1 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques[, Lettre sur l'opéra italien et français], in Œuvres complètes, ed. Gagnebin, Bernard and Raymond, Marcel (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), volume 5, 249Google Scholar. Sources documenting the concern with poetic rules are collected in Wood, Caroline and Sadler, Graham, French Baroque Opera: A Reader (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 73–92Google Scholar.

2 de Mably, Gabriel Bonnot, Lettres à Madame La Marquise de P*** sur l'opéra (Paris: Didot, 1741; facsimile edition, New York: American Musicological Society, 1978), xvGoogle Scholar.

3 Mably, Lettres sur l'opéra, xv.

4 Mably, Lettres sur l'opéra, xvii.

5 Mably, Lettres sur l'opéra, 21.

6 Mably, Lettres sur l'opéra, 102.

7 Mably, Lettres sur l'opéra, 102–103.

8 See Corneille, Pierre, Discours des trois unités, d'action, de jour, et de lieu, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Couton, Georges (Paris: Gallimard, 1980–1987), volume 3, 180–181Google Scholar; the citation in the Lettres sur l'opéra includes several cuts to the original.

9 Mably, Lettres sur l'opéra, 103, Corneille, Discours des trois unités, 181.

10 Mably, Lettres sur l'opéra, 102–103, Corneille, Discours des trois unités, 181.

11 Oliver, Alfred Richard, The Encyclopedists as Critics of Music (New York: Columbia University Press, 1947), 55Google Scholar.

12 Rosow, Lois, ‘Making Connections: Thoughts on Lully's Entr'actes’, Early Music 21/ 2 (1993), 231 and 237CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Additional studies examining the role of entr'actes in the tragédie en musique include Geoffrey Burgess, ‘Ritual in the Tragédie en musique from Lully's Cadmus et Hermione (1673) to Rameau's Zoroastre (1749)’ (PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 1998), volume 1, 90 and 190–199, and Naudeix, Laura, Dramaturgie de la tragédie en musique (1673–1764) (Paris: Champion, 2004), 158–177, 186–193 and 455–461Google Scholar.

13 Bakhtin, M. M., ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes Toward a Historical Poetics’, in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Holquist, Michael and trans. Emerson, Caryl and Holquist, Michael (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

14 Kintzler, Catherine, Poétique de l'opéra français de Corneille à Rousseau, second edition (Paris: Minerve, 2006)Google Scholar, and Théâtre et opéra à l'âge classique: une familière étrangeté (Paris: Fayard, 2004).

15 Kintzler, Poétique de l'opéra français, 158 and 198, and more broadly, 147–243 and 275–278. Kintzler, introduced this thesis in her Jean-Philippe Rameau: splendeur et naufrage de l'esthétique du plaisir à l'âge classique (Paris: Le Sycomore, 1983), 71–97Google Scholar, recently reissued in a third edition (Paris: Minerve, 2011).

16 Kintzler, Poétique de l'opéra français, 232.

17 Kintzler, Catherine, ‘L'opéra français, hyper-théâtre et hypo-théâtre’, in Penser l'opéra français de l'âge classique, ed. Kintzler, Catherine (Paris: Collège International de Philosophie, 1993), 27Google Scholar.

18 Kintzler, Théâtre et opéra à l'âge classique, 147.

19 Kintzler, Théâtre et opéra à l'âge classique, 12 and 9. This analysis extends an earlier characterization of the ‘inversions’ between forms in Poétique de l'opéra français, 229–230.

20 Kintzler, Théâtre et opéra à l'âge classique, 153. Support from the mid-eighteenth century for this argument is found in Pierre-Mathieu Martin de Chassiron's Dissertation sur les tragédies-opera, Lûe par Monsieur de Chassiron, dans une Séance de l'Académie, Recueil de pieces en prose et en vers, lues dans les assemblées publiques de l'Académie Royale des Belles-Lettres de La Rochelle (Paris: Thiboust, 1752), 72–73: ‘Lyric tragedy cannot suffer a void, perhaps by a principle of method [politique]: the mind finds so little to occupy itself with, that [opera] puts everything in use to prevent it from reflecting.’ Kintzler cites another passage in this section (from a different version of Chassiron's text) comparing the construction of acts in opera and tragedy, in Poétique de l'opéra français, 228–229. She judges that Chassiron advances ‘falsities, blinded as he is by searching for differences and resemblances between dramatic tragedy and lyric tragedy graspable in a descriptive fashion’. For further comments on Chassiron see Poétique de l'opéra français, 212 and 280.

