Caught Between Aesthetics and Politics: French Nationalism in the Reception of Two Salome Operas in Pre-War Paris
In spring 1910, promoters for both the Opéra and the Théâtre Lyrique de la Gaîté barraged Parisian opera-goers with advertisements publicizing the upcoming performances of an opera based on a play by the notorious Oscar Wilde – Salome. Or was it Salomé? Confusion among the opera-going public was understandable: two operas, both to libretti adapted from Wilde’s play, were being performed in Paris at the same time. The first was the creation of the German master, Richard Strauss. The second featured music by an unknown Frenchman, Antoine Mariotte. Mariotte’s opera had premiered in 1908 after a long battle between Mariotte and Strauss over the rights to Wilde’s play. Now, two years later, these dueling Salome operas competed for ticket sales and critical recognition in the French capital.
In this paper, I investigate the reception in 1910 of Mariotte’s and Strauss’s Salome operas within the fervently nationalist atmosphere that characterized the French musical press in the years immediately preceding World War I. Drawing on the research of Jane Fulcher, Jann Pasler, and Katherine Bergeron, I position this reception within the context of a musical press that became increasingly polemical in its rhetoric at the fin-de-siècle. Then, through analysis of press reviews, I explore the musical characteristics that critics like Pierre Lalo, Léon Vallas, and Gaston Carraud identified as uniquely “German” or “French” in these operas, such as, in the case of Mariotte’s Salomé, its dark sound world, thick texture, and Debussyian treatment of text. These traits, which critics had previously condemned as monotonous and derivative following Salomé’s 1908 premiere, were now championed as antidotes to the “Germanic” excess and violent physicality of Strauss’s Musikdrama. Utilizing the reception of Mariotte’s and Strauss’s Salome operas as a case study, I examine how musical works can be hijacked as vehicles for furthering a nationalist agenda.
In spring 1910, promoters for both the Opéra and the Théâtre Lyrique de la Gaîté barraged Parisian opera-goers with advertisements publicizing the upcoming performances of an opera based on a play by the notorious Oscar Wilde – Salome. Or was it Salomé? Confusion among the opera-going public was understandable: two operas, both to libretti adapted from Wilde’s play, were being performed in Paris at the same time. The first was the creation of the German master, Richard Strauss. The second featured music by an unknown Frenchman, Antoine Mariotte. Mariotte’s opera had premiered in 1908 after a long battle between Mariotte and Strauss over the rights to Wilde’s play. Now, two years later, these dueling Salome operas competed for ticket sales and critical recognition in the French capital.
In this paper, I investigate the reception in 1910 of Mariotte’s and Strauss’s Salome operas within the fervently nationalist atmosphere that characterized the French musical press in the years immediately preceding World War I. Drawing on the research of Jane Fulcher, Jann Pasler, and Katherine Bergeron, I position this reception within the context of a musical press that became increasingly polemical in its rhetoric at the fin-de-siècle. Then, through analysis of press reviews, I explore the musical characteristics that critics like Pierre Lalo, Léon Vallas, and Gaston Carraud identified as uniquely “German” or “French” in these operas, such as, in the case of Mariotte’s Salomé, its dark sound world, thick texture, and Debussyian treatment of text. These traits, which critics had previously condemned as monotonous and derivative following Salomé’s 1908 premiere, were now championed as antidotes to the “Germanic” excess and violent physicality of Strauss’s Musikdrama. Utilizing the reception of Mariotte’s and Strauss’s Salome operas as a case study, I examine how musical works can be hijacked as vehicles for furthering a nationalist agenda.
