ABSTRACT
In November 1831, faced with Giacomo M eyerbeer’s dazzling new opera Robert le diable, the music critic of the Garde national could only protest his helplessness: ‘Nous n ’osons la ju ger ä une prem iere audi tion; mais rien encore ne nous avait ä ce point etourdis d ’adm iration et de sensations inconnues’ (‘We dare no t pass judgm en t on a first hearing, bu t nothing ever m ade our heads so spin with adm iration and unfam iliar sensations’) .1 O ther writers followed suit, adm itting they expected to be in a position to pronounce on the work only after having heard it six or seven times. Some, including the critic of the Gazette de France, thought it a shame they were obliged to be so hasty:
O n a d o n n e h ie r Robert, il fau t en p a rie r au jo u rd ’hui, en p a rie r de fagon ä ne pas dep laire . II n ’y a p reo ccu p a tio n de coeur, de corps ou d ’esprit qui tien ne . Le feuille ton est com m e u n e diligence, il est oblige de p a rtir, e t plus m a lh eu reu x encore, il fau t q u ’il soit rem pli.2 (Robert was p e rfo rm ed yesterday, so I have to talk ab o u t it today; talk ab ou t it in an ag reeab le way. O th e r concerns, w h eth er o f th e h ea rt, body o r m ind , are immaterial. A weekly colum n is like a stagecoach: it has to leave, and, even worse, it has to be full.)
That they were lost for words is perhaps understandable: the prem iere had been eagerly awaited for several years and, when it finally arrived, lasted m ore than five hours and included a dem onic chorus, a sleeping-beauty episode and a ballet o f debauched nuns risen from the dead. The audience was overwhelmed: a bold new era in grand opera had been inaugurated. While Robert le diable drew on the same fund of opera comique elem ents as La muette de Portici,3 it had m ore of the breadth and scale of Guillaume Tell Yet in its final version it was emphatically no t an opera comique, no r - ju st as obviously - a product of the Rossinisme associ ated with the Theatre-Italien.4 Commentators would need a while to get used to this newfangled kind o f opera - and luckily for them Meyerbeer was a composer who liked to take his time over productions.
