Chausson dans l'ombre de Wagner? : de la genèse à la réception du Roi Arthus

This thesis examines the compositional aspect of Wagnerism in France during the final decades of the 19th century, through a case study of Ernest Chausson’s (1855-1899) opera Le Roi Arthus. Exceptionally well documented thanks to a large number of sources, most of which are unpublished (drafts and sketches of the libretto and score, correspondence, etc.), this opera, composed between 1886 and 1895 and premiered at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels in 1903, in fact allows a remarkable glimpse into the relationship between French composers of the period and the imposing figure of Wagner. The question of Wagnerian influence in Le Roi Arthus is here approached through a methodology that applies the semiotic model developed by Jean-Jacques Nattiez and Jean Molino in a historical perspective. An analysis of the genesis of the opera, its final version and the reception of its premiere provides a fresh overall view of the connection between Chausson’s opera and Wagner’s music dramas, particularly Tristan und Isolde. What emerges is a complex dialectic between Le Roi Arthus—from the first sketches to the opera’s premiere—and a model that provoked both disquiet and admiration. Though an ardent Wagnerian from an early age, Chausson did not want to merely become an epigone of the German composer. Following advice from Henri Duparc, Chausson therefore expended considerable effort in “dewagnerizing” the libretto of Le Roi Arthus, which he wrote himself, based on a mythical subject strongly reminiscent of Wagner. The final version of the libretto, while it maintains some links with Tristan und Isolde and Der Ring des Nibelungen, otherwise projects a worldview quite unlike Wagner’s, in which values such as honor and fidelity outweigh a forbidden love that seems doomed from the start. Paradoxically, this un-Tristanesque dramatic setup rests in part on Wagnerian musical references that Chausson integrated and honed gradually as he composed the score, and whose treatment cleverly underscores what separates Lancelot and Genièvre, poorly matched lovers, from the integrated couple formed by Tristan and Isolde. In this opera conceived, but only up to a point, in Wagner’s shadow, the musical and especially dramatic resemblances with Tristan und Isolde are what have most struck the critics of the first performances, which has given rise to a reception where the question of Wagnerian influence dominates. However, even though all critics touched on this question, they did so from points of view that vary according to factors extrinsic to the work, such as their own prior training, their personal positions on Wagner and the relationships they had had with Chausson during his lifetime. Beyond the knowledge it allows us to gain on the work itself, and more particularly on its early development, the study of Le Roi Arthus from poietic, immanent and esthesic perspectives opens onto an understanding of the central role played by the “Bayreuth Master” in late 19th-century musical imagination, while creating the basis necessary to undertake a new synthesis of the creative strategies used by composers of French opera faced with the Wagnerian model.

Keyphrases: Richard Wagner (1813-1883), Le Roi Arthus, Tristan und Isolde, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Semiotics, Wagnerism, Reception, French Opera, 19th Century