Grand Opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and (in their original productions) lavish and spectacular design and stage-effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events. The term is particularly applied to certain productions of the Paris Opéra from the late 1820s to around 1850, and has sometimes been used to designate the Paris Opéra itself, but is also used in a broader application in respect of contemporary or later works of similar monumental proportions from France, Germany, Italy and other European countries..

Origins

Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century drew in many composers, both French and foreign, and especially those of opera. Several Italians working during this period including Luigi Cherubini demonstrated that the use of recitative was suited for the powerful dramas that were being written. Others, such as Gaspare Spontini, wrote works to glorify Napoleon. These operas were composed on a suitably grand scale for the Emperor. Other factors which led to Parisian supremacy at operatic spectacle was the ability of the large Paris Opéra to stage sizeable works and recruit leading stage-painters, designers and technicians, and the long tradition of French ballet and stagecraft. The first theatre performance ever lit by gas, for example, was Aladino at the Opéra in 1823; and the theatre had on its staff the innovative designers Duponchel, Cicéri and Daguerre.

Several operas by Gaspare Spontini, Luigi Cherubini, and Gioacchino Rossini can be regarded as precursors to French grand opera. These include Spontini's La vestale (1807) and Fernand Cortez (1809, revised 1817), Cherubini's Les Abencérages (1813), and Rossini's Le siège de Corinthe (1827) and Moise (1828). All of these have some of the characteristics of size and spectacle that are normally associated with French grand opera. Another important forerunner was Il crociato in Egitto by Meyerbeer, who eventually became the acknowledged king of the Grand Opera genre. In Il crociato, which was produced by Rossini in Paris in 1825 after success in Venice, Florence and London Meyerbeer succeeded in blending Italian singing-style with an orchestral style derived from his German training, introducing a far wider range of musical theatre effects than traditional Italian opera. Moreover, Il crociato with its exotic historical setting, onstage bands, spectacular costumes and themes of culture clash, exhibited many of the features on which the popularity of Grand Opera would be based.

Ballet in Grand Opera

A notable feature of Grand Opera as it developed in Paris through the 1830s was the presence of a lavish ballet, to appear at or near the beginning of its second act. This was required, not for aesthetic reasons, but to satisfy the demands of the Opera's wealthy and aristocratic patrons, who were more interested in the dancers themselves than in the opera, and did not want their regular meal-times disturbed. The ballet therefore became an important element in the social prestige of the Opéra. Composers who did not comply with this tradition might suffer as a consequence, as did Richard Wagner with his attempt to stage a revised Tannhäuser as a Grand Opera in Paris in 1861, which had to be withdrawn after three performances, partly because the ballet was in Act I.