Grand Opera House

Paris at the turn of the 19th century was a magnet for composers, both French and foreign, especially those of opera. The term "grand opéra" became current in the early 19th century, with contemporaries like the critic Castil-Blaze defining it as a work that was sung throughout (in contrast to opéra comique), performed at the prestigious Paris Opéra, and had a noble subject. The librettist Étienne de Jouy further advocated for a five-act structure and plots drawn from heroic historical events. The aesthetic goals of the Empire were exemplified by works like Gaspare Spontini's Fernand Cortez (1809), which combined an exotic setting with melodramatic plots and spectacular tableaux, such as a…

The first opera of the grand opera canon is, by common consent, Daniel Auber's La muette de Portici (1828). This tale of a revolution set in Naples in 1647, which culminates in an eruption of Mount Vesuvius into which the heroine throws herself, embodied the musical and scenic sensationalism that would become the genre's hallmark. The libretto for La muette was by Eugène Scribe, a dominant force in French theater who specialized in melodramatic and historical plots. Scribe's first libretto for the Opéra, it was so well-suited to the public taste that he went on to write or be associated with many of the most successful grand operas that followed. La muette's reputation was further cemented…