be that plans had been made but were abandoned. The troupe’s stay in London had ended in financial disaster, forcing them to return home prematurely (see Alexander, ‘An “Extraordinary Engagement”’, 101).

⁶⁰ La Revue universelle illustrée (January–February 1890), 330.

⁶¹ Le Guide musical, 9 February 1890, 47.

⁶² Vladimir Odoyevsky, ‘Letter to a Music Lover on the Subject of Glinka’s Opera A Life for the Tsar’, The Northern Bee, 7 December 1836, trans. Stuart Campbell, in Russians on Russian Music, 1830–1880, ed. Stuart Campbell (Cambridge, 1994), 3.

⁶³ See Taruskin, Richard, Defining Russia Musically (Princeton, 1997), 65–66Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ ‘Mais il fallait aussi faire une œuvre intéressante, et là, il a échoué … M. Glinka voudrait faire traduire son opéra en allemand et en français, et le faire représenter en Allemagne et en France … mais je crois que dans nul autre pays que la Russie cet ouvrage n’aurait la moindre chances [sic] de success.’ Adolphe Adam, La France musicale, 21 June 1840, 239.

⁶⁵ ‘Il ne s’est proposé, en les écrivant, ni de s’astreindre à de certaines formes traditionnelles et considérées aujourd’hui comme nécessaires pour produire ce qu’on appelle de l’effet, ni d’obéir aux exigences d’une action dramatique plus ou moins rapide.’ ‘Michel de Glinka’, La Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 22 November 1857, 378.

⁶⁶ ‘Glinka jouit d’un avantage qui le mettra peut-être à l’abri de l’anathème lancé par le public contre l’école dite de l’avenir: il a découvert dans la musique de son pays une mine d’or, une veine inépuisable de mélodies toutes jeunes, dont les procédés, si elles en ont, diffèrent essentiellement des nôtres … S’il faut une certaine éducation musicale pour apprécier les œuvres de Wagner, les moins initiés trouveront toujours chez Glinka un charme qui les enchaînera.’ ‘La Musique Russe’, Revue nationale et étrangère, politique, scientifique et littéraire, 25 January 1862, 297.

⁶⁷ See Huebner, Steven, French Opera at the Fin-de-Siècle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar, 13 and 20.

⁶⁸ ‘S’il est vrai … que nous soyons à la veille d’une complète révolution musicale; si les modes anciens doivent rentrer en scène et détrôner la tonalité moderne, qui s’était établie sur leurs débris; si les gammes des Orientaux doivent faire irruption dans la musique européenne, il est à croire que les Russes nous précéderont dans cette voie.’ ‘Michel Ivanovitch Glinka’, Le Ménestrel, 14 December 1879, 10. One of Fouque’s sources, a chapter entitled ‘L’Opéra national russe’ from Gustave Bertrand’s Les Nationalités musicales étudiées dans le drame lyrique: Gluck-Mozart-Weber-Beethoven-Meyerbeer-Rossini-Auber-Berlioz-F. David-Glinka-Verdisme et wagnérisme-l’école française militante (Paris, 1872) also aligned Russian music with Wagnerism. When Fouque speculated ‘if the antique modes are to re-appear’, he was in all likelihood reworking the arguments of the French composer and teacher Louis Bourgault-Ducoudray, who had suggested in previous years, with reference to Greek music, that contemporary music could be rejuvenated through the discovery of scales beyond the major and minor. See Bourgault-Ducoudray, , Souvenirs d’une mission musicale en Grèce et en Orient (Paris, 1876)Google Scholar and Etudes sur la musique ecclésiastique grecque: mission musicale en Grèce et en Orient (Paris, 1877).

⁶⁹ See, for instance, Bertrand, , Les Nationalités musicales, 310–331Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ ‘[Glinka] en est le fondateur, le créateur; il est le patriarche, le père de cette nombreuse génération de musiciens. Le premier, il a eu l’idée de fouiller cette mine dont on ne connaît pas encore toutes les richesses, la mélodie populaire.’ ‘Michel Ivanovitch Glinka’, Le Ménestrel, 14 December 1879, 10.

⁷¹ Extracts from Glinka’s operas, A Life for the Tsar and Ruslan and Lyudmila, had first been performed in Paris when Berlioz conducted a concert at the Cirque Olympique des Champs-Elysées on 16 March 1845, following his return from a Russian tour. See La Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 23 March 1845, 90–1.

⁷² See Simon, Yannick, Jules Pasdeloup et les origines du concert populaire (Lyon, 2011), 1–5Google Scholar.

