¹ Morelli, Giovanni, ‘Introduzione’ to Tomando a Stiffelio. Popolarità, rifacimento, messinscena, effettismo e altre ‘cure’ nella drammaturgia del Verdi romantico, ed. Morelli, Giovanni (Florence, 1987), v–xv, here xii.Google Scholar

² Conati, Marcello, ‘ “E quasi si direbbe prosa strumentale”: L'aria “a due” nello Stiffelio’, in Tornando a Stiffelio, 243–63, here 253.Google Scholar

³ Weiss, Piero, ‘Verdi and the Fusion of Genres’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 35 (1982), 138–56, here 147. Conati makes a similar observation in his ‘ “E quasi si direbbe” ’, 253. On Dumas père's adapted translation of Kabale und Liebe, see also note 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ Wicks, Charles Beaumont, The Parisian Stage (1800–1900), 5 vols. (Montgomery, Ala., 1959–1979); vol. III, covering the period 1831–50, was published in 1961.Google Scholar A catalogue of performances at the Théâtre Historique (including revivals) can be found in Lecomte, L.-Henry, Histoire des théâtres de Paris: Le Théâtre Historique (Paris, 1906).Google Scholar

⁵ Théophile Gautier writes of the ‘spectacle oculaire’ in his Histoire de I'art dramatique, II (Leipzig, 1858–1859), 174.Google Scholar On this question, see also Nouty, Hassan el, Théâtre et pré-cinéma. Essai sur la problématique du spectacle au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1978), 65ff.Google ScholarThe term ‘boulevard’, of course, refers to the Boulevard du Temple, better known by the nickname ‘Boulevard du Crime’ because of the many crimes enacted on its stages.Google ScholarSee Gascar, Pierre, Le Boulevard du Crime (Paris, 1980).Google Scholar

⁶ Letter quoted in Claudio Sartori, ‘La Strepponi e Verdi a Parigi nella morsa quarantottesca’, Nuova rivista musicale italiana, 2 (1974), 239–53, here 249.Google Scholar

⁷ The letter immediately preceding this one in Sartori, ibid., includes the passage: ‘I forgot to tell you that yesterday evening was opening night at the Opéra: the theatre has been renovated, but I don't like it very much – too heavy – I prefer the new theatres in small Italian cities, which are extremely elegant and simple’. ‘Theatres like those of the Boulevard du Temple’, the composer might well have added. Verdi's antipathy for the Opéra was to become legendary; two months earlier, passing through Paris on his way to London, he had expressed it to Maffei even more bitingly: ‘In Paris I went to the Opéra. I have never heard worse singers, or a more mediocre chorus. Even the orchestra (with apologies to all our Lions) is little more than mediocre.’ Letter to Clara Maffei, dated London 9 June 1847. quoted in Sartori, 245.

⁸ This was, of course, Jérusalem, the reworking of I Lombardi that would be premièred to great acclaim on 26 November of the same year.Google Scholar

⁹ The polemic continued in the following days. In an article entitled ‘Comment on écrit l'histoire’ (8 08 1847), La France musicale asked Le Corsaire to name its sources. Le Corsaire responded the next day repeating its criticisms and adding that ‘the editors of La France musicale are also M. Verdi's publishers. It is therefore natural that they would find M. Verdi's scores admirable.’ Although this was a difficult charge to defend, La France musicale managed to recover, and in an article entided ‘La vérité avant tout’ (15 August). demonstrated that the success of I masnadieri had in no sense been fabricated: ‘The author of these lines [Léon Escudier himself] has attended three performances of Masnadieri; he can, therefore, speak from experience; and since his good faith has not been called into question he has more authority in this discussion than the editor of Le Corsaire, who must rely on correspondents who may or may not be accurate, and who, in all likelihood, have not even heard the work in question.’ Statements such as this could be contradicted only at the risk of provoking a challenge to a duel.Google Scholar

¹⁰ The influence of mélodrame on Sue is especially striking in the following scene from Les Mystères de Paris: the concierge Pipelet, concealed in an empty storeroom, gazes on a tableau of horrifying poverty in the Morel family's garret, as if through the proscenium of the Porte Saint-Martin: ‘Since the wall is badly cracked, when I am in my hole [i.e., his little room], I see them at home, and I hear them as if I were there. It's not that I'm a spy, merciful heaven! But I go to watch them from time to time as if they were in a dark, sad mélodram’ (Les Mystères de Paris, II, xi). With these words, the concierge turns to Rodolphe and invites him to climb up to watch the show (‘It is sad, but intriguing’); he later adds that, after having spied and eavesdropped in this way, his own poor home feels like a palace, thus underlining the consoling effect of melodramatic voyeurism, the true catharsis of the poor. Later, the narrator is even more explicit about the association between this secret observatory and the mélodrame: ‘the noble concierge called this spot his “loge de mélodrame”, because by means of this hole he had made between two beams in the wall, he would sometimes watch the sad scenes that took place at the Morels’ (Les Mystères de Paris, IV, i).Google Scholar

