ABSTRACT
Louis de Cahusac, Jean de La Bruyere believed the supernatural to be an essential ingredient of opera, and he offers a stout rebuff to those who, in that acutely rational age, saw it as puerile and unworthy of a major art form. However, it is necessary for the composer and the scene designer to understand one another, for the orchestra and the machiniste to work together, and for what one is looking at to portray what the instrumental music is conveying, otherwise the musical picture will be imperfect and incomplete. French opera is a dramatic composition that in form partly resembles the theatre of ancient times and in substance has distinctive characteristics which give it a wholly new intellectual and aesthetic character. The French aesthetic demanded an overwhelmingly syllabic approach to word setting, at least in a dramatic context. Astonishing though it may seem, purely instrumental music was regarded by many French intellectuals as barely distinguishable from noise.
