¹ See, for example, portraits of the French composers Cécile Chaminade, Louise Farrenc, Marie de Grandval and Holmès herself housed at F-Pn and F-Po.

² In terms of other disciplines, I am thinking particularly of French feminism's écriture féminine and Elaine Showalter's ‘gynocriticism’; see Marks, Elaine and Courtivron, Isabelle de, eds., New French Feminisms (Brighton, 1981),Google Scholar and Showalter, , ‘Towards a Feminist Poetics, in her edited volume, The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory (London, 1986), 125–43.Google Scholar

³ McClary's, SusanFeminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis, 1991)Google Scholar has most influenced the development of a feminist criticism that dwells mainly on the level of text and, in particular, on generic deviations within it.

⁴ La Montague was preceded by three unpublished works of the 1870s, Astarté, Héro et Leandre and Lancelot du Lac; like most autograph material for Holmès, these operas can be consulted at F-Pc and F-Pn.

⁵ La Montagne, a drame lyrique in four acts and five tableaux, was first performed at the Opéra on 8 02 1895; a vocal score was published in the same year by Maquet.Google Scholar

⁶ To take a small but representative sample: while Anahita in Le Mage escapes from the ruins of the Temple of Djahi, Aida suffocates beneath the Temple of Vulcan, Thamara and Salammbó turn daggers on themselves, Dalila is crushed to death in the Temple of Dagon and Thaïs dies in religious ecstasy.Google Scholar

⁷ This view of opera has, of course, been most famously explored by Clément, Catherine in Opera, or the Undoing of Women, trans. Wing, Betsy (Minneapolis, 1988);Google Scholar see also Poizat, Michel, The Angel's Cry: Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Opera, trans. Denner, Arthur (Ithaca, 1992).Google Scholar

⁸ McClary, , Feminine Endings, 114–15.Google Scholar

⁹ Champsaur, Félicien, 7 01 1882.Google Scholar

¹⁰ From the Arabic: an elaborately decorated grill placed in front of windows that permits those inside to look out without being seen.Google Scholar

¹¹ Most of my information on Le Saïs is from the ‘Dossier d'œuvre’ on the opera at F-Po and the vocal score published by Fouquet in 1883; thanks to Annegret Fauser for drawing this work to my attention.Google Scholar

¹² This discourse, encapsulated in the nicknames ‘Mademoiselle Massenet’ and ‘la fille de Gounod’, begins with the reception of Hérodiade (1881).Google Scholar

¹³ See especially Heilbrun, Carolyn, Writing a Woman's Life (New York, 1988);Google ScholarJelinek, Estelle C., ed., Women's Autobiography: Essays in Criticism (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1980);Google ScholarSmith, Sidonie, A Poetics of Women's Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1987);Google Scholar and Warner, Marina, Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (New York, 1985).Google Scholar For a similar tendency in the reception of women musicians, see Smart, Mary Ann, ‘The Lost Voice of Rosine Stoltz’, this journal, 6 (1994), 31–50;Google ScholarBrooks, Jeanice, ‘Noble et grande servante de la musique. Telling the Story of Nadia Boulanger's Conducting Career’, Journal of Musicology, 14 (1996), 92–116;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Fauser, Annegret, ‘Lili Boulanger's La Princesse Maleine:. A Composer and her Heroine as Literary Icons’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 122 (1997), 68–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ Macdonald, Hugh, ‘Augusta Holmès’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, ed. Sadie, Julie Anne and Samuel, Rhian (London, 1994), 223–4, here 223.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Florence, , 21 01 1890, F-Pn N.a.fr.16262, ff.40–41, here 40.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The festival took place in Florence in 1890 under the tide ‘Sesto centenario della morte di Beatrice. Esposizione Beatrice. Mostra nazionale delle arti e delle industrie femminili italiane’; Holmès’ Hymne à la Paix was performed there as Inno alla pace in onore della Beatrice di Dante.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Agulhon's, MauriceMarianne au combat: I'imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1789 à 1880 (Paris, 1979)Google Scholar and Marianne au pouvoir. I'imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1880 à 1914 (Paris, 1989) trace the fortunes of Marianne, illustrating the extent to which a number of female symbols of nation circulated in France in the period.Google Scholar