⁷³ See Kahane, Martine and Wild, Nicole, Wagner et la France (Paris, 1983), 49–54Google Scholar and 158–61.

⁷⁴ Kamarinskaya was given in 1873, 1875, twice in 1877 and in 1879; the Overture to A Life for the Tsar in 1873; and Jota aragonesa in 1879 (information gathered from concert announcements and reviews in La Revue et gazette musicale de Paris and Le Ménestrel). After this, Pasdeloup stopped programming Glinka, but did introduce Paris to works by Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Dargomїzhsky; see Simon, Jules Pasdeloup, 233–8.

⁷⁵ See Birkin, Kennett, Hans von Bülow: A Life for Music (Cambridge, 2011)Google Scholar, especially 280.

⁷⁶ See Kreuzer, Gundula, ‘“Oper im Kirchengewande”? Verdi’s Requiem and the Anxieties of the Young German Empire’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 58 (2005), 404–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Birkin, , Hans von Bülow, 222Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ A critic for the Le Monde élégant, 13 December 1876, declared that ‘neither the Paris Conservatoire, nor Pasdeloup’s concerts, offer their subscribers an equal variety of novelties’ as Derwies (see Favre, La Villa Valrose, 48–50). This local perspective may well have been an exaggeration, but from what can be gleaned about the programming and the performers, it may not be inaccurate. Derwies was wealthy enough to employ a full-scale orchestra, which counted some of the best musicians in the world: see Knight, Ellen, Charles Martin Loeffler: A Life Apart in American Music (Urbana, 1993)Google Scholar, 21–3. That the Parisian press picked up on Derwies’s activities also suggests that these concerts were of a high standard.

⁷⁸ See Schaeffner, ‘Debussy et ses rapports avec la musique russe’, 120.

⁷⁹ La Saison musicale de Nice, 18 December 1878. The concert also included Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, the ‘Scherzo’ and ‘Finale’ from Victorin de Joncières’s Symphonie romantique, Bruch’s Requiem Romain, Wagner’s Sonate d’album and a Rêverie by Schumann.

⁸⁰ See Helmers, Rutger, ‘“It just reeks of Italianism”: Traces of Italian Opera in A Life for the Tsar’, Music & Letters 91 (2010), 376–405CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸¹ Le Petit Niçois, 28 January 1890.

⁸² ‘Grattez le Napolitain, vous retrouverez le Cosaque. Si la forme de sa mélodie est italienne, le sentiment qui l’anime reste slave.’ Gil Blas, 1 February 1890.

⁸³ ‘La Russie est le pays de l’avenir. Qui oserait le nier, en regardant sa littérature, sa musique, sa peinture, son industrie?’ La Colonie étrangère, 2 February 1890.

⁸⁴ ‘Il les a empruntées, pour ne pas dire volées, de nos compositeurs en vogue, ici 16 pages entières de Delibes, là des phrases de Gounod, de Massenet, de Saint-Saëns et d’autres.’ La Colonie étrangère, 19 January 1890, 1.

⁸⁵ See Michel Espagne, ‘Le Train de Saint-Pétersbourg: Les relations culturelles franco-germano-russes après 1870’, in Transferts culturels triangulaires: France-Allemagne-Russie, ed. Katia Dmitrieva and Michel Espagne (Paris, 1996), 329–31. Debora Silverman, in addition, has explored how the alliance was celebrated through a rococo revival invoking the two countries’ ‘common cultural history of the mid-eighteenth century, when the first Franco-Russian alliance had occurred’. See Silverman, , Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France: Politics, Psychology and Style (Berkeley, 1989), 159–171CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁶ Adolphe Adam declared somewhat disdainfully in 1840 that ‘the Russians possess but a single national opera, it is called All for the Czar’. ‘Quelques Mois Loin de Paris’, La France musicale, 21 June 1840, 239.

⁸⁷ ‘S’il est vrai qu’une politesse en vaut une autre, puisque la Russie traduit Hernani et va le représenter à Pétersbourg et à Moscou, ne serait-il pas de bon goût de monter la Vie pour le Czar à l’Opéra de Paris?’ Quoted from La Revue de Paris et de Saint-Pétersbourg in Le Figaro, 15 November 1887.

⁸⁸ This charter, with these composers’ names as well as those of influential literary figures such as Alexandre Dumas, can be found in Folder 14 of the Juliette Adam Collection held at the Lilly Library, Indiana University. Adam was renowned not only for being a Russophile, but for her hatred of Germany. In 1885, she famously wrote to Le Figaro denouncing plans for a production of Lohengrin at the Opéra-Comique.

