ABSTRACT
The Revolution had established a tradition of massive open-air concerts, many of which included choral items. Such spectacles continued into the later nineteenth century, particularly after 1871 as the newly established Third Republic attempted to bolster its authority by cautious reference to the trappings of a revolutionary past. Massenet was the major French opera composer of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, with a sustained record of success: several of his works still hold the stage. The grand opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer, L'Africaine, was played repeatedly at the Opéra from its premiere in 1865 until into the twentieth century. Charles Lecocq, though now little known, rivalled Offenbach in popularity in the 1870s as a composer of comic operas. An exotic work produced at the Opera-Comique in 1872 was Saint-Saens's early work La princesse jaune, also a one-act opera-comique, this time with a Japanese subject.
