Abstract

This dissertation explores the representation of exoticism in five French operas of the 1890s that premiered at the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique: Bourgault-Ducoudray and Gallet's Thamara, Lefebvre and Lomon's Djelma, Massenet and Gallet's Thaïs, Lambert and Gallet/Alexandre's Le Spahi, and Hahn and Alexandre/Hartmann's L'Île du rêve. These operas embraced the codification of musical and literary exoticism of previous works and incorporated those codes. Each work, however, developed the language of exoticism differently, evolving from imaginary-like settings to the depiction of colonial reality. Through a close reading of text and music and of their interrelationship with the stage setting, this study identifies the exotic as the representation of French social issues and political ideology of the time.

The dissertation is divided into two parts comprising five chapters: the first part (first two chapters) addresses general cultural, literary, and operatic issues; the second (the following three chapters) involves the musical and textual analyses of the five operas. Chapter One focuses on the shaping of exoticism in the last four decades of the nineteenth century through the narrations of travelers, colonizers, missionaries, writers, and the expositions universelles. Chapter Two explains how French operatic exoticism was influenced by literary exoticism, and how the language of operatic exoticism evolved. The last three chapters analyze the five operas. Chapter Three examines Thamara and Djelma, operas that represent the imaginary and dream-like exotic. Their plots are set in remote countries and in the past (Russian Georgia and India) and involve only imaginary exotic characters without making any reference to Western domination. Chapter Four examines Thaïs, which is set in a land free from French domination, Egypt, and in the distant past, and that presents the exotic by contrasting Catholicism and Paganism. The last chapter focuses on Le Spahi and L'Île du rêve, which take place in contemporary times and in the French colonies of Senegal and Tahiti. Both of them feature exotic characters and Westerners as well, and expose racial and cultural conflict, reflecting colonial experience and increasing disillusionment with the exotic.