page_title: Opéra-National
section_title: Opening and first season
hierarchical_section_title: Opéra-National / At the Théâtre Historique under Edmond Seveste (1851–1852) / Opening and first season
caption_attribution_description: English: Press illustration of the French tenor Gilbert Duprez with his soprano daughter Caroline Duprez in 1851, when they were appearing at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris
context_page_description: The Opéra-National was a Parisian opera company that the French composer Adolphe Adam founded in 1847 to provide an alternative to the two primary French opera companies in Paris, the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique. The goals of the new company were to "foster new compositional talent," revive opéras comiques from an earlier period, and produce opera at a lower ticket price for a wider public.
  The company first performed in the relatively large Cirque Olympique on the Boulevard du Temple, in a working class district of Paris. Financial difficulties and the turmoil of the 1848 Revolution caused the company to close in March of that year. It was revived under a new director, Edmond Seveste, in 1851, when it moved to the Théâtre Historique, a short distance away on the Boulevard du Temple. In 1852 the company was renamed Théâtre Lyrique and operated under that name until 1872.
context_section_description: The new opera house opened on 27 September 1851 with the premiere of a 3-act opéra-comique with music by Xavier Boisselot called Mosquita la sorcière. The libretto was by Eugène Scribe and Gustave Vaëz. Hector Berlioz, who reviewed the performance, was not particularly taken with the music of Boisselot, but gave the chorus high marks. The orchestra conducted by Varney was praised as young and energetic by the Moniteur Universel. The opera was performed a total of 21 times that year but only 4 times the next. Boisselot's new opera was followed the next night with Le barbier de Séville (a French adaptation by Castil-Blaze of Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia) and Ferdinando Paer's Le maître de chapelle, both more reliable money-makers. The company performed the former a total of 126 times, and the latter, 182 times. In fact this was to become the pattern later in the history of the company: occasional new operas among numerous French language revivals of popular foreign works.
  Perhaps the most successful new French work that first season was Felicien David's La perle du Brésil, first performed on 22 November. Although the production was apparently not up to snuff (Berlioz reported that it was "sometimes good, often bad and in all, of little advantage to the composer"), it nevertheless received 17 performances before the end of that year, 47 the next, and a total of 144 by the company.
  The year 1852 brought another memorable new work, a one-act opéra-comique by Adolphe Adam called La poupée de Nuremberg, which premiered on 21 February with 47 performances that year and 98 total by the company. Its success was somewhat tarnished by the death of Edmond Seveste on 28 February. His brother Jules Seveste became temporary director and was officially appointed to the post on 1 May from a field of 20 applicants that included the tenor Gilbert Duprez. The very next new production was Duprez's 3-act opera Joanita (a revision of his earlier L'abime de la maladetta), which opened on 11 March and starred his daughter, soprano Caroline Duprez, who had already created the lead soprano role of the first version in Brussels on 19 November 1851 and would go on to create the role of Catherine in Meyerbeer's L'étoile du nord at the Opéra-Comique in 1854.
  On 12 April, during Joanita's short run of 15 performances, the management decided to change the name of the company to Théâtre Lyrique. As attendance was falling rapidly, Joanita was replaced with La pie voleuse, a Castil-Blaze adaptation of Rossini's La gazza ladra, on 23 April. However, they only performed it seven times, as the season was almost over. The season had run from late September to the end of April, a pattern repeated in later seasons, which usually ran from September or early October to May, or sometimes even into the summer. Jules Seveste sought a state subsidy of 50,000 francs for the following year, but it was too late; the budget had already been finalized. In addition, the conductor Alphonse Varney resigned his position and went to Ghent so he would have more time for composition. He was replaced by his assistant conductor, Auguste Francis Placet, and the violinist Adolphe Deloffre, who had recently returned to Paris from London, was made assistant conductor.
caption: Gilbert Duprez and his daughter Caroline in 1851
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