The Repertory of the Italian Court Opera in Berlin, 1740–1786

This chapter shows how a unique canonic repertory of opera seria evolved in Berlin’s Italian Court Opera under the leadership of King Friedrich II of Prussia (Frederick the Great). Thirty-one works by Johann Adolf Hasse and Carl Heinrich Graun were produced from 1740 to 1756 and then revived during the subsequent three decades, until the king’s death in 1786. Moreover, four new operas written in the antique style were produced by the theater’s director, Johann Friedrich Agricola. Even though the economic effects of the Seven Years War played a role in limiting the production of new operas, the repertory evolved in large part due to the king’s deep commitment to the old works and to his authority in selecting each year’s repertory and casting the singers. This chapter is paired with Katherine Hambridge’s “Catching up and getting ahead: The opera house as temple of art in Berlin c. 1800.”

The Survival of English Opera in Nineteenth-Century Concert Life

This chapter shows how selections from English operas composed between the 1730s and the 1790s—chiefly by Thomas Arne, Charles Dibdin, William Shield, and Stephen Storace—became standard repertory in concerts throughout the nineteenth century. Such pieces were performed at benefit concerts organized by individual musicians and at events given by local ensembles that blended songs with virtuoso pieces and orchestral numbers. Critical commentary on such songs justified their aesthetic legitimacy as groups separate from pieces deemed part of classical music. By 1900, songs by Arne, Storace, and even Dibdin were often sung in recitals along with German lieder and pieces from seventeenth- or eighteenth-century Italy or France. The solidity of this tradition contributed to the revival of the operas themselves from the 1920s, most often Arne’s Artaxerxes (1762). This chapter is paired with Rutger Helmers’s “National and international canons of opera in tsarist Russia.”

Canons of the American Musical

As the American musical has come of age and matured with continuing vitality, it has developed not just one canon but many. Various performing canons are tailored to specific cultural settings, reflecting venue, expected audiences, available performers, or other factors. There exist separate canons for high schools interested in getting lots of bodies on stage, for community theaters on a budget with a stable of local stars vying for plum roles, for church groups or junior high schools more careful with subject matter, or for college groups looking for something far enough out there to satisfy their rebellious urges. And finally, there exist a critical canon and a teaching canon, for which musicals are chosen in part according to the larger historical and social narratives they support. This chapter is paired with Micaela Baranello’s “Viennese operetta canon formation and the journey to prestige.”

International Opera in Nineteenth-century New York

This chapter charts how canonic repertories evolved in very different forms in New York City during the nineteenth century. The unstable succession of entrepreneurial touring troupes that visited the city adapted both repertory and individual pieces to the audience’s taste, from which there emerged a major theater, the Metropolitan Opera, offering a mix of German, Italian, and French works. The stable repertory in place there by 1910 resembles to a considerable extent that performed in the same theater today. Indeed, all of the twenty-five operas most often performed between 1883 and 2015 at the Metropolitan Opera were written before World War I. The repertory may seem haphazard in its diversity, but that very condition proved to be its strength in the long term. This chapter is paired with Benjamin Walton’s “Canons of real and imagined opera: Buenos Aires and Montevideo, 1810–1860.”

Operatic Canons and Repertories in Italy c. 1900

This chapter outlines how a fundamental crisis arose in Italian opera houses by 1900, shaped by the focus on canonic repertory as it was defined by the leading theaters and music publishers. Planning of repertory became focused on specific kinds of operas—in effect a canonic typology—from which a work was chosen as appropriate to a specific season or social context. Eventually, this repertory came to be perceived as finite, establishing certain canonic types as standard choices for the organization of a theater’s repertory or a publisher’s list. The leading such framework took shape most significantly in Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, devised by publishers and glorified by key artists, most significantly the conductor Arturo Toscanini. This chapter is paired with Carlotta Sorba’s “Theaters, markets, and canonic implications in the Italian opera system, 1820–1880.”

