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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2008
Recent research in French Revolutionary culture has revealed that women composers and librettists gained access to the opera stage in unprecedented numbers in late eighteenth-century France. Although the number of women constituted still only a fraction of the total number of composers and librettists, it was an explosion as compared with earlier periods. In the fifty years between 1770 and 1820, there were five times as many women writing opera as all the women combined in the 125 years since the beginning of opera in France in 1645. This increased number of female-authored operas constituted a sufficient critical mass for some of these works to be singled out as great successes; indeed two of them, Julie Candeille's (1767–1834) libretto and music for Catherine, ou la belle fermière, and Constance de Salm's (1767–1845) libretto for Sapho (with music by J.-P.-E. Martini), ranked among the ten most-performed dramatic works in Paris during and just after the Terror, in 1793 and 1795, respectively. This article examines the ideological context in which these works were received, and asks, why, despite (or because of) the success of their works, women composers and librettists were often perceived by critics and the public as radical and subversive, especially when the messages they chose to include in their operas could be interpreted as feminist. This attitude is not surprising when one considers that the period of greatest success of female-authored opera (and of women's public activism), 1793–95, coincided with the height of the Jacobin authorities' repression of women. Despite this climate, women composers and librettists of the 1790s were surprisingly vocal in protesting their continuing exclusion from the many advantages brought about by the democratization of the institution of opera and society. This article is part of a continuing investigation by feminist scholars into the controversial meaning of the Revolution for public women, bringing nuance to earlier conclusions that women were excluded from public life during the era of the Revolution.
1 For more on the phenomenon of French opera by women between 1770 and 1820, see Letzter, Jacqueline and Adelson's, Robert forthcoming book tentatively entitled Women Writing Opera. Creativity and Controversy in the Age of the French Revolution (University of California Press).Google Scholar For specific questions relating to women opera composers and librettists in this period, see Letzter and Adelson, ‘Women Opera Composers Face the Parisian comités de lecture: Where Institutional Barriers Meet Social Barriers to Performance’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth century 2000:05 (forthcoming).
2 For performance statistics in the period of 1789–99, see Kennedy, Emmet, Netter, Marie-Laurence, McGregor, James P., and Olsen, Mark V., Theatre, Opera, and Audiences in Revolutionay Paris. Anaiysis and Repertory (Westport, Conn., and London, 1996), 384–5.Google Scholar Candeille's Catherine, ou la belle fermière was first performed at the Théâtre de la République on 27 November 1792, and Salm's Sapho at the Théâtre des Amis de la Patrie on 12 December 1794; both works continued into the next years. At that time Constance de Salm was still married to Jean-Baptiste Pipelet de Leury and was known as Citoyenne Pipelet.
3 In autumn 1793 women's clubs were abolished and women were denied the few political rights they had obtained earlier in the Revolution. Partly as a symbolic act, three prominent women were executed: Marie-Antoinette, Olympe de Gouges, and Marie-Jeanne Roland. indeed, the executions of these women were interpreted at the time as a lesson for all public women. See Leçons à tirer de l'exécution de trois femmes (19 November 1793) in Paroles d'hommes (1790–1793), ed. Badinter, Elisabeth (Paris, 1989), 184–6.Google Scholar
4 My finding that women in opera successfully challenged their exclusion from many of the advantages enjoyed by men in the profession confirms the related findings of feminist scholars Geneviève Fraisse and Lynn Hunt, that because of the Revolution's problematic exclusion of women (problematic, because it contradicted the Revolution's universal tenets of liberalism and egalitarianism), women, with other previously marginalized groups, could challenge their exclusion and make their voices heard. Fraisse, Geneviève, Reason's Muse: Sexual Difference and the Birth of Democracy, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Chicago and London, 1994), 170–4Google Scholar (originally published as Muse de la raison: La démocratie exclusive et la différence des sexes [Aix-en-Provence, 1989]). Hunt, Lynn has noted in The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1992), 203Google Scholar ‘The exclusion of women was not theoretically necessary in liberal politics; because of its notions of the autonomous individual, liberal political theory actually made the exclusion of women much more problematic.’ See also 200–4. Among other scholars who are challenging the notion that the French Revolution silenced public women, see Colwill, Elizabeth, ‘Laws of Nature/Rights of Genius: The Drame of Constance de Salm’, in Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France, ed. Goldsmith, Elizabeth C. and Goodman, Dena (Ithaca and London, 1995), 224–42Google ScholarMacArthur, Elizabeth,‘ Between the Republic of Virtue and the Republic of Letters: Marie-Jeanne Roland Practices Rousseau’, Yale French Studies, 92 (1997), 184–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Carla, Hesse, ‘French Women in Print, 1750–1800: An Essay in Historical Bibliography’, in The Darnton Debate: Books and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Mason, Haydn T., Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 359 (1998), 65–82.Google Scholar For the view that the Revolution necessarily led to the exclusion and silencing of women, see Landes, Joan B., Women and the Public sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, 1988)Google Scholar and Pateman, Carole, The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Political Theory (Stanford, 1989)Google Scholar and The Sexual Contract (Cambridge and Stanford, 1988).Google ScholarPubMed
5 Candeille composed instrumental works and several songs and romances, besides the music for her operas. She also wrote several plays, historical novels, some quasi-autobiographical essays, and memoirs. The equally prolific Salm preferred poetry and non-fiction, especially opinion pieces about various contemporary questions, such as the status of women, education, marriage, and the position of intellectuals in society. For complete bibliographies of these two women, see Letzter and Adelson, Women Writing Opera (n.1).
