Sabinus (opera)

Michel Paul Guy de Chabanon, the librettist

Chabanon had written a play on the subject, Éponine, in 1762. He later transformed it into a tragedy, Sabinus, which was performed at the Comédie-Française in 1770, but audiences were unenthusiastic. Undiscouraged, Chabanon decided to turn the piece into a libretto for a tragédie lyrique, which he offered to Gossec the following year. The composer and Chabanon already knew one other because Chabanon was a violinist as well as an author. By the summer of 1773, the score was ready and went into rehearsal at the Théâtre des Menus Plaisirs on 8 June. Further rehearsals (there were nine in all) took place at the Opéra Royal de Versailles in November.[1]

The premiere took place at Versailles on 4 December 1773 in the presence of King Louis XV as part of the wedding celebrations of the Comte d'Artois and Princess Maria Theresa of Savoy. Despite the magnificent staging, the audience found the work too long and boring, although critics praised some of Gossec's music, particularly the ballet sections. Sabinus transferred to the Paris Opéra on 22 February 1774. By now, Gossec had decided to refashion the piece in line with the criticisms it had received and reduce it to four acts. But even the shortened version failed to please audiences and Sabinus was soon withdrawn. It had enjoyed 11 performances in all. Gossec's plans to revive Sabinus were thwarted by the arrival of Christoph Willibald Gluck on the Parisian scene. Gluck's Iphigénie en Aulide, which premiered in April 1774, changed the face of French opera for good and made Sabinus look obsolete (although Gossec later claimed that the innovations he had made in Sabinus had paved the way for Gluck's success).[2]

An autograph score of the opera survives, but the music for the overture has been lost.[3]

Some modern critics have shared Gossec's contemporaries' lack of enthusiasm for Sabinus. In the opinion of Frédéric Hellouin, it failed to break free from its roots in late Baroque tragédie lyrique: "in spite of its serious qualities, Sabinus is far from being a masterpiece. Instead of genuine authority, we only feel the direct and overwhelming influence of Rameau and Mondonville."[4] David J. Buch has dismissed it as "a tame, even conservative opera."[5] Nevertheless, Sabinus is not simply derivative, but contains some innovative features, especially in its orchestration, as it was the first work presented at the Opéra to contain trombones.[6] Gossec's own assessment of Sabinus, in a letter of 1803, made claims for its modernising tendencies. According to the composer, compared to previous operas, it offered "a more marked character, a brighter colouring, a more animated style, more varied, more modern and consequently more universal." The musicologist Benoît Dratwicki agrees with Gossec and sees Sabinus and Philidor's tragédie lyrique Ernelinde, princesse de Norvège (1767) - both showing strong Italianate influence - as the two key operas which helped to pave the way for the revolution in French musical theatre Gluck brought to Paris with Iphigénie en Aulide in 1774.[7]

Scene: the opera takes place at Langres in Gaul.

There is no complete recording of the opera, but extracts from the ballet music appear on two recordings by the conductor Guy Van Waas: the DVD La Petite Musique de Marie-Antoinette (Armide, 2006) and the CD Gossec: Trois grandes symphonies (Ricercar, 2011).

• (in French) Claude Role François-Joseph Gossec (1734-1829): un musicien à Paris de l'Ancien Régime à Charles X (Harmattan, 2000)
• (in French) Frédéric Hellouin François-Joseph Gossec et la musique française à la fin du XVIII siècle (A.Charles, 1903)
• (in French) Original libretto available online at Google Books
• David J. Buch Magic Flutes and Enchanted Forests: The Supernatural in Eighteenth-Century Musical Theater (University of Chicago Press, 2009)