¹⁸ The most complete worklist for Holmès is in Gefen, Gérard, Augusta Holmès: l'outrancière (Paris, 1987), 251–63; on the revival of French symphonic writing in this period,Google Scholar see Hart, Brian, The Symphony in Theory and Practice in France, 1900–1914, Ph.D. diss. (University of Indiana, 1994),Google Scholar and Locke, Ralph P., ‘The French Symphony: David, Gounod, and Bizet to Saint-Saëns, Franck, and Their Followers’, in The Nineteenth-Century French Symphony, ed. Holoman, D.Kern (New York, 1997), 163–94.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Pierre, , Musique exécutée aux fêetes nationales de la révolution française (Paris, 1893),Google ScholarMusique des fétes et cérémonies de la révolution française (Paris, 1899)Google Scholar and Les Hymnes et chansons de la révolution (Paris, 1904);Google Scholar and Tiersot, , Les Fétes et les chants de la révolution française (Paris, 1908).Google Scholar For the revolutionary spectacle in general, see Ozouf, Mona, La Féte révolutionnaire 1789–1799 (Paris, 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ For collections of press cuttings relating to the Ode, see F-Pn N.a.fr.16260, ff.107–112; ‘Recueil d'articles de journaux sur Augusta Holmès’, F-Pc 4°B391;Google Scholar and Opinion de la presse sur l'Ode triomphale d'Augusta Holmès (Paris, 1889), a copy of which is at F-Pn Rés.ThB.56(l). As Holmès originally conceived it, the Ode made specific reference to the hardships of the Third Republic: at the end of the work not one but two veiled women were to appear, one for Alsace, the other for Lorraine, two regions ceded to Germany after the Franco-Prussian war.Google Scholar

²¹ George Moore to Holmès, n.d., F-Pn N.a.fr.16262, f.192. In a letter to Paul Fromageot dated Paris, 10 July 1899 (F-V Dossier Augusta Holmès, Panthéon Versaillais), the composer writes ‘Je suis née à Paris, de parents irlandais – mais je suis Française, de cœur, vous n'en doutez pas, et d'adoption’. However, this is far from the picture painted by, say, René Pichard du Page, who claims that Holmès was of Danish as well as Irish and Scottish descent and that she believed herself to have rights to the Irish throne, telling friends that Queen Victoria was a usurper (Page, Pichard du, Une Musicienne versaillaise: Augusta Holmès [Paris and Versailles, 1921], 40).Google Scholar

²² Edouard Dujardin in Le Progres artistique, 12 12 1884; ‘Ryno’ in Gil Bias, 22 October 1885; Louis de Romain, Programme book for the première of Pologne, housed at F-Pc 4°B391.Google Scholar

²³ Le Rappel, 12 09 1889.Google Scholar

²⁴ La Liberté, 12 05 1888, unsigned.Google Scholar

²⁵ Review of the Ode by ‘Minotoro’, 12 09 1889.Google Scholar

²⁶ Théodore Dubois to Hugues Imbert, dated Paris, 5 Feburary 1892, F-Pn Res.2009c, from a copy of Imbert's, Nouveaux Profits de musiciens (Paris, 1892) in which a number of letters in response to his publication have been inserted; I am grateful to Katharine Ellis for drawing this document to my attention.Google Scholar

²⁷ Interview with Gaston Méry, quoted in Page, Pichard du, Une Musicienne versaillaise, 40 (I have been unable to trace the original). Méry was an editor of La Libre parole, one of the most antisemitic newspapers in late nineteenth-century France.Google Scholar

²⁸ La France juive was first published in two volumes by Marpon and Flammarion and reissued by the Librairie françchise in 1986. In her ‘Vincent d'Indy's “Drame Anti-Juif” and its meaning in Paris, 1920’, this journal, 2 (1990), 295–319, here 297, Jane Fulcher notes that Holmès was included in the ‘adhérents’ to the anti-Dreyfusard ‘Ligue de la Patrie française’ listed in Le Temps of 2 January 1899.Google Scholar

²⁹ I have been unable to trace the author and place of publication of this review of La Montagne: it is the first press cutting in the Dossier d'œuvre on the opera at F-Po and is signed ‘GH’.Google Scholar

³⁰ See Bojović's, Jovan R. introduction to his edited volume Le Monténégro dans les relations Internationales (Titograd [Podgorica], 1984), 7–13.Google Scholar

³¹ The reduced score, dated 23 July 1884, is housed at F-Pc Ms.6629(1–4); the only surviving manuscript libretto for La Montagne, at F-Pn ThB.2318(l–2), seems earlier but is undated. As Dimitrije-Dimo Vujović points out in his ‘La Troisième République française et le Monténégro 1871–1914’, Montenegro came to the attention of the French press in the early 1880s, a period when the region was technically independent but in practice not free from Turkish rule; a number of articles demanded Turkey's execution of the orders given by the major European powers at the Congress of Berlin (Bojović, Le Monténégro, 109–44).Google Scholar

³² Several versions of Norah Greena are housed at F-Pn Rés.ThB.56(5): the manuscripts are undated, but a number of letters to Holmès from the mid-1880s refer to an Irish opera, some discussing details of historical works on eighteenth-century uprisings against the English. See letters from the publisher Hodges Figgis, Dublin, 29 09 1885, F-Pn N.a.fr.16261, ff.193–194;Google Scholar E. Gaynor, Sheffield, 4 March 1889, ibid., N.a.fr.16262, ff.12–13; her cousin J.B. Hewitt, Oxford, 15 December 1885 and 1 February 1886, ibid., ff.109–112; and Moore, n.d., ibid., flf. 187–192.

³³ Reproductions of Marcel Jambon's décors for La Montagne can b e found at F-Po B.69(10) and D.291; the scale-models (maquettes) of the designs are at ibid. Maq.274–7.

