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Dustin
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The women who were able to turn their educational limitations to their advantage gained access to the opera stage as composers and librettists in unprecedented numbers in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century France. Although women still formed only a fraction of the total number of composers and librettists, one can nevertheless speak of an explosion of women creating opera as compared with earlier periods. In the first fifty years of opera in France (1670-1720), only approximately seven works by three women are known (see appendix). In the next fifty-year period (1720-70), the figures remain relatively stable with nine operas by four women. But in the fifty years between 1770 and 1820, at least forty-four operas by nineteen women are known to have been composed or performed. This multiplication of female-authored operas constituted a sufficient critical mass for some of these works to be singled out as great successes. Indeed, two of them, Catherine, ou la belle fermitre (Catherine, or the beautiful farmer-woman) by Julie Candeille and Sapho by Constance Pipelet (later de Salm), ranked among the ten most-performed dramatic works in Paris in 1793 and 1795, respectively. This was a significant accomplishment given the social and artistic importance assigned to opera during this period, as well as the large number of new operas created every year-a feat comparable to writing a best-selling novel today. Furthermore, this phenomenon was unique in the history of opera. Not only was it unequaled in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, but even in the eighteenth century no such proliferation of opera by women occurred anywhere else in Europe." Although opera continued to grow in popularity in the nineteenth century, and women continued to be active composers and librettists (mostly in the lighter genre of operetta), there was a decrease both in the number of women and in the number of their works. Most importantly, none of the works came close to reaching the same heights of popularity as the works of women like Candeille and Pipelet.
What made this explosion of opera by women possible? Certainly the increased demand for opera in general led to greater production of works, and women benefited from this overall trend. Starting in the middle of the eighteenth century, opera became the entertainment of choice for a larger proportion of the French people rather than appealing exclusively to an elite public. The influence of Italian comic opera and improvised farce chiseled away at the stagnating trage'die-lyrique. As a result of the more diverse audiences, theaters needed a constant supply of new operas in various genres. In response to this more competitive market and pressure from authors-as well as larger political factors-the institution of opera became more democratic over the course of the eighteenth century. Rather than relying on an earlier system of patronage which favored authors who had privileged connections, theaters used more substantive and formal standards of evaluation. They instituted submission procedures designed to judge and reward works on the basis of their merits. At a time when women were succeeding in other creative endeavors (novels and painting, for example) women composers and librettists were attracted by the promise of having their works selected by what they considered to be an impartial tribunal. The abolition of privileges for the royal theaters during the Revolutionary period resulted in a tremendous multiplication of new theaters, giving authors and composers even more chances to see their works staged-especially because opera fulfilled the dual (and contradictory) roles of providing an escape from Revolutionary violence and of being a forum for political education.
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