Scribe and the term ‘grand opera’

As we saw on p. 3, ‘grand opera’ is not a generic term with secure historical credentials. Since William Crosten's book French Grand Opera: An Art and a Business (1948) it has gained currency in musicology for a not very precisely definable subspecies of nineteenth-century opera that is French and influenced by France. From the late 1820s, long before the emergence of the generic paradigm, librettists and composers did, according to Anselm Gerhard, use the term to ‘characterise individual works’, but not very systematically. In 1803, for instance, when Henri Berton dedicated his Aline, reine de Golconde to Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, he referred to the ageing Monsigny's 1766 setting of the same libretto as follows: ‘With your tuneful songs you enriched the poem La Reine de Golconde, grand opera’. In fact, the older work had been designated as a ballet héroïque and as an opéra. Critics of Auber's operas at their first performances did not use the generic label ‘grand opera’; nor did Scribe and Auber when their works were printed. It is, however, found in a number of Scribe's manuscript librettos for five-act operas such as Le Prophète and Noëma (intended for Meyerbeer and containing elements that were reused in L'Enfant prodigue), for four-act operas such as Dom Sébastien (set by Donizetti), for one-acters such as La Tapisserie or for the adaptation of Auber's opéra comique Le Cheval de bronze as a three-act opera-ballet for the Opéra.