Origins
Paris at the turn of the 19th century drew in many composers, both French and foreign, and especially those of opera. Several Italians working during this period including Luigi Cherubini demonstrated that the use of recitative was suited for the powerful dramas that were being written. Others, such as Gaspare Spontini, wrote works to glorify Napoleon. These operas were composed on a suitably grand scale for the Emperor. Other factors which led to Parisian supremacy at operatic spectacle was the ability of the large Paris Opéra to stage sizeable works and recruit leading stage-painters, designers and technicians, and the long tradition of French ballet and stagecraft. The first theatre performance ever lit by gas, for example, was Aladin ou La lampe merveilleuse at the Opéra in 1823; and the theatre had on its staff the innovative designers Duponchel, Cicéri and Daguerre.
Several operas by Gaspare Spontini, Luigi Cherubini, and Gioachino Rossini can be regarded as precursors to French grand opera. These include Spontini's La vestale (1807) and Fernand Cortez (1809, revised 1817), Cherubini's Les Abencérages (1813), and Rossini's Le siège de Corinthe (1827) and Moïse et Pharaon (1828). All of these have some of the characteristics of size and spectacle that are normally associated with French grand opera. Another important forerunner was Il crociato in Egitto by Meyerbeer, who eventually became the acknowledged king of the grand opera genre. In Il crociato, which was produced by Rossini in Paris in 1825 after success in Venice, Florence and London, Meyerbeer succeeded in blending Italian singing-style with an orchestral style derived from his German training, introducing a far wider range of musical theatre effects than traditional Italian opera. Moreover, Il crociato with its exotic historical setting, onstage bands, spectacular costumes and themes of culture clash, exhibited many of the features on which the popularity of grand opera would be based.
What became the essential features of 'grand opéra' were foreseen by Etienne 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.
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