6 Candeille, femme de R., Jonrnal de Paris (9 pluviôse=28 February 1795), quoted in Pougin, Arthur, ‘Une charmeuse: Julie Candeille’, Le ménéctrel, 49 (4 11 1883), 388. This and all other translations in this article are my own.Google Scholar
7 Michaud, Louis Gabriel, Biographie des bommes vivants; on, histoire par orde alphabétique de la vie publique de tons les hommes qni se sont fait remarquer par leurs actions on leurs écrits, 5 vols. (Paris, 1816–1819), 11: 33–5.Google Scholar
8 Unpublished undated ‘Lettre à Mr … (auteur d'une biographic)’ in the Fonds Salm, Musée clu Vieux Toulon.
9 See MS letters of October and November 1813 between Constance de Salm, Amaury-Duval, Pierre-Edouard Lemontey, Louis-Mathieu Langlés, and Pierre-Paul Raboteau, Fonds Salm, Musée du Vieux Toulon.
10 Salm, , Epître aux femmes (1797), in CEuvres complètes, 4 vols (Paris, 1841), I: 19.Google Scholar As discussed below, fictionalizations of Sappho in the eighteenth century usually ignored the poetess's lesbianism even though the connection of Sappho with Sapphic love was acknowledged. This passage with its reference to ‘transports légitimes’ could be interpreted as an allusion to lesbian love, which Salm might have associated with female solidarity in the arts.
11 ‘Do not try to be exceptions among your peers, as so many have done; do not seek to adopt, along with the talents men have arrogated to themselves, their tastes and prejudices.’ Salm, , Rapport sur un ouvrage intitulé de la condition des femmes dans une république (1799) in CEuvres complètes, IV: 152–3.Google Scholar
12 Candeille, Julie, Essai sur les félicités bumaines, ou Dictionnaire du bonbeur; 2 vols (Paris, 1828), s.v. ‘Profession’, II: 185–7.Google Scholar Interestingly Olympe de Gouges made the same claim as Candeille that writing for the theatre was one of the only lucrative professions open to women during the Revolution. To encourage women in this career, she took up the idea of a theatre devoted primarily to the performance of women's works. Her hopes for this establishment were twofold: first, she wished to make the theatre a place of emulation, virtue, and patriotism; second, she wanted to give women financial opportunities in the theatre: ‘Yes, citizens; having no fortune, I have tried to get one thanks to a noble emulation, and have invited my sex to distinguish itself, like men, by an honourable occupation. A great number of well-born women are lost because men, who have seized everything for themselves, have deprived women of the possibility of elevating themselves and of acquiring useful and durable resources … Throughout history, women have written; they have had the right to compete with men as playwrights. But we should give them evidence of greater encouragement; and this is my plan.’ Gouges, Olympe de, Le bonbeur primitif de l'bomme ou les rêveries patriotiques (1789) in CEuvres de Madame de Gouges (Paris, 1790), 11: 71–2.Google Scholar
13 See Letzter, Jacqueline and Adelson, Robert; ‘French Women Opera Composers and the Esthetics of Rousseau,’ Feminist Studies, 26/1 (forthcoming Spring 2000).Google Scholar
14 Michelet, Jules, Histoire de la Révolution française (Paris, 1952), II: 34–5Google Scholar, cited in Muriel, Usandivaras, ‘Deux dramaturges du dix-huitièrne siècle: Marie Moreau et Julie Cancleille’, in Femmes sarantes et femmes d';esprit: Women Intellectuals of the French Eighteenth Century, ed. Bonnel, Roland and Rubinger, Catherine (New York, 1994), 381.Google Scholar
15 For a typical example of a twentieth-century assessment of the work, see Hemmings, F. W. J., Theatre and State in France, 1760–1905 (Cambridge, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ‘it was a sentimental pastoral work which at any other period might have been judged insipid, but which presumably formed a welcome contrast to the bloody drama being enacted day by day.’ (97).