The Practical and Symbolic Functions of Pre-Rameau Opera at the Paris Opéra before Gluck

This chapter explains how a uniquely long-lived canon evolved in revivals of operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully and his immediate successors—chiefly André Campra and André-Cardinal Destouches—right up to the early 1770s. The Académie Royale de Musique was unique as the only theater to resist Italian repertory, except in two brief controversial periods. A dogmatic commitment to the old style and repertory survived after Lully’s death, quite separate from the operas of Jean-Philippe Rameau. Opposition to this unique practice broke out occasionally among the public, but such opinion was not widely supported in the press. It is striking that the main critics of ancienne musique, as it was called—Rousseau, Paul Henri d’Holbach, and Friedrich Melchior von Grimm—all came from outside France. This chapter is paired with Franco Piperno’s “Italian opera and the concept of ‘canon’ in the late eighteenth century.”

The Evolution of French Opera Repertories in Provincial Theaters

Which operas did people most often watch in France—all over France, that is—in 1780, 1820, 1860, and 1890? How did provincial theaters compare with those in Paris, where the great majority of operas originated? This chapter aims to correct the unduly narrow focus on Paris traditionally followed in histories of French opera. The chapter shows how old, indeed canonic, repertories were created in Paris, which then were performed in such cities as Rouen, Bordeaux, and Lyon. It traces how repertories emerged, focusing variously on works by Gluck, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Donizetti, Verdi, and Wagner. The most important respect in which provincial theaters differed from those in Paris was the close intermingling in a single theater of pieces in different genres—opéra comique, grand opéra, and opérette. This chapter is paired with Yannick Simon’s “The mingling of opera genres: Canonic opera at the Théâtre des Arts in Rouen, 1882–1897.”

Italian Opera and the Concept of “Canon” in the Late Eighteenth Century

This essay shows that in Italy for much of the eighteenth century, canonic recognition was granted to the librettist of a famous opera but not to the composer, who was seen as an artisan rather than an intellectual. But the unique long-term popularity of Pergolesi’s La serva padrona (1733) led to the honoring of composers in subsequent generations both in musical and in dramatic terms. Even though a stable authorial canon of opera composers failed to establish itself in Italy prior to the triumph of Rossini, strong respect emerged for composers such as Niccolò Jommelli, Niccolò Piccinni, and Giovanni Paisiello, which, together with the rising fame of leading singers, laid the groundwork for the Italian operatic canon of the nineteenth century. This chapter is paired with Michel Noiray’s “The practical and symbolic functions of pre-Rameau opera at the Paris Opéra before Gluck.”

Redefining the Standard

This chapter shows how a singer could “rescue” a work in canonic terms. Whereas Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice (1774) had not been performed in Paris since 1833, Pauline Viardot took a key role in re-solidifying not only the opera but also Gluck’s reputation generally; by the same token, Gluck’s music, in turn, helped Viardot leave a legacy in the history of great singers. The new version of Orphée, premiered at the Théâtre-Lyrique on 18 November 1859, featured Viardot in the title role, a performance that stunned Parisian audiences and critics alike. While the scope of singers’ authority had diminished somewhat, important opportunities arose to shape a canon as it evolved and expanded, and Viardot certainly did so in the case of Gluck. This chapter is paired with Kimberly White’s “Setting the standard: Singers, theater practices, and the opera canon in nineteenth-century France.”

Phantoms at the Opéra

This chapter argues that the reputation of Giacomo Meyerbeer went through a process of “de-canonization” after his death in 1868. More than those of other opera composers powerful in that time, views about his rise and eventual decline became firmly established by the fin-de-siècle. By re-examining the discourse surrounding this dominant figure, the chapter reveals larger tendencies of operatic canonicity in nineteenth-century Paris, illustrating the volatility of reputation and the peculiarly operatic ways of measuring canonic status. From Meyerbeer’s death, a gradual process took place by which his works either were dropped from repertories or discredited, long before Les Huguenots finally bowed out at the Paris Opéra in the 1930s. This chapter is paired with William Gibbons’s “The uses and disadvantages of opera history: Unhistorical thinking in fin-de-siècle Paris.”