Women opera composers of the early French Revolution (1789-1794) dominated Parisian stages despite facing increasing limitations on their sex. While archival research has established the proliferation of these women composers’ musical successes, their broader cultural and political significance has yet to be fully understood. Employing the political philosophies of Revolutionary sensibility and Republican Motherhood, coupled with the period’s celebration of the pastoral mode, the works of Lucile Grétry (1772-1790) Florine Dezède (1766-1792), and Julie Candeille (1767-1834) are explored to better understand how and why women-composed
opéra-comiques which featured women as the main drivers of its narrative found success specifically during the early French Revolution. The feminocentric worlds of
Le mariage d’Antonio (1786),
Lucette et Lucas (1781), and
Catherine, ou La belle fermière (1792) served two key purposes: these operas allowed their co-creators to self-fashion their identity as opera composers while simultaneously echoing the Revolution’s foundational principles which were so seldomly realized within actual French society. This project ultimately reveals that
opéra-comique during the French Revolution did not always serve as escapism. Rather, women-composed
opéra-comiques of the early Revolution became political experiments where the French Revolution’s ideological possibilities—
liberté, égalité, and fraternité—could be lived to their fullest extent through the fictional Parisian operatic stage.
Marching onto the Stage: The Political Significance of Women-Composed Opera of the Early French Revolution, 1789-1794
Gleason-Mercier, C. (Author). 1 Aug 2023
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy