Grand Opera-Petit Opera: Parisian Opera And Ballet From The Restoration To The Second Empire

The emergence of grand opera around 1830 resulted in large-scale works in five acts setting libretti largely based on historical subjects that dominated much European stage music until the First World War. But these shifts in generic paradigm came at a price. The repertoire of the Paris Opera was based as much on ballet-pantomime as on opera, and until 1830 both genres would share the stage in a single evening. Although the aesthetic impulses behind grand Opera made programming new opera and ballet henceforth impossible, the state required the Opera to maintain the balance between opera and ballet in order to reserve the institution's "pompe et luxe," a situation that called forth a number of responses from its management during the period that all Parisian opera houses were controlled by license (1806/7 to 1864).