Ce mémoire porte sur les quatre premières tragédies lyriques de Quinault et Lully, soit Cadmus et Hermione (1673), Alceste (1674), Thésée (1675) et Atys (1676), et étudie la représentation des personnages féminins dans leur rapport à la violence. Se fondant sur des considérations sociohistoriques et dramaturgiques, il cherche à déterminer si, par leur liberté formelle, les premiers opéras français ont pu promouvoir une image plus libre et plus forte de la féminité que celle véhiculée par la doxa. Le premier chapitre aborde la question de la violence dans la société française du XVIIe siècle et du rapport des femmes à la violence, tant subie qu’engendrée. Il s’attarde ensuite aux particularités de la violence dans la tragédie lyrique, convoquant les notions de pathos et de catharsis, d’effet tragique et de représentation scénique. Recourant à une méthodologie basée sur les études littéraires et dramaturgiques et complétée par de brèves analyses musicales, le second chapitre analyse le rapport à la violence chez les personnages féminins du corpus : d’abord les mortelles, puis les surnaturelles, avant de comparer leur représentation dichotomique à celle plus diversifiée des personnages masculins. / This master's thesis will focus on the first four lyric tragedies that were written by Quinault and Lully, that is Cadmus et Hermione (1673), Alceste (1674), Thésée (1675), and Atys (1676), and examine the representation of female characters in their relation with violence. Based on socio-historical and dramaturgical considerations, it seeks to determine whether, through their formal freedom, the first French operas were able to promote a freer and stronger image of womanhood than the one conveyed by the doxa. The first chapter addresses the issue of violence in the French society of the 17th century and discusses women's relation with violence, suffered, as well as caused. It then details the peculiarities of violence in lyric tragedy by summoning the notions of pathos and catharsis, tragical effect and theatrical representation. Using a methodology based on literary and dramaturgical studies, complemented by short musical analysis, the second chapter analyzes the corpus' female characters' relation to violence – first, the deadly, followed by the supernatural, before comparing their dichotomous representation to the more diversified one of the male characters.

Ce mémoire porte sur le rôle des divinités dans la structure dramatique de la tragédie en musique Idoménée d’Antoine Danchet et d’André Campra, originalement créée en 1712 et remaniée en 1731. L’étude répond à des questions d’ordre structurel quant à l’évolution du genre et montre de quelle façon la représentation des dieux dans Idoménée est liée à une ouverture formelle qui annonce la disparition du prologue, puisque les divinités n’y sont plus confinées à une fonction de louange du roi, mais contribuent activement à lancer l’action dramatique dès cette partie liminaire de l’opéra. Par un bref aperçu historique de la tragédie lyrique et des traditions mythologiques se rapportant à Vénus et à Neptune, ce mémoire questionne la place de ces dieux dans l’univers des hommes, tel que l’envisage la tragédie lyrique, qui démontre, comme on le sait, une propension à unifier les mondes surnaturel et humain. Dans Idoménée, cette unification passe en grande partie par l’usage d’un prologue qui fait office de premier acte, en assurant aux divinités en question une fonction essentielle à la structure dramatique. / This essay focuses on the deities’ role in the dramatic structure of Antoine Danchet and André Campra’s Idoménée, a tragédie en musique originally written in 1712 and rearranged in 1731. This research raises questions about the evolution of this particular genre while aiming to show how the representation of the Gods in Idoménée is linked to a formal opening which announces the disappearance of the prologue during the 1740s, as the deities are no longer used to solely praise the king but actively contribute to start off the dramatic effect as early as this opening part of the opera, thus giving a new function to the prologue. Through a brief historical overview of the French opera genre known as tragédie lyrique and of the mythological traditions linked to Venus and Neptune, this essay questions the place of these two deities in the human universe as envisioned by the tragédie lyrique which, as it is well known, tends to unify the supernatural and human worlds. In Idoménée, this unification mostly occurs through the use of a prologue, which also forms the first act of this drama, giving the deities in question an essential role in the dramatic structure of the opera.

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.

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