¹ ‘Ossian à Napoléon’, L'observateur des spectacles, de la littérature et des arts, 4 prairial an X (24 May 1802).

² On Napoleon's fascination with Macpherson's Ossianic poetry, see Healy, Frank George, The Literary Culture of Napoleon (Geneva, 1959), 120–1 and 127–32Google Scholar.

³ The Treaty of Amiens was signed on 25 March 1802, marking the beginning of a year of peace in Europe. Napoleon exploited this achievement to make his successful bid to become ‘Consul for life’, for which he acquired the support of the Tribunat and Corps législatif in May 1802. These results were ratified by a public plebiscite on 2 August 1802. See Dwyer, Philip G., The Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power, 1799–1815 (London, 2013), 101–2Google Scholar.

⁴ George Levitine, ‘L'aigle épouvanté de l’ ‘‘Ossian’’ de Girodet et l'aigle effrayé du mausolée de Turenne’, Gazette des beaux-arts (1974), 319–23; and Cuillé, Tili Boon, ‘From Myth to Religion in Ossian's France’, in The Super-Enlightenment: Daring to Know too Much, ed. Edelstein, Dan (Oxford, 2010), 251–2Google Scholar.

⁵ See Sueur, Jean-François Le, Ossian ou les bardes (Paris, [1805]), 541Google Scholar. Le Sueur could secure only eight harps for the premiere. See a letter from Joseph-Balthasar Bonet de Treiches to Jean-Baptiste-Charles Legendre de Luçay, 8 messidor an XII (27 June 1804). F-Pan AJ¹³ 90.

⁶ See the cast list in [Paul Dercy and Jacques-Marie Deschamps], Ossian ou les bardes (Paris, 1804), [iii, v–vi].

⁷ [Jean-Simon Berthélémy], ‘Neuf plaques de costumes’. F-Pbmo D216 1 (24–32). These costumes are also described in the score, see Le Sueur, Ossian ou les bardes, 388.

⁸ Since no set designs survive, information is taken from the detailed descriptions and quotations of the Opéra's set designer and machinist, Pierre Boullet. [Pierre Boullet], ‘Programme pour l'opéra d'Ossian ou les bardes’ and ‘Ce que couterons les décorations des bardes’. F-Pan AJ¹³ 90.

⁹ Le Sueur, Ossian ou les bardes, 407–12.

¹⁰ Le Sueur, Ossian ou les bardes, 409.

¹¹ See Journal de commerce and Mercure de France, 23 messidor an XII (14 July 1804).

¹² See Gazette nationale ou le moniteur universel, 23 messidor an XII (14 July 1804). A similar comment was made the next day in the Petites affiches, 24 messidor an XII (15 July 1804).

¹³ Cuillé, ‘From Myth to Religion in Ossian's France’, 251–2, and Charlton, David, ‘Ossian, Le Sueur and Opera’, Studies in Music 11 (1977), 47–8Google Scholar. Reprinted in David Charlton, French Opera, 1730–1830: Meaning and Media (Aldershot, 2000).

¹⁴ From March 1804 onward, the government became strongly involved in the production of Ossian, requesting among other things that no sets or costumes from older productions were to be reused, but that all should be made new. F-Pan AJ¹³ 90.

¹⁵ The meeting of Napoleon with Le Sueur is mentioned in Correspondence des amateurs musiciens, 30 messidor an XII (21 July 1804).

¹⁶ Giroud, Vincent, French Opera, A Short History (New Haven, 2010), 105–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dean, Winton, ‘French Opera’, in The Age of Beethoven, 1790–1830, ed. Abraham, Gerald (London, 1982), 72–3 and 83–5Google Scholar. A similar image of opera under Napoleon is given in Baker, Evan, From the Score to the Stage: An Illustrated History of Continental Opera Production and Staging (Chicago, 2013), 121–7Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Hillmer, Rüdiger, Die napoleonische Theaterpolitik: Geschäftstheater in Paris (1799–1815) (Cologne, 1999)Google Scholar; and David Chaillou, Napoléon et l'Opéra: la politique sur la scène, 1810–1815 ([Paris], 2004).

¹⁸ Jahrmärker, Manuela, Ossian: Eine Figur und eine Idee des europäischen Musiktheaters um 1800 (Cologne, 1993), 87–8Google Scholar. A similar claim was made in Sieghart Döhring and Sabine Henze-Döhring, Oper und Musikdrama im 19. Jahrhundert. Handbuch der musikalischen Gattungen 13 (Laaber, 1997), 11; and Matthias Brzoska, ‘Ossian ou les bardes’, in Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters, Band 3 (Munich, 1989), 481–3.

