ABSTRACT
The rapid eclipse of Andre-Ernest-Modeste Gretry's reputation, beginning around 1830 and resulting in his almost complete disappearance from operatic repertoires in the later nineteenth century and the twentieth, obscures from us the scale of his earlier prestige. He enjoyed a career of remarkable longevity, productivity, and apparent imperviousness to political upheaval. Gretry's career has been the object of research, most frequently from a biographical point of view. Systematic examination of his music, however, has been rare: the sole book-length work remains David Charlton's meticulous and definitive analysis of his contribution to the genre of opera comique. A practical and successful man of theatre, dependent upon commercial success, Gretry was minutely concerned with the ways that his work was received by the public. An engagement with Gretry's musical reputation and in particular, the ways that his melodies intersected with popular sung culture, informs us that music fitted into the broader universe of ideas in complex, unpredictable fashions.
