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There is no abstract available for this dissertation. / School of Music

Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera Armide (1777) is an anomaly within the context of his eighteenth-century operatic reform. While all of Gluck’s other libretti had been written as an embodiment of the operatic reform, including his Italian works Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) and Alceste (1767) in addition to the French operas Iphigénie en Aulide (1774) and Iphigénie en Tauride (1779), Armide was based upon the seventeenth-century libretto that Phillipe Quinault had written for Jean-Baptiste Lully, the founder of French tragédie lyrique. The use of Quinault’s libretto drew a direct comparison not only between Gluck and Lully, but also between Gluck and traditional French opera. Setting Armide also required Gluck to incorporate many traditional elements of tragédie lyrique absent in the operatic reform, such as divertissement and ballet. Armide’s departure from the tenets of the reform were so significant that they were criticized by Gluck’s French librettist François-Louis Gand LeBland Du Roullet, who found particular fault with the opera’s lack of dramatic veracity. It is the very incongruity of Armide—its utilization of an antiquated libretto—that makes it key to understanding Gluck’s conception of eighteenth-century opera. Armide provides the best opportunity to explore how Gluck amalgamated the traditional forms and styles of French opera with the goals of Viennese operatic reform. Drawing out connections between tragédie lyrique and the precepts of his reform, Gluck demonstrated the composer’s role in strengthening and clarifying the reform qualities as expressed by the libretto. Through musical analysis, this thesis demonstrates that Armide maintains the musical characteristics and dramatic musical construction of Gluck’s earlier reform operas. It also illustrates that while Gluck honoured Lully’s conception of tragédie lyrique, he did not hesitate to improve what he saw as the faults of the earlier operatic style. Gluck’s juxtaposition of the Italian and French operatic traditions in Armide elucidates his creation of supranational opera. Superseding and encompassing both the French and Italian national styles, Gluck enlivened the operatic traditions of both countries while remaining true to his own dramatic and musical conception of opera.

La tragédie-opéra de Christoph-Willibald Gluck réalise les aspirations esthétiques des philosophes des Lumières dont l’influence de l’esthétique de la sensibilité, et la quête des origines en constituent la matrice poétique. Derrière les nouveautés introduites par la tragédie lyrique réformée dans les rapports qu’entretient le texte poétique à l’élément musical, s’émancipe un objet lyrique global qui, se fondant sur la construction organique de la tragédie grecque, s’érige en modèle poétique unitif. Souhaitant se placer au service d’une pluridisciplinarité exigée par les affinités qui s’établissent entre la tragédie grecque et le drame lyrique dès son origine, la présente contribution académique vise à apporter des éclaircissements sur le rôle du modèle antique dans l’élaboration théorique et la réalisation scénique de la tragédie-opéra pré-révolutionnaire de 1774 à 1789. Alors que le recours à la tragédie grecque répond à la fois aux nouvelles idées philosophiques et à la poétique globalisante de l’œuvre lyrique réformée, des inspirations textuelles et des liens de l’ordre de la construction formelle et poétique, notamment dans la réalisation des tableaux dramatiques, revendiquent une parenté composite et immédiate. Le lien intrinsèque établi dorénavant entre le théâtre déclamé antique et le théâtre lyrique réforme, met en lumière des questions inédites ou provenant du passé sur le rôle de la musique, aussi bien dans son rapport avec le poème que dans la corrélation avec le modèle global, faisant, ainsi ressortir le concept de musique « dramatique » sous fond de querelle musicale. Le recours à la tragédie grecque, derrière une apparence de légitimation du nouveau drame lyrique, fait apparaître l’émancipation de la forme antique, dont est reproduite surtout la finalité poétique. Entre le parcours d’un compositeur-dramaturge qui s’achève avec la tragédie d’Iphigénie en Tauride (1779) et celui d’un librettiste dont les poèmes ultérieurs s’inspirent de la forme antique, la tragédie-opéra, fondée sur une conception de théâtre « éprouvé », trouve pleinement sa place dans le mouvement du néo-classicisme des Lumières. / Christophe-Willibald Gluck’s tragédie-opéra, accomplishes the aesthetic inspirations of the Enlightenment based on the new aesthetic of sensibility and the quest of origins, its federal matric elements. Behind novelties introduced by the new relation between text and music, the emancipation of a global lyric project is founded in the organic structure of Greek tragedy, becoming, therefore, a poetic and unity model. The present academic contribution, based on a bi-disciplinary exigency due to early affinities between ancient Greek tragedy and opera, comes to enlighten the role of ancient model played on the tragédie-opéra’s theoretical elaboration and stage performance from 1774 to 1779. Although ancient tragedy responds not only to new ideas introduced by the Enlightenment but to the poetics of reformed opera, textual, formal and poetic inspirations, up to generating dramatic tableaux, mark a composite and immediate affiliation. New relation between ancient dramatic and lyric theatre is established on two fundamental directions: music’s new role as a poems interpreter, a collaborator to global result and as an art claiming its autonomy. On the other hand, the references to Greek tragedy to legitimize the reformed opera, reveals the emancipation of ancient Greek tragedy. The parallel itinerary of a composer-dramatist and a librettist, finishing, for the first, and, starting, for the second, with Iphigénie en Tauride, demonstrates that the global model, based on a felt conception of Greek tragedy, finds its place in the neo-classical movement.