¹⁹ Jean Mongrédien, ‘Ossian à l'Opéra (1804)’, in Regard sur l'Opéra: du ‘Ballet Comique de la Reine’ à l'Opéra de Péking (Paris, 1976), 100; and Charlton, ‘Ossian, Le Sueur and Opera’, 47–8.

²⁰ Garlington, Aubrey S. Jr., ‘Lesueur, Ossian, and a “Synthesis of the Arts”’, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 18 (1964), 352–6Google Scholar.

²¹ Mongrédien, ‘Ossian à l'Opéra (1804)’, 89.

²² Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. and ext. edn (London, 2006), 191–210.

²³ On the popularity of ballet, see Jean Mongrédien, French Music from the Enlightenment to Romanticism 1789–1830 (Portland, OR, 1996), 73; and Ivor Guest, Ballet under Napoleon (Alton, 2001), 1–3.

²⁴ Between 1789 and 1799, only eleven new full-length tragic operas were premiered; but three were successfully performed during more than one season. Close to 80 per cent of the repertoire consisted of pre-Revolutionary operas. Performance data has been collected from the Journal de l'Opéra ([Paris: Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, 19..–1981]), digitised on Gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France).

²⁵ The Le Chapelier law stated that royal or government permission was no longer a prerequisite to opening a new theatre, a measure that quickly led to an unseen proliferation of small theatres in Paris. On its effect on the Opéra, see Darlow, Mark, Staging the French Revolution, Cultural Politics and the Paris Opéra 1789–1794 (Oxford, 2012), 107–9 and 118–24Google Scholar.

²⁶ Almanach des spectacles, an III (1794–5), 198; and Almanach des spectacles, an VIII (1798–9), 88.

²⁷ This description of the Opéra's unique artistic identity was prominent in the writings of Denis-Pierre-Jean Papillon de la Ferté (1727–94), administrator of the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi. It crops up in pre-Revolutionary notices to champion more generous royal patronage, as well as in the 1790s, in appeals to the Revolutionary governments. He often argued that subsidising expensive but unique spectacles would be rewarding, for it would attract foreigners and thus make the Parisian economy thrive. When writing to the king, he attributes this rationale to Louis XIV's minister of Finance, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. See [Denis-Pierre-Jean Papillon de la Ferté], ‘Notice’ (c.1785), f. 1r (F-Pan, O¹ 617.17); ‘Mémoire’ (after 1785), f. 1r (F-Pan, O¹ 617.36); and ‘Conclusion’ (c.1790), f. 1r (F-Pan, O¹ 617.46). The latter is a manuscript draft for the print from which the above quote is taken: [Denis-Pierre-Jean Papillon de la Ferté], Réflexions sur l'Opéra et sa conservation [s.d., s.l.], 1.

²⁸ See Johnson, Victoria, Backstage at the Revolution: How the Royal Paris Opera Survived the End of the Old Regime (Chicago, 2008), 108–10Google Scholar.

²⁹ Johnson, Backstage at the Revolution, 78–82.

³⁰ [Joseph-Louis Francœur, Simon-Nicholas Denesle and Réné-Gaston Baco de la Chapelle], Compte rendu au Directoire exécutif, par les C.ns Francœur, Denesle et Baco sur le théâtre de la République des Arts, à l'administration duquel ils ont été appelés le 29 germinal an 6 (Paris, an VI [1798]).

³¹ [Francœur, Denesle and Baco de la Chapelle], Compte rendu au Directoire exécutif, 14–15. The proposal is included in the Opéra's statutes: ‘Règlement du Théâtre de la République et des Arts’, 29 brumaire an VII (19 October 1798), 8v. F-Pan AJ¹³ 72.

³² See [Francœur, Denesle and Baco de la Chapelle], Compte rendu au Directoire exécutif, 13; and ‘Règlement du Théâtre de la République et des Arts’, 29 brumaire an VII (19 October 1798), 2v.

³³ [Francœur, Denesle and Baco de la Chapelle], Compte rendu au Directoire exécutif, 15.

³⁴ Solveig Serre, L'Opéra de Paris, 1749–1790: politique culturelle au temps des Lumières (Paris, 2011), 63–72.

³⁵ The committee included the general director, assistant director, head of music, head of the orchestra, two heads of the ballet, a painter, the Académie's secretary and the oldest among its principal actors. Serre, L'Opéra de Paris, 69 and 220–1.

³⁶ Serre, L'Opéra de Paris, 222–3.

³⁷ [Francœur, Denesle and Baco de la Chapelle], Compte rendu au Directoire exécutif, 16.

³⁸ ‘Règlement du Théâtre de la République et des Arts’, 29 brumaire an VII (19 October 1798), 6v.

³⁹ ‘Règlement du Théâtre de la République et des Arts’, 19 ventôse an IX (10 March 1801), 7v. F-Pan AJ¹³ 72.

⁴⁰ ‘Projet de Règlements pour l'Académie impériale de musique dressé par M. Bonet directeur’, 23r. F-Pan AJ¹³ 53.

⁴¹ Pierre Frantz, L'esthétique du tableaux dans le théâtre du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1998).

⁴² Erika Fischer-Lichte, ‘Der Körper als Zeichen und als Erfahrung: Über die Wirkung von Theateraufführungen’, in Theater im Kulturwandel des 18. Jahrhunderts, Inszenierung und Wahrnehmung von Körper–Musik–Sprache, ed. Erika Fischer-Lichte and Jörg Schönert (Göttingen, 1999), 59–60.

⁴³ On the popularity of pantomime and melodrama, see Hambridge, Katherine and Hicks, Jonathan, eds., The Melodramatic Moment: Music and Theatrical Culture, 1790–1820 (Chicago, 2018), 3–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Revolutionary festivals have been extensively discussed in Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, MA, 1988).

⁴⁴ Charlton, David, Opera in the Age of Rousseau: Music, Confrontation, Realism (Cambridge, 2013), 230–2Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ See Frantz, L'esthétique du tableaux, 91–8. Charlton has pointed to a wider mid-eighteenth-century change in the concept of verisimilitude as now based on ‘empirical reality’ rather than on an ideal of that reality. Charlton, Opera in the Age of Rousseau, 73–9.

⁴⁶ See Malakis, Emile, ‘The First Use of Couleur Locale in French Literary Criticism’, Modern Language Notes 60/2 (1945), 98–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Charlton, David, Grétry and the Growth of Opéra Comique (Cambridge, 1986), 232–40Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ See, for example, Hillmer, Die napoleonische Theaterpolitik, 21–4; and Darlow, Staging the French Revolution, 152–4.

⁴⁸ Darlow, Staging the French Revolution, 325.

⁴⁹ Only four new operas premiered in the years between the fall of Robespierre in 1794 and Napoleon's establishment of the Consulate in November 1799. The only successful one was André-Modeste Grétry's Anacréon chez Polycrate (1797) with a libretto by Jean-Henry Guy. According to historian R.J. Arnold, this opera set in ancient Greece denotes a return to pre-Revolutionary plot types because it centres on a poet's defence of two lovers against a tyrannical ruler and emphasises sensibilité over ‘stoic heroism’. Still, its stand against tyranny also suits the official political rhetoric of the Directory (1795–9). See R.J. Arnold, Grétry's Operas and the French Public: From the Old Regime to the Restoration (Farnham, 2016), 150–2.

⁵⁰ Deirdre Dawson and Pierre Morère, eds., Scotland and France in the Enlightenment (Lewisburg, 2004), 19.

⁵¹ Deirdre Dawson, ‘Fingal meets Vercingetorix: Ossianism, Celtomania, and the Transformation of French National Identity in Post-Revolutionary France’, in The Scottish Enlightenment and Literary Culture, ed. Ralph McLean, Ronnie Young and Kenneth Simpson (Lewisburg, 2016), 210.

⁵² Dawson, ‘Fingal meets Vercingetorix’, 211.

⁵³ On the origin of the Gaulish genealogy, see Pomian, Krszystof, ‘Franks and Gauls’, in Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, ed. Nora, Pierre, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (New York, 1996), 51–5Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ See Dawson, ‘Fingal meets Vercingetorix’, 209.

⁵⁵ Ozouf, Mona, ‘L'invention de l'ethnographie française: le questionnaire de l'Académie celtique’, Annales, Histoire, Sciences sociales 36/2 (1981), 210–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁶ Théophile Malo Corret de la Tour d'Auvergne, Origines gauloises, celles des plus anciens peuples de l'Europe puisées dans leurs vraie source, ou recherches sur la langue, l'origine et les antiquités des Celto-Bretons de l'Armorique pour servir à l'histoire ancienne et moderne de ce peuple et à celle des Français (Paris, an V [1796]).

⁵⁷ Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6–7 and 20–6.

⁵⁸ Anderson, Imagined Communities, 196–203.

⁵⁹ Girodet initially conceived of a painting depicting Hercules, but changed the topic to Ossian to complement François Gérard's Ossian évoque les fantômes au son de la harpe sur les bords de la Nora (1801), which was also destined for Malmaison. Cuillé, ‘From Myth to Religion in Ossian's France’, 250–1.

⁶⁰ See, for instance, Gérard's Ossian and Jean-Dominique-Auguste Ingres Le songe d'Ossian (1813).

⁶¹ See Girodet, Anne-Louis, ‘Description du tableau’, in Œuvres posthumes de Girodet-Troison, peintre d'histoire, suivie de sa correspondence, ed. Coupin, P.A., vol. 2 (Paris, 1829), 289–95Google Scholar.

⁶² de Treiches, Joseph Bonet, De l'Opéra en l'an XII (Paris, 1804), 74Google Scholar.

⁶³ Bonet, De l'Opéra, 74.

⁶⁴ See Holmström, Kirsten Gram, Monodramas, Attitudes, Tableaux Vivants: Studies on Some Trends of Theatrical Fashion 1770–1815 (Stockholm, 1967), 217–23Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Porta himself made clear that he wanted the scene to act out the painting. The score requests that the singers are to take on ‘the postures forming the painting’ and in a letter to the Opéra's management, he described the scene as: ‘Le Serment des David Horaces par David mis en action au théâtre.’ Bernardo Porta, ‘Les Horaces’ vol. 2, 191. F-Pbmo Mus. MS. A-375 (1–3); and Bernardo Porta aux administrateurs (c.1814). F-Pbnf musique, LA-PORTA BERNARDO (6). Douglas Ipson credibly dates this letter to 1814 and provides a more detailed account of the oath scene's political meaning in Douglas L. Ipson, ‘Deadly Tableau: David's Horatii, Porta's Horaces, and the Plot to Assassinate Napoleon, 1800’. Paper read at the AMS Conference Louisville, 15 November 2015. On the educational value of oath scenes in patriotic theatre and opera, see Bartlet, M. Elizabeth C., ‘The New Repertory at the Opéra during the Reign of Terror: Revolutionary Rhetoric and Operatic Consequences’, in Music and the French Revolution, ed. Boyd, Malcolm (Cambridge, 1992), 130–2 and 139–49Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Bonet, De l'Opéra, 77.

⁶⁷ On Napoleon's transformations of the secondary school system, see Alexander Grab, Napoleon and the Transformation of Europe (Basingstoke, 2003), 55–9.

⁶⁸ Bonet, De l'Opéra, 49. In these hopes, Bonet was later joined by Jean-Baptiste-Charles Legendre de Luçay, the governmental official overseeing the Parisian theatres. See Jean-Baptiste-Charles Legendre de Luçay to Bonet, 22 messidor an XII (11 July 1804). F-Pan AJ¹³ 90.

⁶⁹ Jean-François Le Sueur, Lettre en réponse à Guillard sur l'opéra de la ‘Mort d'Adam’ dont le tour de mise arrive pour la troisième fois au Théâtre des Arts et sur plusieurs points d'utilité relatifs aux arts et aux lettres (Paris, brumaire an X [October 1801]). The Lettre was at least in part invoking the tradition of the eighteenth-century querelles over theatrical and operatic styles, yet it largely failed to elicit an aesthetic debate. Instead it unleashed a fierce and personal conflict between Le Sueur and Bernard Sarrette, the director of the Conservatoire, that eventually resulted in the dismissal of the composer as Inspecteur at the Conservatoire. The quarrel, nevertheless, had its aesthetic grounds, as Le Sueur and Sarrette had very different visions about the future of French music, with the former privileging opera and the latter instrumental music. See Rebecca Geoffroy-Schwinden, ‘Politics, the French Revolution, and Performance: Parisian Musicians as an Emergent Professional Class, 1749–1802’ (PhD diss., Duke University, 2015), 113–14.

⁷⁰ Le Sueur, Lettre en réponse à Guillard, 16.

⁷¹ Le Sueur, Lettre en réponse à Guillard, 52.

⁷² Le Sueur, Lettre en réponse à Guillard, 33 (emphasis in original), see also 17.

⁷³ Le Sueur's three opéras comiques are discussed extensively in Jean Mongrédien, Jean-François Le Sueur: contribution à l’étude d'un demi-siècle de musique française (1780–1830), vol. 1 (Bern, 1980), 217–455.