16 Etienne, C. G. and Martainville, B., Histoire du Théâtre Français, depuis la Révolution jusqu'à la réunion générale (Paris, 1802), 111: 34–6.Google Scholar
17 After Catherine, ou la belle fermière (1792), she authored Bathilde, ou le duo (1793) La bayadère, on le Françaic à Surate (1795). In all three works, Candeille performed the title role.
18 Gazette nationale (1 February 1795), quoted in Lumière, Henry, Le Théâtre Françis pendant la Révolution, 1789–1799. Avec plusieurs lettres inédites de Talma (Paris, 1894), 265.Google Scholar
19 Journal de Paris, 166 (16 Ventôse an VIII=7 March 1800), 732.Google Scholar
20 MS letter of 15 March 1800 from Constance de Salm to Sophie de Salis. Fonds Salm, Musée du Vieux Toulon.
21 Camideille, Julie, Catherine, ou la belle fermière in Pierre Marie Michel Lepeintre [Desroches], Suite du répertoire du thréâtre français (1822–1823; rpt. Geneva, 1970), XX: 240.Google Scholar
22 Candeille, Catherine, ou la belle fermière, 241.
23 Candeille, Catherine, ou la belle fermière, 231. Note how similar this tirade is to Marceline's feminist diatribe in Act III scene 16 of Beaumarchais's Le mariage de Figaro, first performed a decade earlier.
24 These phrases are from female members of political clubs in Bordeaux (April 1792) and Besançon (March 1793), respectively. Cited in Desan, Suzanne, ‘“Constitutional Amazons”: Jacobin Women's Clubs in the French Revolution’, in Recreating Authority in Revolutionary France, ed. Ragan, Bryan T. Jr. and Williams, Elizabeth A. (New Brunswick, 1992), 26.Google Scholar
25 Candeille, Catherine, ou la belle fermière (see n. 21), 253.
26 Contemporary reviews, even hostile ones, never mention the political conservatism of Catherine, ou la belle fermière, even when they blame Candeille for identifying herself with a heroine who is too perfect. See reviews in Mercure Français (7 January 1793), 49–50 Journal des théâtres et des fêtes nationales (16 December 1799), 2–7.
27 As cited earlier in this article, Julie Candeille made explicit her belief that women should be free to exercise a broader range of professions than were then open to them. See Candeille, Essai sur les félicités bumaines (see n. 12), II: 185–7.
28 For an analysis of the transparency Candeille cultivated in her representation of her operatic heroine, see Letzter and Adelson, ‘French Women Opera Composers and the Esthetics of Rousseau.’ (n. 13).
29 Candeille, Catherine, ou la belle fermière (see n. 21), 245.
30 Candeille, Catherine, ou la belle fermière, 263–4.
31 Rubin, James H., ‘Disorder/Order: Revolutionary Art as Performative Representation’, in The French Revolution 1789–1989: Two Hundred Years of Rethinking, ed. Petrey, Sandy (Lubbock, Tex., 1989), 83–111, esp. 84.Google Scholar Historian Susan Maslan modifies this view by emphasizing the role of revolutionary audiences in helping shape the meaning of dramatic works. Maslan observes that contemporary critics of the theatre were convinced that it was ‘audiences rather than plays that made the theatre disruptive and dangerous’. Maslan, Susan, ‘Resisting Representation: Theater and Democracy in Revolutionary France’, Representations, 52 (Fall 1995), 27–51, esp. 33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
32 For a history of fictionalizations of Sappho, see Dejean, Joan, Fictions of Sappho: 1546–1937 (Chicago and London, 1989)Google Scholar, esp. Chapter 2 for the eighteenth century. For a brief discussion of the question of the heroine's sexual orientation in Sapho, see Charlton, David, ‘The Tragic Seascape: “Sapho” and its 12-note chord’, Jabrbuch für Opernforschung, 1 (1985), 52.Google Scholar