21 See in particular chapter 6 of Théâtre et opéra à l'âge classique, ‘La réduction du théâtre et le spectaculaire: la subversion du spectaculaire et la réassomption du théâtre’ (147–164), where Kintzler cites Villégier (152–153).

22 Jean-Marie Villégier, ‘Atys, une tragédie sans extérieur’, in Penser l'opéra français de l'âge classique, ed. Kintzler, 18. Villégier's discussion of Atys and the tragédie en musique more broadly is of compelling interest in light of his prominent work as a director, which includes the widely acclaimed 1987 production of Atys with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, reprised at the Opéra-Comique in 2011.

23 Villégier, ‘Atys, une tragédie sans extérieur’, 18. For Rémond de Saint-Mard as well, there was no equivalent in opera of the entr'acte in spoken tragedy, yet he based his argument on a conflation of the entr'acte with the divertissement. While in spoken tragedy the action continues ‘outside the theatre’, in opera the librettist must ‘fill these voids’; the technique by which these gaps are filled is the divertissement, which renders the action of opera ‘perceptible’ and ‘continuous’ and in this way is superior to entr'actes in spoken theatre. This account does not, however, eliminate the possibility that agents in the plot, absent from the stage during the divertissement, continue to ‘act’ off-stage; it merely asserts the sustained presence of some form of on-stage action, here achieved through the mode of dance. [Toussaint] de Saint-Mard, Rémond, Réflexions sur l'opéra (La Haye: Jean Neaulme, 1741; facsimile edition, Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), 22–26Google Scholar. See also Girdlestone, Cuthbert, Jean-Philippe Rameau: His Life and Work, second edition (New York: Dover, 1969), 139–140Google Scholar.

24 Villégier, ‘Atys, une tragédie sans extérieur’, 18–19.

25 Accounts of the role of the unities in classical dramaturgy of particular relevance here include Bray, René, La formation de la doctrine classique en France (Paris: Nizet, 1963)Google Scholar, Scherer, Jacques, La dramaturgie classique en France, second edition (Saint-Genouph: Nizet, 2001)Google Scholar, Lyons, John D., Kingdom of Disorder: The Theory of Tragedy in Classical France (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, and Hénin, Emmanuelle, Ut pictura theatrum: théâtre et peinture de la Renaissance italienne au classicisme français (Geneva: Droz, 2003)Google Scholar.

26 On these conventions in the theatre see Rosow, ‘Making Connections’, 231–233, and Louvat-Molozay, Bénédicte, Théâtre et musique: dramaturgie de l'insertion musicale dans le théâtre français (1550–1680) (Paris: Champion, 2002), 122–126Google Scholar.

27 Lyons, Kingdom of Disorder, x–xi. Lyons is sceptical regarding Bray's attempt to establish a uniform ‘doctrine’ in La formation de la doctrine classique en France.

28 Bakhtin, ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope’, 84.

29 ‘In literature the primary category in the chronotope is time.’ Bakhtin, ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope’, 85. He later affirms this priority by referring parenthetically to time as ‘the dominant principle in the chronotope’ (86).

30 Bakhtin, ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope’, 84.

31 Bakhtin, ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope’, 166 and 163.

32 As Rousseau characterized it, the function of the Italian intermède or intermezzo was to ‘amuse and rest, as it were, the mind of the spectator saddened by the tragedy and strained by profound matters [tendu sur les grand intérêts]’. Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, ‘Intermède’, in Œuvres complètes, volume 5, 864.

33 Pavis, Patrice, Analyzing Performance: Theater, Dance, and Film, trans. Williams, David (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 154CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A survey of the term's uses and a collection of representative papers in literary and film studies are given in Bakhtin's Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives, ed. Bemong, Nele and others (Ghent: Academia, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 On the ‘virtual space of the text’ or ‘imaginary space’ see Ubersfeld, Anne, Lire le théâtre II: l'école du spectateur (Paris: Belin, 1996), 54–55Google Scholar.

35 Bakhtin, ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope’, 252–254.

36 Certain theorists gestured toward the exact coordination of represented and fictional time as an ideal, a kind of ‘literalization’ of temporalities in which the time of performance as it unfolds objectively in the theatre would coincide exactly with the fictional action. Fontenelle outlined the principle in his Réflexions sur la poétique: ‘The rule of twenty-four hours is not at all a rule but is rather the opportune extension of the true rule, which accords to the duration of the action only the duration of its representation’. de Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier, Réflexions sur la poétique, in Œuvres (Paris: Michel Brunet, 1742), 197Google Scholar. The rule of ‘twenty-four hours’ originated in a reading of Aristotle's statement in the Poetics that ‘tragedy tends so far as possible to stay within a single revolution of the sun, or close to it’. Aristotle, Poetics 5, 1449b; trans. Stephen Halliwell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 47. The passage was variously interpreted to mean either a ‘natural’ day (thus the rule of ‘twenty-four hours’) or an ‘artificial’ day comprising twelve or fewer hours. See Bray, La formation de la doctrine classique en France, 262–285.