⁸⁹ See McAllister, Elaine and Baylen, Joseph, ‘Saint-Saëns and Juliette Adam: An Unpublished Letter’, Music & Letters, 50 (1969), 296–300Google Scholar. Saint-Saëns wrote to Adam from Algiers on 9 February 1888, saying ‘When I get back I shall begin practising pieces in the purest Muscovite style again and shall see that both the music and my fingers are at your disposal.’

⁹⁰ ‘Monsieur le Ministre, Les soussignés, membres de la section de composition musicale de l’Académie des Beaux-Arts de l’Institut de France, désireux de donner un témoignage de sympathie internationale et artistique à la Russie, dans la personne de Glinka, l’illustre fondateur de l’opéra russe, seraient heureux de voir représenter sur une scène française son œuvre capitale et populaire, la Vie pour le Tsar.’ The letter was published, with the six composers’ names, in a number of journals and newspapers, including Le Ménestrel, 22 July 1888, 235–6.

⁹¹ The Russian embassy even encouraged pro-Russian groups in the capital in the 1880s and 1890s for fear that the émigré community would unsettle public opinion. See Kennan, George, The Fateful Alliance: France, Russia, and the coming of the First World War (Manchester, 1984)Google Scholar, 69.

⁹² Funnily enough (in this context), one of the negative stereotypes about the ‘colonie russe’ in Nice was that it was full of wealthy Russian socialites who had no concept of politics, only the social scene. See, for instance, Louis Bertrand’s derisive anecdotes in La Riviera que j’ai connue (Paris, 1933), 219.

⁹³ There is no evidence to suggest that the staging of A Life in Nice was an official (or even covertly official) diplomatic act. The council minutes in Nice’s municipal archive show that this was Gunsbourg’s personal initiative. Nor was it an official ambassadorial quest on Gunsbourg’s part. Though in his autobiography Gunsbourg makes numerous, often far-fetched, claims about his role in the formation of the Franco-Russian alliance, he makes no mention of this performance serving such a purpose; see Gunsbourg, Cent ans, 109–10.

⁹⁴ La Nouvelle Revue, January–February 1890, 878.

⁹⁵ Nice artistique, 2 February 1890.

⁹⁶ Le Petit Niçois, 28 January 1890.

⁹⁷ Gil Blas, 1 February 1890.

⁹⁸ A letter from Stasov to Mily Balakirev, M.A. Balakirev i V.V. Stasov: Perepiska, ed. A.S. Lyapunova, Vol. I (Moscow, 1970), 130, quoted in Taruskin, Richard, On Russian Music (Berkeley, 2009), 49–50Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ The Weekly Dispatch, 17 July 1887.

¹⁰⁰ La Saison de Nice, 30 January 1890.

¹⁰¹ This was noted, for instance, in Le Phare du littoral, 31 January 1890: ‘Finally, I [will] report on the superb decor in a few lines … above all, that of a forest in the snow, which produced a striking effect. The grand procession finale was not lacking in scale. A series of riders processed across the stage; it was magnificent’ (‘Enfin, je signale en quelques lignes les superbes décors … et surtout celui d’une forêt sous la neige, qui a produit un saisissant effet. Le grand défilé final ne manquait pas d’ampleur. Une série de cavaliers ont défilé sur la scène; ça été superbe’).

¹⁰² See, for example, the account in Le Figaro, 1 February 1890.

¹⁰³ L’Union, 2 February 1890.

¹⁰⁴ This point was also a common one for such appreciative demonstrations. Indeed just two years before, the theatre had erupted into a special round of applause midway through a performance of Hamlet due to Ambroise Thomas himself being in attendance.

¹⁰⁵ This was reported in almost every review. ‘Amaury’, for instance, noted that ‘the enthusiasm [of the crowd] reached its climax when Gunsbourg appeared on the stage, placed himself among the singers, and sang the Marseillaise with them’, Le Petit Niçois, 31 January 1890.

¹⁰⁶ Walsh, T.J., Monte-Carlo Opera, 1879–1909 (Dublin, 1975), 67Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁷ Though various arrangements of the hymn had been heard in performance since the 1830s, the first to be published was Russische Volkshymne (Vienna, 1841), and the first from a Parisian publishing house was a ‘Grand fantaisie par l’hymne national russe … pour violon’ (1844). Many followed in the coming decades, including a ‘Fantaisie sur l’hymne national russe’ by Charles Gounod (1886).