⁷⁴ Le Sueur discussed the progress of Ossian at the Feydeau and then at the Opéra in a document, largely contemporary with the Lettre, entitled ‘Époque de la réception de cet opéra au Théâtre des arts’ (c.1801). F-Pbnf musique Rés F 1219 (2).

⁷⁵ Le Sueur, Lettre en réponse à Guillard, 13–15.

⁷⁶ These manuscript libretti represent three different stages of Le Sueur's opera. The text of the oldest manuscript copy (F-Pbnf musique 7884) alternates between prose and verse and thus likely preserves the opéra comique version in rehearsal at the Feydeau in 1798. It contains several indications in Le Sueur's hand for transforming the text into a more spectacular and sung-through opera. The second manuscript (F-Pan AJ¹³ 90) may have been one of the versions presented to the Opéra's jury de l'art between 1800 and 1803. The text is now entirely in verse and some scenes have been expanded or cut, but it largely retains the structure of the 1799 version. The third manuscript (F-Pbmo Rés 592) reflects the libretto as rewritten by Jacques-Marie Deschamps after Paul (pseudonym for Alphonse-François) Palat Dercy had passed away in 1802. It cites both authors on the front page, includes numerous comments in Deschamps's hand, and displays a number of changes that Le Sueur was advised to undertake by the Opéra's director, Étienne Morel de Chédeville, in May 1803. See the letter from Étienne Morel de Chédeville to Le Sueur on 11 prairial an XI (31 May 1803) quoted in a letter from Jean-Marie Deschamps to Luçay, 1 vendémiaire an XII (24 September 1803). F-Pan AJ¹³ 90.

⁷⁷ A note of caution is warranted when comparing manuscript libretti with printed ones because the former usually contain lengthier scene descriptions to convey the full spectacle to the literary jury. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate any other manuscript libretti by Dercy or Deschamps for comparison. In general, little is known about Le Sueur's two librettists. Paul Palat Dercy had already worked with Le Sueur in the 1790s on two opéras comiques: La caverne (1793) and Télémaque (1796). He died in 1802, after which Jacques-Marie Deschamps took on the responsibilities of revising the libretto. Deschamps was a prolific writer, having tried his hand at many different genres of theatre and literary translation. He also became secretary of Joséphine de Beauharnais. For the Opéra, he primarily worked on smaller works and pasticcio oratorios, often in collaboration with Étienne Morel de Chédeville and Jean-Baptiste-Denis Desprès. See Spire Pitou, The Paris Opéra: An Encyclopedia of Operas, Ballet, Composers and Performers. Rococo and Romantic, 1715–1815 (Westport, CT, 1985), 151 and 153–4.

⁷⁸ Jury report of Ossian, ou les bardes, 2 fructidor an VIII (10 August 1800) copied in ‘Délibérations du jury de littérature’, an VII-XI [1798–1802]. F-Pan AJ¹³ 44.

⁷⁹ ‘Rapport du jury’ [17 floréal an IX (7 May 1801)]. F-Pan AJ¹³ 90. The jury report itself is not dated, but its contents resemble a summary of the jury decision on 17 floréal an IX as recorded in the ‘Délibérations’.

⁸⁰ This tension between literary aspirations and a demand for spectacle had been part and parcel of the Opéra's existence since its very beginnings. The emphasis on spectacle tended to be denounced by intellectuals, and so the Opéra's management and some of its artists usually tried to highlight the genre's literary qualities. See Johnson, Backstage at the Revolution, 119–47. This long-standing association of the Opéra with supposedly empty spectacle was also exploited by the Comédie Italienne during the 1780s as the latter theatre sought to distinguish its new employment of stage technology in its productions. See Doe, Julia, ‘Opéra-Comique on the Eve of Revolution: Dalayrac's Sargines and the Development of “Heroic” Comedy’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 68/2 (2015), 339–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸¹ This belief is attested in the opening of Le Sueur's ‘historical essay on the bards’. Jean-François Le Sueur, ‘Essai historique sur les bardes, leurs mœurs et leurs coutumes, avec une exposé des usages, des opinions, des fêtes et des costumes des peuples chez lesquels ils vivoient, pour servir aux mœurs, costumes, fêtes, pantomimes et décorations à suivre dans l'opéra d'Ossian’, [1801–4?], f. 1r. F-Pbnf Musique Rés F1219(2).

⁸² Le Sueur, 17r. Also quoted in Charlton, ‘Ossian, Le Sueur and Opera’, 42 and Mongrédien, ‘Ossian à l'Opéra (1804)’, 549. Charlton suggests that this description of bardic music allowed Le Sueur to move rather flexibly between recitative and aria in Ossian.

