Genealogies of Music and Memory

Mark Everist has the enviable knack of discovering areas of research that enable him to rewrite history with greater accuracy, completeness, and nuance. The productions of Gluck's Orphee (1859) and Alceste (1861), with Pauline Viardot in both title-roles, are a reference point for most historians of Gluck reception since, and Everist's scrutiny of primary sources, while also tracking interest in other Gluck operas (notably Armide and Iphigenie en Tauride), shows the extent to which a combination star singer and composer, in 1859, was anticipated in concerts and criticism throughout the earlier nineteenth century. -- Julian Rushton, Professor Emeritus of Music, University of Leeds In this path-breaking study, Mark Everist offers a fascinating and fine-grained account of the performance and appreciation of Gluck's music in nineteenth-century Paris. Drawing on his intimate knowledge of French musical life during this period, Everist documents an ongoing, variegated engagement with the composer's works, through concert performances, editions, and study, despite an almost complete lack of full, staged productions of the operas during the three decades preceding Pauline Viardot's landmark performance in Orphee et Euridice at the Theatre-Lyrique in 1859, in a version arranged by Berlioz. -- Bruce Brown, Professor of Musicology, University of Southern California