|
|
Article: Backstage at the Revolution: How the Royal Paris Opera Survived the End of the Old Regime
- Article from:
- Opera News
- Article date:
- August 1, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright Metropolitan Opera Guild, Incorporated Aug 2009. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
|
Backstage at the Revolution: How the Royal Paris Opera Survived the End of the Old Regime By Victoria Johnson University of Chicago Press, 304 pp. $45
The idea that opera as an art form is uniquely magnificent, uniquely exclusive and uniquely expensive is a notion that has a certain history. The question of how those traits came to be taken for granted as indispensable parts of opera shapes the core of Victoria Johnson's inventive chronicling of the Paris Opera, from its founding - by Pierre Perrin in 1669, as the Académie d'Opéra - through its early successes under Jean-Baptiste Lully and on through the French Revolution. Far from being a straightforward or comprehensive history of the ...