⁸³ Le Sueur, ‘Essai historique sur les bardes’, 1r.

⁸⁴ See, for example, Jean Picot, Histoire des Gaulois depuis leur origine jusqu’à leur mélange avec les Francs et jusqu'au commencement de la Monarchie Françoise suivi de détails sur le climat de la Gaule, sur la nature de ses productions, sur la caractère de ses habitans, leurs mœurs, leurs usages, leur gouvernement, leurs lois, leur réligion, leur langage, les sciences et les arts qu'ils ont cultivés etc. (Genève, an XII – 1804).

⁸⁵ For instance, he reproduced the following quote ‘bardi apud gallos virorum fortium laudes decantabant’, a slightly abbreviated version of ‘bardi apud gallos vates erant aut philosophi, qui virorum fortium laudes decantabant’ (‘the bards among the Gaulish poets were also philosophers, who sang the praises of brave men’). The latter is ascribed to Lucan in F. Ambrosi Calepini Bergomensis, Dictionarium Septem Liguarum (Venice, 1635), 36. For Le Sueur's quote see his ‘Essai historique sur les bardes’, 5v.

⁸⁶ Étienne-Nicholas Méhul, ‘Oscar et Dermide. Chant Gallique imité d'Ossian’, in Deuxième Recueil de six romances de différents auteurs (Paris, 1796), 12. The text is by François Arnault, who claimed this piece had given him the inspiration for his tragédie, Oscar fils d'Ossian (1796). On Ossianic romances, see Emmanuel Reibel, Comment la musique est devenue ‘romantique’: de Rousseau à Berlioz (Paris, 2013), 128–9.

⁸⁷ Le Sueur, Ossian ou les bardes, 541. This custom was mentioned in James Macpherson, Fingal, Book VI (London, 1765), 111 and 119.

⁸⁸ Étienne-Nicolas Méhul, Uthal (Paris, 1806).

⁸⁹ Charlton, ‘Ossian, Le Sueur and Opera’, 42–4. Charlton seems to doubt that Le Sueur was earnestly interested in recovering the music of the bards, and proposes that the composer had a more recent operatic model in mind when creating their music: Rousseau's Le devin du village (1752). He points out that one of the dream scene melodies is the minor version of the first aria of the latter work and characterises the Caledonians as ‘noble savages after Rousseau's own musical model, whose optimism and regularity of musical language bear no close resemblance to folk utterance’.

⁹⁰ Le Sueur, ‘Essai historique sur les bardes’, 14v.

⁹¹ Le Sueur, ‘Essai historique sur les bardes’, 17v (on the primacy of melody) and 18r (on their use of harmony).

⁹² Le Sueur, ‘Essai historique sur les bardes’, 14v–15r. On the early nineteenth-century debate about melody and harmony as well as whether music's highest goal is to imitate nature, see, for example, Michael Fend, Cherubinis Pariser Opern (1788–1803) (Stuttgart, 2007), 114–39.

⁹³ Rousseau's Enlightenment method of researching the origins of language and music through philosophical inquiry is discussed in Peter Mondelli, ‘The Phonocentric Politics of the French Revolution’, Acta Musicologica (2016), 153–4.

⁹⁴ [Dercy and Deschamps], Ossian ou les bardes, 1–2.

⁹⁵ Le Sueur, Ossian ou les bardes, 1.

⁹⁶ Le Sueur, Ossian ou les bardes, 1.

⁹⁷ Le Sueur uses a similar style in the opening hymn to the sun of the native Americans in his Paul et Virginie, but this hymn hardly has any musical pictorialism. See Jean-François Le Sueur, Paul et Virginie (Paris, [1795]), 16–44.

⁹⁸ As the weakest example of imitation, the ascending sequence may only be an accidental illustration of the sunrise. In an earlier version of this chorus that was performed at a concert on 14 April 1802, this melody set the line ‘que la harpe à nos voix s'unisse’ (that the harp may unite with our voices). The sunrise over the mountain in this version, a line deleted from the final score, are more distinctly depicted by a leap of a seventh in the soprano to the highest note in the piece (a²) and a subsequent plunge of an eleventh. ‘Concert figurant les fêtes du Palais de Selma’. F-bmo, Mat. 19 [191 (70–3).

⁹⁹ Charlton, ‘Ossian, Le Sueur and Opera’, 45–6 and Cuillé, ‘From Myth to Religion in Ossian's France’, 251–2.

