Scribes & pharisees

Musical Times, Summer 2003 by Thomson, Andrew

Basically, the Odeon - the second Theatre francais licensed in 1824 to promote music drama in addition to straight plays - contributed to the internationalisation of opera in a way that the other state-controlled houses, the Opera and the Theatre Italien, did not. In addition to French opera-comiques and pasticci, foreign works in translation by Mozart, Rossini, Weber, Mercadente, Cimarosa and Meyerbeer were regularly mounted there, along with a host of now forgotten figures. Alas, what should have been a interesting study is ruined by information overload, lack of selection, equal treatment of facts, and little sense of foreground and background; a tragedy, really, since - quite apart from the author's energetic researches - much care has been taken over the actual writing and individual sentence construction. However, determined tunnelling into the inspissated mass of detail reveals some fascinating things. In October 1826, for instance, the great Scott himself attended performances of Ivanhoe, an opera by Pacini and Rossini with a 'mangled' libretto by Emile Deschamps. I realise that Professor Everist - an authority on French medieval music - is working in the historical tradition of the Annales school (now rather passe), but surely the prime purpose of a good academic book is to make strong and clear impressions on the mind, rather than merely adding fuel to dons' complaints that students don't like reading.

ANDREW THOMSON

Opera, liberalism, and antisemitism in nineteenth-century France: the politics of Halevy's La Juive Diana R. Hallman

Cambridge Studies in Opera

Cambridge UP (Cambridge, 2002); xvii, 390pp; L50. ISBN 0 521 65086 0. Music drama at the Paris Odeon 1824-1828

Mark Everist

University of California Press (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, 2002); xvii, 331pp; L40, $60. ISBN 0 520 23445 6.

Andrew Thomson is author of monographs on Widor and d'Indy, both published by Oxford University Press.