37 Bakhtin, ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope’, 100 and 87.

38 On the narratological distinction between fabula and sjuzet as applied to theatre see Elam, Keir, Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, second edition (London: Routledge, 2002), 107Google Scholar.

39 Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, ‘Acte’, 635.

40 Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, ‘Acte’, 635.

41 Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, ‘Acte’, 635–636.

42 Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, ‘Entr'acte’, 810. Excerpts from the entry are translated in Wood and Sadler, French Baroque Opera, 54.

43 Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, ‘Entr'acte’, 811. Rousseau contrasts the French practice of the brief instrumental entr'acte with the extended intermezzos of Italian opera, advancing the French practice as a model.

44 [de Cahusac, Louis,] ‘Entr'acte’, in Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens de lettres, ed. Diderot, Denis and d'Alembert, Jean le Rond (Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton and Durand, 1751–1757; Neufchastel: Samuel Faulche, 1765–1772), volume 5, 727Google Scholar. See Oliver, The Encyclopedists as Critics of Music, 55, and Rosow, ‘Making Connections’, 233.

45 Corneille outlined this function in the prefatory material to his machine play Andromède, where he noted that music was used to fill the interval of time and cover the noise of machines during scenic transformations. See Corneille, Argument to Andromède, in Œuvres complètes, volume 2, 447; the passage is duplicated in the Examen to the play (452).

46 Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, ‘Entr'acte’, 810.

47 Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, ‘Entr'acte’, 811.

48 Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, ‘Entr'acte’, 811.

49 Rosow has suggested that unlike spectators in the spoken theatre, who probably spent the entr'actes talking amongst themselves, ‘presumably the opera audience spent this very brief intermission not chatting but watching the scenery change – and unless their murmurs of astonishment and delight were too loud, they heard the entr'acte’. Rosow, ‘Making Connections’, 233. Rousseau's comments on the importance of instrumental music suggest the possibility of close audition of entr'acte music.

50 Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, ‘Entr'acte’, 812. As for the question of ‘dramatic time’, Rousseau advocates a twelve-hour interpretation of the ‘unity of time’ based on the alteration of stage space by natural diurnal cycles that are presumed to operate within the fictional world.

51 Casanova's account in his Mémoires of set changes during a performance at the Académie Royale de Musique in 1750 is well known and often cited; see Wood and Sadler, French Baroque Opera, 29. Casanova's remark concerning the ‘silence of the audience’ throughout the performance calls into question Johnson, James H.'s argument that audiences were always unruly and noisy at the Opéra in the mid-eighteenth century, made in his Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1995), 9–34Google Scholar. Johnson's portrayal of audience behaviour would certainly minimize potential moments of reflection or even absorption in spectacle, although the royal decree of 1769 concerning entr'actes (see below) suggests that disruptive behaviour on the part of at least some spectators had become a problem by that time. Charlton, David has questioned the accuracy of Johnson's account for mid-century opera audiences in Opera in the Age of Rousseau: Music, Confrontation, Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 187–190Google Scholar.

52 Kintzler, Poétique de l'opéra français, 40–41 and 143.

53 Charlton, David, Grétry and the Growth of Opéra-Comique (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 128–131 and 308–310Google Scholar. Charlton cites a royal decree of 1769 that included proscriptions regarding distracting behaviour during entr'actes, which attests to an increased awareness of their importance (129). Also pointing to a change in awareness is Noverre's call for entr'actes to maintain the ‘sentiment’ established in the preceding action and to prepare for the following act, which may well have influenced Rousseau's account in the Dictionnaire. Noverre, Jean-Georges, Lettres sur la danse et sur les ballets (Stuttgart: Aimé Delaroche, 1760; facsimile edition, New York: Broude Brothers, 1967), 152–157Google Scholar.

