Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera

Rebecca Harris-Warrick is Professor of Music at Cornell University, New York. She has published widely on French Baroque music and dance, with excursions into nineteenth-century opera, and has prepared critical editions of ballets by Lully and of Donizetti's opera, La Favorite. Much of her scholarly work has been informed by her interests in performance; she has studied early dance and performed as a Baroque flutist. She serves on the editorial boards for the Les Oeuvres complètes de Jean-Baptiste Lully and the Journal of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Introduction; Part I. Lully: 1. The dramaturgy of Lully's divertissements; 2. Constructing the divertissement; 3. Dance foundations; 4. Dance practices on stage; 5. Prologues; 6. The lighter side of Lully; Part II. The Rival Muses in the Age of Campra: 7. The muses take the stage; 8. Thalie, muse of comedy; 9. Thalie visits the fairs; 10. The contested comic; 11. Melpomène, muse of tragedy; 12. Melpomène adapts; 13. Terpsichore, muse of the dance; 14. In the traces of Terpsichore; Epilogue; Appendix 1. Works performed at the Académie Royale de Musique, 1695–1732, in which the impact of the comédie italienne can be seen; Appendix 2. A partial list of performances consisting of 'fragments', 1702–32; Appendix 3. The choreographies danced at the Opéra contextualized.