After its premiere in 1762, the opera Annette et Lubin became famous throughout Europe. Now a new edition published as part of the OPERA Project offers the opportunity of rediscovering this work.

Premiered on 15 February 1762, the Opéra comique Annette et Lubin by Justine Favart and Adolphe Blaise remained in the Parisian repertoire for several weeks in succession, was extremely favourably reviewed and then appeared in quick succession in numerous printed editions. The work was performed and adapted throughout Europe. Annette et Lubin can be regarded as a key work of Enlightenment music theatre, a piece which deals with central moral-philosophical and socio-political themes in an intelligent and greatly refined manner.

Marie-Justine-Benoîte Favart (1727–1772, née Duronceray) was a famous dancer, singer and actress as well as being an outstanding author. With Annette et Lubin she drew on Jean-François Marmontel’s story of the same name. In musical terms, the work consists of newly-composed numbers and ensembles (by the bassoonist and orchestra leader Adolphe Benoît Blaise, ca. 1720–1772) and well-known song and operatic melodies.
Justine Favart’s works (the best-known of which is Les amours de Bastien et Bastienne, 1753) deal with the theme of “natural love”, free of financial calculations or issues of social class, which is threatened by powerful and rich rivals. In Marmontel’s tale, Lubin and his cousin Annette are sharply criticised by a nobleman (Le Seigneur) because of their love. Annette is expecting a child out of wedlock which presents the nobleman with an opportunity for blackmail: only a marriage to him can save Annette from condemnation by society and the church. However, Annette and Lubin win the favour of the nobleman (Le Seigneur), who enables their marriage to take place. For the stage, Favart removed the motifs of blood ties, pregnancy and the references to the church, and by contrast, effectively dramatised Lubin’s courage in fearlessly confronting the bailiff (Le Bailli) and the nobleman (Le Seigneur). With these interventions she achieves a fundamental reinterpretation of the essential point: whilst Marmontel sought to warn his readers against naive trust in “the simple laws of nature” – that is to say, against unsuitable love affairs – the stage version turns into an unconditional apotheosis of natural, true love.

Newly-composed numbers and quotations from existing works are brought together to produce a remarkable combination, both in the quest for expression and in an occasionally ambiguous depiction of the content. So, Annette laments in a moving solo scene: “Pauvre Annette / Quelle douleur secrète / me frappe et m’inquiète”. The music of this number is an aria from Johann Adolf Hasse’s Italian Opera seria Adriano in Siria. Like the overture (a hitherto completely unknown Sinfonia by Johann Joachim Christoph Bode in the “sensitive” style), Annette’s bravura piece is in G minor and establishes a serious note not previously found in this genre. The contexts, evoked through the many quotations, extend far beyond events on the stage and raise philosophical issues such as the conflict between nature and culture, ultimately accurately gauging the aesthetic distance of the French opera tradition from the “naturalistic” musical language of the “unspoilt” country cousins in the wake of the Querelle des Bouffons.

The wealth of surviving source material has enabled us to create a complete orchestral score including the vaudeville numbers – a stroke of luck, considering that for comparable Opéras comiques often only the melodies, and not the orchestral scoring, survive. The historical-critical edition also contains the full text, enabling a full appraisal of the alternation of music and dialogue characteristic of this genre. In the electronic part of the publication (Edirom), as well as the work sources, secondary sources and contexts are presented in full for the melody and text citations found in Annette et Lubin – a first in the publishing history of early Opéra comique.

Andreas Münzmay
(translation: Elizabeth Robinson)
(from [t]akte 1/2014)