54 Rameau added a ‘Bruit de guerre’ as an entr'acte to the second version of Dardanus (1744), implying off-stage combat. He extended the technique in depicting a large-scale storm and earthquake between Acts 3 and 4 in his final opera, Abaris, ou Les Boréades (c1763), in this way bridging the entr'acte with mimetic music. See Rameau, Jean-Philippe, Les Boréades, ed. Lescat, Philippe (Paris: Stil, 2001), 187–192Google Scholar. This entr'acte of fifty-five bars is marked ‘suitte des vents’, indicating the continuation of the storm (‘orage, tonnerre et tremblement de terre’). On the musical and dramaturgical techniques of this storm see Bouissou, Sylvie, Jean-Philippe Rameau: Les Boréades, ou la tragédie oubliée (Paris: Méridiens Klincksieck, 1992), 173–186Google Scholar, and Girdlestone, Jean-Philippe Rameau, 319. The most complete survey of the music of Rameau's entr'actes is Masson, Paul-Marie, L'opéra de Rameau (Paris: Henri Laurens, 1930), 337–340Google Scholar, which also includes discussion of trends toward the greater dramatic significance of the entr'acte in the 1760s.

55 The source narrative is the Book of Judges, chapter 11.

56 [Pellegrin, Simon-Joseph,] Jephté, Tragédie tirée de l'Ecriture Sainte (Paris: Jean-Baptiste-Christophe Ballard, 1732), 23Google Scholar.

57 Mercure de France (March 1732), 580.

58 Buchanan, George, Tragedies, trans. Sharratt, Peter and Walsh, P. G. (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

59 Pellegrin, Jephté, iv.

60 [de Montéclair, Michel Pignolet,] Jephté, Tragedie tirée de l'Ecriture Sainte (Paris: Boivin, 1732), 120Google Scholar.

61 The didascalia for Act 2 indicates ‘Le Theâtre représente le Palais de Jephté’; the set indications for Act 3 are as follows: ‘Le Theâtre représente l'Avant-Cour du Palais de Jephté, orné d'Arcs de Triomphe et d'Obelisques; On y voit un Thrône.’ Pellegrin, Jephté, 11 and 23. According to the first edition of the score, the setting of Act 3 is ‘une place publique’.

62 Pellegrin, Jephté, 10, and Montéclair, Jephté, 80.

63 Montéclair, Jephté, 137 and 161.

64 Mercure de France (March 1732), 585.

65 The first two scenes of Act 5 were subsequently cut, as indicated in the Preface to the 1732 print of the livret (v) and the revised printed score, F-Po Liv 18[R38. This is the version described in the Mercure notice. The revised Act 5 opens with Jephté's monologue ‘Seigneur, un tendre Pere, à tes ordres soûmis’; the stage represents ‘le Temple de Maspha’ with a view of the altar.

66 D'Aubignac distinguished between ‘the truth of the action’ or the ‘true story’ (‘la vérité de l'action’ or ‘l'histoire véritable’), describing the autonomous dramatic action, and ‘representation’ (‘la représentation’), the material aspects of performance that serve the spectators' interests. Abbé [François-Hédelin] d'Aubignac, La pratique du théâtre (1657), ed. Baby, Hélène (Paris: Champion, 2011), 85–87 and 369–371Google Scholar. On d'Aubignac's terms see Hagiwara, Yoshiko, ‘La théorie de la représentation dans La pratique du théâtre de d'Aubignac’, Études de langue et littérature françaises 40 (1982), 23–24Google Scholar, and Burgess, Geoffrey, ‘“Le théâtre ne change qu'à la troisième scène”: The Hand of the Author and Unity of Place in Act V of Hippolyte et Aricie’, Cambridge Opera Journal 10/3 (1998), 280CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Corneille, Discours des trois unités, 175.

68 Burgess discusses the opera's reception in the Mercure and examines the implications of the initial maintenance of spatial unity across Acts 4 and 5 in ‘Le théâtre ne change qu'à la troisième scène’, 275–276.

69 [Pellegrin, Simon-Joseph,] Hippolyte et Aricie, Tragedie, représentée pour la premiere fois, par l'Academie royale de musique; le Jeudy premier October 1733 (Paris: Jean-Baptiste-Christophe Ballard, 1733), 46Google Scholar. See Rameau, Jean-Philippe, Hippolyte et Aricie (1733 version), ed. Bouissou, Sylvie, in Opera omnia Rameau (Paris: Billaudot, 2002), series 4, volume 1, 258–259Google Scholar; here ‘imposture’ is replaced with ‘injustice’.

70 Burgess, ‘Le théâtre ne change qu'à la troisième scène’, 277. On rare occasions, Rosow observes, Lully had also deliberately used ‘musical recall’ in entr'actes for symbolic effect, referring to prior events within the act for particular dramatic purposes. See Rosow, ‘Making Connections’, 234.

