The opera before the revoluti...

Vol 3 of Art and Letters, starts off with recounting the opening of Tancrède, the first opera composed specifically for la Maupin, or any contralto, in 1702. Jullien describes both the event and the history of the Theater of the Palais Royal in fair detail. The book is illustrated with pictures and plans of the opera house and a portrait of la Maupin (the "Mademoiselle Maupin dansant à l'opera" that we have seen elsewhere) and Mlle Desmastain as Pallas among others.

After covering opera in the reigns of Louis XIV, XV and XVI, the author turns to the subject of "Obsolete Types", treating us to a fine essay on the role of the Lackey in history and fiction. Quite useful for someone writing an historical fiction faced with the question of what, if anything, to say about our heroine's two lackeys who show up in the police report of her assault on her landlord's cook.

Source

clorinde

Jan 11, 2010 12:09 PM UTC

Do you have a copy of this book, or know where one is available? Google only shows the publisher's onfo and the table of contents online, and it doesn't seem to be available to buy either digitally or normally.

It appears to be at Google...

JimB.

Jan 12, 2010 4:44 AM UTC

Interesting. When I connect to the link above, I see a page that has a button to "Read this book" and a link to download it as a PDF. I take it that you don't see the same thing? If not, I have the PDF and I don't believe there is any reason that I can't share it with you. Let me know and I'll what I can do. Perhaps the Google servers in different countries have different books available?

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