¹¹ Janin, Jules, Histoire de I'art dramatique, I (Paris, 1855), 145.Google Scholar

¹² See Follain, Jean, ‘Le mélodrame’, in Entretiens sur la paralittérature, ed. Armand, N., Lacassin, F. and Tortel, J. (Proceedings of the Cerisy-la-Salle Conference, September 1967) (Paris, 1970), 60–70.Google Scholar

¹³ Pilati [Auguste-Aimé Pilate], Le Chiffonnier de Paris, orchestral parts (incomplete), Bibliothèque de l'Opéra (F-Po), Mat.th. (312).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Pyat, Félix, Le Chiffonnier de Paris (Paris, 1847), 2.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Le Chiffonnier, 5.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Le Chiffonnier, 6.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Scenes in which music played a crucial role were, according to Arthur Pougin, known as ‘scènes mystérieuses’; see , Pougin, ‘Mélodrame’, in Dictionnaire historique etpittoresque du théâtre (Paris, 1885), 512.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Lecomte (see n. 4), 33.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Alphonse Varney, Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, orchestral parts (incomplete), F-Po, Mat.th. (279). These seem to be the orchestral parts used for a revival twenty years after the première. The flute part is dated ‘Porte Saint-Martin, 10 November 1869’ and that for the first violin ‘Lille, February 1870’. However, there is no doubt that these parts correspond to Varney's original orchestral accompaniment.Google Scholar

²⁰ Zoppelli, Luca, L'opera come racconto. Modi narrativi net teatro musicale dell'Ottocento (Venice, 1994), 99–100.Google Scholar

²¹ Dumas, Alexandre and Maquet, Auguste, Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge (Paris, 1847), 95.Google Scholar

²² ‘Chceur des Girondins / chanté dans le drame: / Le / Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, / de M.M. A. Dumas et Maquet, / Musique de / A. Varney.’Google Scholar

²³ A fascimile of the list (which appears on the verso of the last page of the second fascicle of the composer's business correspondence) is published in I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, ed. Cesari, Gaetano and Luzio, Alessandro (Milan, 1913; rpt. Bologna, 1968), plate XI, between pp. 222 and 223. O n the problems of dating this document,Google Scholarsee Conati, Marcello,Rigoletto. Un'analisi drammatico-musicale (Venice, 1992), 9n23.Google Scholar

²⁴ The premiere had taken place at the Porte Saint-Martin on 11 11 1845.Google Scholar

²⁵ ‘This text, sung or recited by women in white dresses and men in black suits, owes its success to the delightful music of the orchestra leader Varney.’ Lecomte (see n. 4), 52.Google Scholar

²⁶ Dumas, Alexandre, Intrigue et amour (Paris, 1847), 43; clearly, the corresponding point in Schiller's ‘bürgerliches Trauerspiel’ lacks the reference to musical accompaniment.Google Scholar

²⁷ The double bass part of the surviving orchestral material carries the following pencil annotation: ‘Première représentation / de la premièe partie / de la premi`re journée / de la première moitiée / de Monte Cristoooo / le 2 fevrier 1848/Grrrrrrrandissime / succès (Bravo)’ [First performance / of the first part / of the first day / of the first half / of Monte Cristoooo / 2 February 1848 / Marrrrrrvellous / success (Bravo)]. Alphonse Varney, Stoepel and Sylvain Mangeant, Monte-Cristo, orchestral parts, F-Po, Mat.th. (257). In fact, the première took place the next day: 2 February must have been the date of the dress rehearsal (which was open to the public).Google Scholar

²⁸ , Dumas and , Maquet, Monte-Cristo (Paris, [1848]), 13.Google Scholar

²⁹ Monte-Cristo, 17.Google Scholar

³⁰ The clipping is housed at Bibliothèque Nationale (Estampes), Tb mat. la. The description printed below the lithograph is in error: the tableau in question is the penultimate one, not the last. Furthermore, the role of Faria was not played by Rouvière, although he was scheduled for the part. Since his name was mistakenly left off the poster, he refused to appear and was replaced at the last minute by a M. Bonnet; see Lecomte (n. 4), 43–4.Google Scholar