¹⁰⁰ References to the cult of Odin are completely absent from the opéra comique libretto (F-Pbnf musique 7884), where the dream scene is also no more than a short prophetic chorus about Ossian's glorious future and does not depict a fully developed heavenly realm. Throughout the following three versions (the two other manuscript libretti and the printed libretto), this religious dimension increases considerably in both the dream scene's depiction of a bardic afterlife and the Scandinavians’ cult. This suggests that it was likely added to create a link with Napoleon's efforts to make peace with the Catholic Church, which were ongoing as Ossian was in rehearsal at the Opéra.

¹⁰¹ Charlton, ‘Ossian, Le Sueur and Opera’, 45.

¹⁰² Charlton, ‘Ossian, Le Sueur and Opera’, 47.

¹⁰³ Le discours de Lyon par le lieutenant Napoléon Bonaparte, introduction by Édouard Driault (Paris, 1929), 81.

¹⁰⁴ [Berthélémy], ‘Neuf plaques de costumes’.

¹⁰⁵ See letters from Bonet to Le Sueur and the set designers of the Opéra on 21 vendémiaier an XII (14 October 1803). F-Pan AJ¹³ 90.

¹⁰⁶ See letter from the director to Chaignin, Robert, Ménageot, Valenciennes, Girodet, Berthélémy, Crotain, Dégotty, Mœnch, Le Sueur, Boulet, 2 brumaire an XII (25 October 1803). F-Pan AJ¹³ 90.

¹⁰⁷ According to historian David Bell, Napoleon could sustain his position and popularity with the French people only by a continuous string of military victories, see David A. Bell, Napoleon: A Concise Biography (New York, 2015), 49, 80–3 and 93.

¹⁰⁸ [Dercy and Deschamps], Ossian ou les bardes, 52. This chorus was not present in the earlier opera comique libretto; its addition may thus have been intended to create further resonances with the contemporary political climate of the Napoleonic regime.

¹⁰⁹ This effect is described in reviews in the Gazette nationale ou le moniteur universel, 23 messidor an XII (14 July 1804) and the Petites affiches, 24 messidor an XII (15 July 1804).

¹¹⁰ For the description of this festival, see Almanach des spectacles (Paris, an III [1794]), 100–1.

¹¹¹ Le Sueur, Ossian ou les bardes, 405–6 (a cappella chorus), 399–400 and 411 (aeolian inflected melodies), and 398 and 428 (plagal cadences). Mongrédien also explicitly points out the complex religious number symbolism that underlies the structure of the dream scene. Mongrédien, ‘Ossian à l'Opéra (1804)’, 97–8.

¹¹² The score even highlights the connection to Act II by requesting that it is performed ‘a little slower, but with the same tone and the same character as in the second act’. Le Sueur, Ossian ou les bardes, 411.

¹¹³ James Livesey, Making Democracy in the French Revolution (Cambridge, 2001), 213–15.

¹¹⁴ This situation was only alluded to in two journals: the Gazette nationale ou le moniteur universel of 23 messidor an XII (12 July 1804) lauded Ossian as a success suitably marking the Opéra's renaming as the Académie impériale de musique. The other was L'ambigu of July 1804, a satirical journal that bulged with anti-governmental statements and took the opportunity to criticise the assumed influence of the emperor on the Opéra's repertoire: ‘On annonçait depuis longtemps l'opéra des bardes; cet opéra, dont nous avons donné plus haut l'extrait, a été sifflé d'un bout à l'autre, moins à cause de ses défauts, que par la raison que l'on supposait que ce sujet avait été mis au théâtre pour plaire à Napoléon, qui, comme on sait, est admirateur enthousiaste d'Ossian, des Bardes, des nuages, des ombres, des spectres et de tout le systême de la Phantasmagorie.’ (‘The premiere of the Bards was announced for a long time; this opera, of which we have given a review above, was booed from beginning to end, less for its flaws than because the subject was thought to have been put on stage to please Napoleon, who, as we know, is an enthusiastic admirer of Ossian, the bards, clouds, shadows, spectres and all kinds of phantasmagoria.’) This account contradicts all the reports of Ossian's success in the French newspapers. Whereas it is possible that the reports of success were exaggerated – possibly for censorship reasons – the truthfulness of the account in L'ambigu is also in question, especially since the majority of its reviews (including the one of Ossian in this issue) were reprints of Geoffroy's articles in the Journal des débats and the Journal de l'Empire. Thus, there is little evidence that the journal had someone regularly attend the Opéra to write specifically for them.

