Hey, Opera! Why so grand?

Grand Opera is not just a generic term for big sets and big productions, in fact the term Grand Opera refers to a specific genre of 19th-century opera and at times can refer specifically to only certain productions of the Paris Opéra from the late 1820s to around 1860.

Paris at the turn of the 19th-century drew in many composers, both French and foreign, and operas were composed on a suitably grand scale for the Emperor Napoleon. Parisian supremacy in opera was in large part because of the size alone of the Paris Opéra house allowing it to stage massive works and recruit leading stage-painters, designers, and technicians to take the art of stagecraft to a whole new level. The first theater performance lit by gas, for example, was Aladin ou la lampe merveilleuse at the Opéra in 1823, and leveraged the innovative designs of Duponchel, Cicéri, and Daguerre.

The first opera officially considered to be “grand” was La muette de Portici (1828) by Daniel François Auber. This tale of revolution set in Naples in 1647, ending with an eruption of Mount Vesuvius into which the heroine throws herself, embodied the musical and scenic sensationalism which were to be Grand Opera's hallmark. In 1829, this was followed by Rossini's swansong Guillaume Tell. The resourceful Rossini, having largely created a style of Italian opera to which European theatre had been in thrall, recognized the potential of new technology which included larger theatres and orchestras and modern instrumentation. He proved in this work that he could rise to meet them in this undoubted Grand Opera style. However, his comfortable financial position, and the change in political climate after the July Revolution, persuaded him to quit the field, making Guillaume Tell his last public composition.

What became the essential features of Grand Opera were described by Étienne de Jouy, the librettist of Guillaume Tell, in an essay of 1826:

“Division into five acts seems to me the most suitable for any opera that would reunite the elements of the genre: ... where the dramatic focus was combined with the marvellous: where the nature and majesty of the subject ... demanded the addition of attractive festivities and splendid civil and religious ceremonies to the natural flow of the action, and consequently needed frequent scene changes.”

But that was not all, a notable feature of Grand Opera as it developed in Paris through the 1830s was the presence of a lavish ballet, to appear at or near the beginning of its second act. This was required, not for aesthetic reasons, but to satisfy the demands of the Opera's wealthy and aristocratic patrons, many of whom were more interested in the dancers themselves than the opera. These individuals also did not want their regular meal-times disturbed. The ballet therefore became an important element in the social prestige of the Paris Opera. Composers who did not comply with this tradition might suffer as a consequence, as did Richard Wagner with his attempt to stage a revised Tannhäuser as a Grand Opera in Paris in 1861, which had to be withdrawn after three performances, partly because the ballet was in act one (when the dancers' admirers were still at dinner).

During the 1870s and 1880s, a new generation of French composers continued to produce large-scale works in the tradition of Grand Opera but often broke its melodramatic boundaries. Jules Massenet had at least two large scale historical works to his credit, Le roi de Lahore (Paris, 1877, assessed by Grove as "the last Grand Opera to have a great and widespread success".) and Le Cid (Paris, 1885). While Cendrillon (1899) still has several elements of traditional Grand Opera including an extended ballet section and multiple acts, one can see that Massenet was also moving the art form forward with chromatic leitmotifs à la Wagner and a touch of Italian verismo. Furthermore, as one of the first operas to be produced at the newly rebuilt Salle Favart (the home of the Opéra-Comique), it enjoyed the modern facilities provided during the refurbishment, including special effects on stage and electricity throughout the theater. The original production with sets designed by Lucien Jusseaume (act 1), Eugène Carpezat (act 2), Auguste Alfred Rubé (act 3, scene 2), and Marcel Jambon (act 4), was an immediate success with fifty performances in its first season and has since been produced all over the world with recent productions at The Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera House in London.