33 Salm, Précis de la vie de Sapho, in CEuvres complè;tes (see n. 10), II: 4–5.
34 Charlton, ‘The Tragic Seascape’ (see n. 32), 53.
35 Dejean, Fictions of Sappho (see n. 32), 192.
36 Charlton, ‘The Tragic Seascape’ (see n. 32), 58.
37 See review of Sapho in Journal des théâtres et des fêtes nationales (26 frimaire an 111 [=16 December 1794]), 122–5, at 124.
38 Journal des théâtres et des fêtes nationales (26 Frimaire, an 111), 125.
39 Salm, , Mes soixante ans (1833), in CEuvres complétes (see n. 10), IV: 294.Google Scholar
40 Ibid.
41 Salm, , Pensées (1829), in CEuvres complètesGoogle Scholar (see n. 10), 111: 230. She added ‘Far from contributing to our happiness, love is the source of almost all the problems that afflict humanity. Its first consequence is to invade or compress all natural sentiments; to isolate us from everything that had until then filled our souls and occupied our minds; to make us neglect or abandon our studies and amusements, and to engulf forcefully all of our feelings’.
42 Salm, , Epître aux femmes (1797), in CEuvres complètes (see n. 10), 1: 19.Google Scholar
43 Salm, Mes soixante ans (see n. 39), 275–6.
44 See Colwill, Elizabeth, ‘Epistolary Passions: Friendship and the Literary Public of Constance de Salm, 1767–1845’, The Journal of Women's Histoy (forthcoming).Google Scholar
45 MS letter of 23 February 1798 from Sophie de Salis to Constance de Salm, Fonds Salm, Musée du Vieux Toulon. The rapturous tone of this letter seems to suggest that Sophie de Salis linked her desire for female authorship to another forbidden activity, lesbian love. However, I have found nothing in the correspondence of Salm and Salis that suggests lesbianism.
46 Cited in Marquiset, Alfred, Quand Barras éetait roi (Paris, 1911), 243.Google Scholar Marquiset explains that Ecouchard-Lebrun refers to Salm in this poem.
47 See review of Sapho in Journal des théâtires el des fê;tes nationales (26 frimaire an 111 [ = 16 December 1794]), 124. See also the review of the opera's revival in 1796 in the Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique 78 [18 06 1796] (30 Prairial Year VI), 561–3Google Scholar where the critic Amaury Duval singled Out Salm as an exceptionally talented dramatist who should be spared the condemnation of female authors that his colleague, the poet Ecouchard-Lebrun, had launched in the Décade earlier that year.
48 Two years after Martini's death, Salm approached Cherubini about revising the work, but he refused, claiming that he was too busy and that the comité of the Opéra had just accepted another Sappho opera written jointly by Cournol and Empin (letter of 20 August 1818 from Cherubini to Constance de Salm, Toulon, Musée du Vieux Toulon, Fonds Salm). Salm finally submitted the revised Sapho to the Opéra in 1819, but the work was rejected with no reasons noted in the registres. Paris, Bibliothèque de l'opéra, Registres de l'Opéra, vol. 23, fols 209–18, 12 August–3 March 1819.
49 For a discussion of Salm's literary reputation during this period, see Marquiset, Quand Barras eétait roi (see n. 46), 227–51; Fraisse, Reason's Muse (see n. 4), 56–7; 125–6; Quérard, Joseph-Marie, La France littéraire, ou dictionnaire bibliographique des savants, historiens et geus de lettres de la France, ainsi que les littérateurs étrangers qui ont écrit en français, plus particulièrement Pendant les XVIIIe et XlX siècles (Paris, 1838).Google Scholar
50 For the surviving correspondence relating to the revival of Catherine, ou la belle fermière (1810–1825), see Dossier Candeille, Bibliothèque-Musée de la Comedie-Française.