Review: Charles Edward Horn’s Memoirs of his Father and Himself

Review: Charles Edward Horn’s Memoirs of his Father and Himself

Abstract

occurred to her (see Elisabeth Cook’s foundation study, Duet and Ensemble in the Early Opéra-Comique (New York, 1995)), any more than the credenda of Sedaine, the most important librettist in this field after Favart. Sedaine (precisely) refused to accept the generic designation ‘comédie mêlée d’ariettes’ because his work always rejected the concept of a ‘play interspersed with music’. Similarly, because it misjudges the same self-conscious tradition that made Méhul’s contribution possible, one may not assert that (p. 41) ‘Grétry and many other[s] . . . included more pieces than they intended to keep’ when putting operas initially before the public (anyway, no evidence is offered). Of course improvements took place after the premiere. But the ideal and aim rejected papillotage for a musico-dramatic unity which produced in Richard Coeur-de-lion, for example, a final act that contains not one solo number, so tightly are these levels organized. When it comes to the 1790s, even Cherubini seems to be shortchanged in order to prioritize Méhul, since all we are told about the former’s Lodoïska and Eliza is that they ‘show strong ties to the opera buffa tradition’ (p. 6), surely a weirdly misleading generalization. The important place to find information