French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Didier, Le Livret d’opéra en France au XVIIIe siècle
Theatre and Performance
Béatrice Didier, Le Livret d’opéra en France au XVIIIe siècle
Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, coll. "SVEC", 2013
EAN 9780729410625
360 p.
Price 88 EUR.
Publisher's overview:
Long overlooked by literary critics, the opera libretto is deeply connected to a range of aesthetic and philosophical questions that defined the 18th century: the relationship between words and music, the origins of language, and the representational power of music. In this pioneering interdisciplinary study, Béatrice Didier explores the libretto through multiple complementary approaches: historical, sociological, structural, thematic, and aesthetic. She examines the highly variable socioeconomic circumstances of librettists, analyzes the formal structures of librettos, and investigates the profound transformations to which classical myths were frequently subjected. An exhaustive directory of 18th-century French librettists rounds out the volume, making it an indispensable reference work.
By demonstrating how opera librettos provided a freer outlet for the imagination than other literary forms—even capturing a certain nostalgia for the sacred that the era's rigorous rationalism tended to suppress elsewhere—B. Didier opens up fresh perspectives on the cultural, social, and intellectual life of the Age of Enlightenment.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction. The Opera Libretto: A Despised Yet Prolific Genre
I The Librettists
1. Contexts and Contingencies
2. Nostalgia for Grandeur
3. Four Writer-Librettists
II Librettos and Their Forms
4. Justifications
5. Lyrical Genres
6. Language and Staging
III Towards Myth
7. Gateways to the Marvelous
8. Rameau's Opera Librettos and Myth
9. Early Romanticism
Conclusion. The Libretto: A Tremendous Reservoir of Myths
Directory of Librettists (Late 17th–Early 19th Century)
Bibliography
Index
Béatrice Didier is Professor Emeritus at the École Normale Supérieure (Paris, Ulm). A specialist in the relationship between literature and music, her most recent books focus on Diderot, Lesage, Stendhal, and George Sand.
During the Enlightenment, the opera libretto occupied a curious space between dramatic literature and musical performance, often marginalized by traditional literary criticism despite its immense popularity. The genre intersected with broader aesthetic and philosophical debates concerning the origins of language, the tension between text and score, and the expressive capacities of sound. Readers interested in the intersections of literature, music, and theatrical history during the Age of Enlightenment may find this study relevant to their research into French cultural life.