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.

'An indispensable resource for those reconstructing this repertoire for the stage, Harris-Warrick's book also offers much of interest to scholars in many subspecialties of early modern European history who are willing to do the work of connecting her impressive study to the world beyond the stage.' Chantal Frankenbach, Notes