71 See Girdlestone, Jean-Philippe Rameau, 146.

72 Villégier's investment in visual display marked his 1996 production of Hippolyte et Aricie, in which Phèdre and Thésée return to haunt the final divertissement. The production is described in Thomas, Downing A., Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime, 1647–1785 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 173–175Google Scholar. Burgess reports on William Christie's use of a transposed arrangement of Phèdre's monologue ‘Cruelle mère des amours’ as the entr'acte music between Acts 4 and 5 in ‘Le théâtre ne change qu'à la troisième scène’, 278.

73 See Sadler, Graham, ‘Rameau, Pellegrin and the Opéra: The Revisions of Hippolyte et Aricie during Its First Season’, The Musical Times 124 (September 1983), 533–537CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Burgess, ‘Le théâtre ne change qu'à la troisième scène’, 278.

74 [Pellegrin, Simon-Joseph,] Hippolyte et Aricie, Tragedie, représentée par l'Academie royale de musique; Pour la premiere fois, le jeudi premier october 1733. Remise au théâtre le mardy 11 septembre 1742 (Paris: J-B-Christophe Ballard, 1742), 46Google Scholar. Diane's narrative is cited in the Mercure de France (October 1733), 2248. The passage, set in récitatif simple, is given in the supplement (‘Changemens conformes à la Réprés[e]ntation’) in [Jean-Philippe Rameau,] Hippolyte et Aricie (Paris: Boivin and Le Clerc, 1733 [F-Pn Rés. F. 1234]), 4. In the 1767 print of the livret, all narrative references to Phèdre, Thésée, Neptune and Destin have been stripped away; the final scenes are given over to reunion and divertissement. See also Rameau, Hippolyte et Aricie (1733 version), ed. Bouissou, 291–292.

75 Mercure de France (October 1733), 2244. Much of the synopsis of the plot in this notice is oriented toward the informative function of dramatic discourse – that is, describing scenes such as Aricie's opening monologue ‘Temple sacré, séjour tranquille’ and the first two scenes of Act 5 in terms of the spectator's access to knowledge, aligning with d'Aubignac's conception of ‘representation’ rather than the internal, autonomous ‘action’. The opening of Act 5, for instance, is described in the following terms: ‘The first two scenes are employed to inform the spectators that Phèdre has died in Thésée's sight, after having justified Hippolyte's innocence, as she promised at the end of the preceding act’ (2246). This priority of the informative function of discourse illustrates the critical role of the verbal text in conveying actions withheld from view.

76 Hippolyte et Aricie, Parodie Par M.rs Riccoboni et Romagnési Pour les Comédiens Italiens 30 Nov.bre 1733, in Il teatro di Jean-Antoine Romagnesi: testi inediti ed esame linguistico, ed. Trivellini, Gabriella Fabbricino (Naples: Liguori, 1998), 78Google Scholar.

77 Hippolyte et Aricie, Parodie Par M.rs Riccoboni et Romagnési, 78.

78 A concise account of these assumptions concerning spectatorship and representation in spoken theatre is found in d'Aubignac, La pratique du théâtre, 81–82.

79 Hippolyte et Aricie, Parodie; Représentée pour la premiere fois par les Comédiens Italiens Ordinaires du Rois, le 11 Octobre 1742, second edition (Paris: Duchesne, 1759), 45. This parody considerably reduces Phèdre's role by eliminating an equivalent to her scene of lamentation and self-accusation at the end of Act 4 of Hippoyte et Aricie. Diane's explanatory narrative in Act 5 Scene 6 was cut in both the 1742 and 1757 revisions of Rameau's opera, although two manuscript copies of the 1742 version preserve a modified version of the passage. See Rameau, Jean-Philippe, Hippolyte et Aricie (1757 version, with revisions of 1742), ed. Bouissou, Sylvie, in Opera omnia Rameau (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2007), series 4, volume 6, 386–387Google Scholar.

80 This notion of the ‘consuming’ of time is drawn from Corneille, Discours des trois unités, 185.

81 Kintzler, Poétique de l'opéra français, 19.

82 On the notion of the entr'acte as a ‘mask’ see Kintzler, Théâtre et opéra à l'âge classique, 148.

83 I borrow the expression from Taplin, Oliver's Greek Tragedy in Action, second edition (London: Routledge, 2003), 21Google Scholar, cited from an earlier edition in Barnwell, H. T., ‘“They Have Their Exits and Their Entrances”: Stage and Speech in Corneille's Drama’, The Modern Language Review 81/1 (1986), 52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rosow alludes to this technique as revealed by act-opening conversations that begin in medias res; see Rosow, ‘Making Connections’, 232.