¹⁰⁸ See also Janine Neboit-Mombet, L’Image de la Russie dans le roman français, 1859–1900 (Clermont-Ferrand, 2005), 18–19.

¹⁰⁹ The former story was reported, for example, in L’Avenir de la Dordogne, 1 October 1889; the latter in Le Figaro, 16 May 1889.

¹¹⁰ The season was busiest between the end of January and early March.

¹¹¹ On 14 July 1839, Nicholas I had granted the title of Imperial Highness to Maximilian de Beauharnais after he married his daughter, the Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna. The Duke in attendance in 1890 was Nicholas Maximilianovich de Beauharnais, husband of Nadezhda Sergeevna Annekova. He was named the Fourth Duke of Leuchtenberg in 1890 by Alexander III.

¹¹² The lengthy review that appeared in the journal after the performance, however, was written by Gallet. Since he was not recorded as being one of the Parisian journalists in attendance, it is likely that he wrote his account using a report provided by Adam. See La Nouvelle revue, January–February 1890, 876–9.

¹¹³ Le Mentonnais, 8 February 1890. Hardy-Polday in Gil Blas also expressed excitement over the ‘fusion of these two national airs’, 1 February 1890.

¹¹⁴ As, for example, noted by Bauer in L’Echo de Paris, 3 February 1890: ‘The men in black, the women with bare shoulders in elegant dress, upstanding in the boxes applauding, cheering, certainly offered a curious and completely novel ensemble. It was marvellous to see, marvellous to hear.’

¹¹⁵ La Saison de Nice, 6 February 1890.

¹¹⁶ The menu was noted in Le Petit Niçois, 1 February 1890, among other papers.

¹¹⁷ Many of the local reports included transcriptions of his speech, including Le Phare du littoral, which quoted Gunsbourg as saying: ‘I have always considered myself a Frenchman’; 1 February 1890.

¹¹⁸ ‘Je vous ai fourni avec l’occasion, en vous offrant la première représentation de la Vie pour le Tsar, de grandir en France le grand mouvement de sympathie que est né en faveur de la Russie, de le féconder en quelque sorte, de le vivifier.’ Le Phare du littoral, 1 February 1890.

¹¹⁹ ‘Francis Sam’ of Le Phare du littoral (31 January 1890) noted that correspondents from the New York Herald, the London Daily News, the Gazette de Moscou, the Fremblatt and the Rome Tribuna attended the premiere.

¹²⁰ ‘Il est certain qu’on ne pouvait rêver … une réclame plus grandiose et plus efficace en faveur de notre ville’. La Vie mondaine, 6 February 1890.

¹²¹ ‘L’Opéra français à Nice’, Le Rabelais (1891), 257–8. The article accepted that the performance of A Life for the Tsar had been a great patriotic event, but claimed that the idea had been theirs, not Gunsbourg’s.

¹²² Le Figaro, 1 February 1890.

¹²³ After Diaghilev’s financially disastrous first visit with his ballet troupe to Paris in 1909, Gunsbourg bought the sets to use in Monte Carlo, where he produced his own opera, Ivan le Terrible, in 1911. For the remainder of Diaghilev’s career, Gunsbourg became a strong rival in terms of Russian opera and ballet performances. He founded the ‘Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo’ in 1938. See Garafola, Lynn, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (New York, 1998)Google Scholar, 178–9 and 238–41.

¹²⁴ Le Petit Niçois, 3 February 1890: ‘A Life for the Tsar, said one of these gentlemen [the Parisian critics], will make its tour of France. We are certain of it.’

¹²⁵ Arthur Pougin in Le Ménestrel, 25 October 1896, 338–9, described the Paris version as ‘truncated and mutilated’ and the execution as ‘generally mediocre’.

¹²⁶ ‘On savait … que M. Wannovski devait assister à la représentation … Tout à coup, au moment où allait commencer le second acte, l’orchestre attaqua l’hymne national russe … Ce fut comme une étincelle électrique. En un clin d’œil, tout le public fut debout. Les chapeaux s’agitaient. Les cris de Vive la Russie! se mêlaient aux acclamations. Tous les spectateurs, tournés vers la loge où se trouvait M. Wannovski, saluaient en lui le représentant d’une puissance amie de la France.’ La Semaine de Cusset et de Vichy, 12 July 1890; quoted in Neboit-Mombet, L’Image de la Russie, 385–6. Neboit-Mombet states that this was the event that inspired Therieut in Charme dangereux. It is far more likely, however, that events in Nice prompted Theuriet’s scenario, not only owing to the close similarities between the descriptions in the press and his account, but also because Theuriet regularly stayed in Nice. Even if he had not been there, he would have been more likely to have read about A Life for the Tsar’s premiere in the national papers than the Vichy performance, which was far less widely documented.

