Le Grand Opéra.—Its enormous Expense.—Its Fashion.—Its acknowledged Dulness.—'La Juive'.—Its heavy Music.—Its exceeding Splendour.—Beautiful management of the Scenery.—National Music.
Can I better keep the promise I gave you yesterday than by writing you a letter of and concerning le grand opéra? Is there anything in the world so perfectly French as this? Something like their pretty opéra comique may exist elsewhere; we have our comic opera, and Italy has her buffa; the opéra Italien, too, may be rather more than rivalled at the Haymarket: but where out of Paris are we to look for anything like the Académie Royale de Musique? ... le grand opéra? ... l'opéra par excellence?—I may safely answer, nowhere.
It is an institution of which the expenses are so enormous, that though it is more constantly and fully attended perhaps than any other theatre in the world, it could not be sustained without the aid of funds supplied by the government. The extraordinary partiality for this theatre seems to have existed among the higher classes, without any intermission from change of fashion, occasional inferiority of the performances, or any other cause, from the time of Louis Quatorze to the present. That immortal monarch, whose whim was power, and whose word was law, granted a patent privilege to this establishment in favour of the musical Abbé Perrin, but speedily revoked it, to bestow one more ample still on Lulli. In this latter act, it is ordained that "tous gentilshommes et demoiselles puissent chanter aux dites pièces et représentations de notre dite Académie Royale sans que pour ça ils soient censés déroger au dit titre de noblesse et à leurs priviléges."
This was a droll device to exalt this pet plaything of the fashionable world above all others. Voltaire fell into the mode like the rest of the fine folks, and thus expressed his sensibility to its attractions:—
"Il faut se rendre à ce palais magique,
Où les beaux vers, la danse, la musique,
L'art de charmer les yeux par les couleurs,
L'art plus heureux de séduire les cœurs,
De cent plaisirs font un plaisir unique."