¹¹⁵ Courrier des spectacles, 22 messidor an XII (11 July 1804).

¹¹⁶ Courrier des spectacles. Madame de Staël had first made this contention in De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (1800). It was an oft-repeated comparison in turn-of-the-century Ossianism and reviews of Le Sueur's opera. Since Homeric epics had formed the basis of many an opera plot, such claims surely served to disprove any lingering questions about Ossian's origins as an opéra comique and thus its suitability for the Opéra.

¹¹⁷ Journal de la littérature, des arts et de commerce, 5 thermidor an XII (24 July 1804).

¹¹⁸ Like most other reviewers, the critic of the Courrier was hesitant to designate Macpherson's poems forgeries, but without choosing sides he still acknowledged the debate about their authenticity.

¹¹⁹ Dawson, ‘Fingal meets Vercingetorix’, 224–6.

¹²⁰ He was dismissed as commissioner of war in 1805 for unspecified misbehaviour in Italy. See ‘Extrait des minutes de la Secrétairerie d’État’, 6 nivôse an XIV (27 December 1805).

¹²¹ In 1804, Grobert invented a device to measure the velocity of projectiles. Jacques-François-Louis Grobert, Machine pour mésurer la vitesse initiale des mobiles de différens calibres (Paris, an XII [1804]).

¹²² Jacques-François-Louis Grobert, Des fêtes publiques chez les modernes (Paris, an X [1802]).

¹²³ No documentation survives attesting that Grobert's design was used for the actual events of that day, even though there are many similarities. These resemblances may be coincidental because several practices – such as aligning the street decorations, architectural structures and the free music and theatre performances with the theme of the event – were common in Revolutionary festivals too. Colonel Grobert, ‘Programme d'une fête pour l'inauguration de Napoléon premier empéreur des Français’. F-Pan AF^iv 1049. A detailed account of Napoleon's coronation is given in Patrick Rambaud and Pierre-Jean Chalençon, eds., Le sacre de Napoléon (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 2004).

¹²⁴ According to Hillmer, conscription agents were waiting at the doors of theatres at the end of performances of this nature. Hillmer, Die napoleonische Theaterpolitik, 371–2.

¹²⁵ Jacques-François-Louis Grobert, De l'exécution dramatique considérée dans ses rapports avec le matériel de la salle et de la scène (Paris, 1809).

¹²⁶ Grobert, De l'exécution dramatique, 125–30.

¹²⁷ Grobert, De l'exécution dramatique, 97–9.

¹²⁸ Grobert, De l'exécution dramatique, 200–1.

¹²⁹ Grobert, De l'exécution dramatique, 161–6 and 265–8.

¹³⁰ Grobert, De l'exécution dramatique, [v, vii–xii].

¹³¹ Grobert's De l'exécution dramatique was elaborately reviewed in the Gazette nationale ou le moniteur universel on 12 October 1812. In the official documents of the Bureau des sciences et des arts, several letters survive (dating to the years 1809–10) discussing a new theatre building based on the recommendations made by Grobert. F-Pan AF^iv 1290. The treatise was discussed at length by the class of fine arts in the Institut de France on 28 December 1816. See Catherine Giraudon and Jean-Michel Leniaud, eds., Procès verbaux de l'académie des beaux-arts. Vol. 2: 1816–1820 (Paris, 2002), 115–17.

¹³² The finale of Louis-Luc Loiseau de Persuis's Jérusalem délivrée (1812) was also inspired by this apotheosis. See Annelies Andries, ‘Modernizing Spectacle: The Opéra in Napoleon's Paris’ (PhD diss., Yale University, 2018), 262–88.

¹³³ See letter from Raphaël du Plantys to Sosthène de la Rochfoucauld, 18 January 1827. Reprinted in Bruno Cagli and Sergio Ragni, eds., Gioachino Rossini, lettere e documenti (Pesaro, 1992), 122–3.

¹³⁴ Bapst, Germain, Essai sur l'histoire du théâtre (Paris, 1893), 529–30Google Scholar.

¹³⁵ The most recent study that details how early nineteenth-century French opera technologies and practices informed Wagner's music dramas and aesthetic theories is Kreuzer, Gundula, Curtain, Gong, Steam: Wagnerian Technologies of Nineteenth-Century Opera (Oakland, CA, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³⁶ Howard Gaskill, ed., The Reception of Ossian in Europe (London, 2004), xxi.

¹³⁷ On the reception of the notion of Napoleon's ‘universal monarchy’ see Dwyer, The Citizen Emperor, 345–50.