¹²⁷ See Haldey, Olga, Mamontov’s Private Opera: The Search for Modernism in Russian Theatre (Bloomington, 2010)Google Scholar, 249.

¹²⁸ ‘Le patriotisme n’a rien à faire avec l’art en général et la musique en particulier. Bien que nés en pays momentanément ennemis, Beethoven, Wagner, Mendelsohn [sic] et Verdi, n’en doivent pas moins être admirés par les Français les plus chauvins, et il serait dur de nous mettre au régime de Glinka et de Rubinstein sous prétexte que leur pays est allié à la France et qu’en entendant cette musique grise nous rendons service à notre chère patrie.’ ‘Zut Majeur’, La Saison de Nice, 19 February 1890.

¹²⁹ On Lohengrin’s spread around the provinces and, eventually, Paris, see Ellis, ‘How to make Wagner Normal’, 127–31.

¹³⁰ See Schaeffner, , ‘Debussy et ses rapports avec la musique russe’, 133–138Google Scholar; Gasparov, Boris, Five Operas and a Symphony (New Haven, 2005), 185–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Howat, Roy, ‘Russian imprints in Debussy’s Music’, in Rethinking Debussy, ed. Elliott Antokoletz and Marianne Wheeldon (New York, 2011), 31–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Baur, Steven, ‘Ravel’s “Russian” Period: Octatonicism in His Early Works, 1893–1908’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 52 (1999), 531–592CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³¹ Garafola, , Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 45–47Google Scholar.

¹³² As discussed in Taruskin, , Defining Russia Musically, 360–388Google Scholar. For more on Russian primitivist modernism and its reception abroad, see Rebecca Beasley and Philip Bullock’s introduction to Russia in Britain, 1880–1940: From Melodrama to Modernism (Oxford, 2013), 9.

¹³³ See, for instance, Garden, Edward, Balakirev: A Critical Study of his Life and Music (London, 1967), 70–74Google Scholar.

¹³⁴ See Newmarch, Rosa, ed., The Life and Letters of Peter Illich Tchaikovsky (London, 1906), 152Google Scholar.

¹³⁵ The diaries of Frederick Gye, the director at Covent Garden, include entries about the plans between 24 March and 9 May 1874, which were made in honour of the state visit of Tsar Alexander II to London that summer (Frederick Gye Diaries, Royal Opera House Archive). The prospectus for the season included A Life for the Tsar, as reported in The Athenaeum on 7 March and 23 May 1874. The production was cancelled when it became apparent that the Tsar would not have time to attend (The Athenaeum, 11 July 1874).

¹³⁶ See, for example, Birkin, Kenneth, Hans von Bülow: A Life for Music (Cambridge, 2011), 276–278Google Scholar.

¹³⁷ See Le Ménestrel, 9 July 1876.

¹³⁸ See Favre, Georges, Un Haut-Lieu Musical Niçois au XIXe siècle. La Villa Valrose (1870–81) (Paris, 1977), 79–81Google Scholar and 114–15.

¹³⁹ See, for instance, rumour in The Musical Standard, 19 August 1882.

¹⁴⁰ See Le Figaro, 15 March 1882.

¹⁴¹ Reviewed, for instance, in The Times, 13 July 1887.

¹⁴² See Alexander, , ‘An Extraordinary Engagement’, A People Passing Rude (Cambridge, 2012), 112Google Scholar.

¹⁴³ Tyrrell, John, Czech Opera (Cambridge, 1985), 48Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁴ As reported, for instance, in The Musical Times, 1 December 1889.

¹⁴⁵ A report from Barcelona, for instance, published in Le Ménestrel, 9 April 1893, expressed disappointment that A Life for the Tsar had been announced for the winter season, but abandoned: ‘Plus nous allons, plus nos saisons lyriques du Liceo sont insignifiantes, plus les impresarios de cette halle à musique semblent peu se soucier des mirifiques promesses qu’ils font en vue d’allécher le public et de pêcher l’abonné. C’est ainsi qu’après nous avoir annoncé, pour cet hiver, comme nouveautés, les opéra La Vita per lo Czar de Glinka, il Biricchino de Mugnome, et i Pagliacci, de Leoncavallo, on nous a juste donné il Biricchino, une véritable niaiserie musicale.’

¹⁴⁶ Reviewed, for instance, in Le Figaro, 20 October 1896.