³¹ Monte-Cristo, 13.Google Scholar

³² See Allévy, Marie-Antoinette, La Mise en scène en France dans la première moitiè du dix-neuvième siècle (Paris, 1938; rpt. Geneva, 1976).Google Scholar

³³ See Frantz, Pierre, ‘L'espace dramatique de la Brouette du vinaigrier a Coelitia’, Revue des sciences humaines, 162 (1976), 151–62.Google Scholar

³⁴ Hassan el Nouty (see n. 5 ), 85.Google Scholar

³⁵ In the last scene, we see the nocturnal theft of a sack containing a corpse, a prop central to the plot, as in Rigoletto; the jailers throw it into the water, believing that it contains Faria's body, then discover that Edmond, alive and well, has taken the place of the corpse, and thus succeeded in escaping.Google Scholar

³⁶ ‘Macaire’ had actually been born twenty-five years earlier, when – without consulting the authors – Lemaître surprised everyone by placing a comic spin on the role of the traître in the insipid mélodrame, L'Auberge des Adrets by Benjamin Antier, Armand Lacoste and Alexandre Chapponier, with music by Adrien Quaisain (première: Ambigu-Comique, 1823). This episode is recounted in Marcel Carné's film Les Enfants du paradis.Google Scholar

³⁷ F-Po, Th.mat. (343).Google Scholar

³⁸ An Italian translation of the review appears in Frédérick-Lemaître: Testi e materiali, ed. Molinari, C. (Rome, 1991), 208. We cannot be sure that the musical accompaniment used for the 1834 première (at the Folies Dramatiques) was the same as that used in the 1848 revival at the Porte Saint-Martin.Google Scholar

³⁹ Faust was performed in that year at the Porte Saint-Martin in a French adaptation by Jean-Toussaint Merle and Charles Nodier; at one point (Act I scene 9), the stage directions indicate that ‘Mephistophélés et Martha dansent une valse, ou plutôt, jouent une scène du pantomime, dans laquelle Mephistophélès emploie toute sa puissance d'un magnétisme infernal pour soumettre à ses lois Martha’ (Mephistophélès and Martha dance a waltz, or rather, play a pantomime scene, in which Mephistophélès uses all his demonic magnetism to place Martha in his power).Google ScholarPicat-Guinoiseau, Ginette, Une Oeuvre méconnu de Charles Nodier (Paris, 1977), 151.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Le Pasteur stayed in the repertory of the Porte Saint-Martin for about a month.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Abbiati, Franco, Giuseppe Verdi, II (Milan, 1959), 59.Google Scholar

⁴² Abbiati, II, 62.Google Scholar

⁴³ F-Po, Mat.th. (326), orchestral parts and score. On the melodramatic elements in Stiffelio, see my ‘Tra melodrame e dramma borghese: Dal Pasteur di Souvestre-Bourgeois allo Stiffelio di Verdi-Piave’, in Tornando a Stiffelio (n. 1), 97–106;Google Scholarsee also Ludwig, Hellmuth, ‘La fonte letteraria del libretto’, in Stiffelio: Quaderno dell'Istituto di studi verdiani, 3 (Parma, 1968), 9–18.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Souvestre, Emile and Bourgeois, Eugene, Le Pasteur ou I'évangile et le foyer (Paris, 1849), 54 (Act III scene 5).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ It is unclear exactly when the chorus should start, since the score cues it to begin after a line of dialogue (‘que lui reste desormais’) that does not appear in the printed text; the inconsistency is probably due to differences betweeen the performed and published texts. What is more, the published version of Le Pasteur also lacks the text of the Ashaséveriens'. Chorus; I transcribe the first strophe here as it appears in the score: ‘Marchons vers la terre promise / Pour ces grands jours. / Dieu nous donne un nouveau Moïse, / Marchons toujours.’ [Let us walk towards the Promised Land, / towards those great days ahead./ God has given us a new Moses, / let us walk on forever.]Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Fabrizio Delia Seta has recently discussed Verdi's attempts to translate the techniques of spoken drama into opera; I would argue that this is particularly the case with regard to the melodramatic techniques of spoken drama with musical accompaniment;Google Scholarsee Seta, Fabrizio Delia, Italia e Francia mil'Otiocento (Turin, 1993), 229.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Conati (see n. 23), 232. Gilles de Van also discusses links between Verdi and Parisian melodrame, although in less direct, more metaphorical terms.Google ScholarSee Van, de, Verdi: Un Théâtre en musique (Paris, 1992), 240–71.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ See my ‘Tra melodrame e dramma borghese’ (n. 43).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ The substitution of a happy ending was normal in stage adaptations: in 1847, for example, Dumas softened the last scene of Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge when turning the original novel into a play.Google Scholar