³⁴ According to the stage directions at the beginning of the act: ‘Plus haut, sur un rocher, dominant la scène et se détachant sur le ciel, Dara, appuyée sur un grand bâton, contemple la bataille’.Google Scholar

³⁵ The majority of exotic operas in the period were named after their heroines, part of a larger tendency in nineteenth-century opera; the title of Lutèce is from the Roman name for Paris, Lutetia.Google Scholar

³⁶ The designs are housed at F-Po D.216(49), ff.60–91: Mirko's and Aslar's costumes, for example, include elaborately decorated sabres and pointed slippers.Google Scholar

³⁷ To Victorien Sardou, 11 09 1894, F-Pn N.a.fr.16260, ff.88–89, here 88.Google Scholar

³⁸ Holmès’ personal papers were donated to the Bibliothèque Nationale (N.a.fr.16258–63); the absence of documents concerning the opera is difficult to explain, though it may have been a result of its hostile reception. So far as the date of composition is concerned, the earliest dated document for the opera – the reduced score of 1884– is fairly neat and transmits a version not substantially different from that finally performed; it was probably preceded by sketch material and a skeleton score. I have been unable to trace the source, though the specific chronological setting (1657) suggests that Holmès drew her scenario from a short story or historical work.Google Scholar

³⁹ Boissy d'Anglas to Goullet, Paris, 20 03 1892, F-Pn N.a.fr.16263, ff.134–6.Google Scholar On the Ministre des Beaux-Arts (here Leon Bourgeois) in the administration of the Opéra, see Patureau, Frédérique, Le Palais Gamier dans la société parisienne, 1875–1914 (Liège, 1991).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Baude de Maurceley in L'Evénement, 6 07 1894.Google Scholar

⁴¹ See Parakilas, James, ‘The Soldier and the Exotic: Operatic Variations on a Theme of Racial Encounter’, Opera Quarterly, 10/2 (1993–1994), 33–56 and 10/3 (1994), 43–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴² Take two well-known exotic women: Carmen and Dalila. Carmen has three seduction scenes: the Habañera and Seguidilla in Act I and the start of her duet with Don José in Act II. What we might describe as the moment of Don Jose's submission occurs in the duet, with the ‘Flower Song’. Dalila has two seduction scenes: the first, at the end of Act I, begins amid the chorus of Philistine women and only troubles Samson; the second (in Act II), culminating in Dalila's ‘Mon cœeur s'œuvre à ta voix’, is decisive.Google Scholar

⁴³ In Act II, Yamina seduces Mirko, then Héléna reproaches him for his neglect; he sings a duet of reconciliation with his fiancée, but then agrees to run away with Yamina. In Acts III and IV, Aslar takes Héléna's place to plead with his warrior-brother; though by the close of the third act he is reunited with Mirko, the fourth finds the tenor in the Turkish village. As if in response to the strain of such repetition, the conflict becomes increasingly generalised. By Act III Yamina and Aslar have collapsed into allegorical figures: ‘Je suis l'honneur!’ he exclaims; she replies, ‘Je suis l'amour!’Google Scholar

⁴⁴ In the (undated) manuscript libretto for La Montagne at F-Pn ThB.2318(1), n.p., Yamina appears in the list of protaganists as ‘Courtisane errante’. The description is erased, but a trace of the designation survived until rehearsals in the choral response to Yamina's first aria, ‘Parmi les fleurs et les odeurs’: originally beginning ‘C’est l'esclave des Turcs! / C'est la prostituée!’, it was changed to ‘C’est l'esclave des Turcs! / A la mort soit vouée!’Google Scholar

⁴⁵ As Carl Dahlhaus points out in his Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. Robinson, J. Bradford (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989), 307, nature was usually depicted in the period by what he calls a ‘sound sheet’ – a preference for harmonic and motivic repetition over more teleological musical progressions. Holmès would have been especially familiar with the exotic potential of the mezzo-soprano voice, for she sang the part of Dalila (with Henri Regnault as Samson) in the second of three private performances of Samson et Dalila that took place in the 1860s and 70s.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ In his ‘The Soldier and the Exotic’, Parakilas argues for the centrality of performance in such seduction scenes: one only has to think of Carmen's ‘Gypsy’ numbers and the ‘Bell Song’ in Delibes’ Lakmé.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ At the close of both numbers the two men swear their devotion at the upper – and vulnerable – end of the tenor range. See McClary, Susan, Georges Bizet: ‘Carmen’ (Cambridge, 1992), 97–8,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Locke, Ralph P., ‘Constructing the Oriental “Other”: Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila’, this journal, 3 (1991), 261–302, here 295.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ According to the stage directions at the start of the third section of this aria, ‘Yamina, comme dans un rêve, prend les attitudes de la danse d'Orient’; in the absence of a surviving livret de mise en scène for La Montagne, it is difficult to know what this involved.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ There is certainly room for a queer reading of this relationship. In general, Aslar stands between Mirko and Yamina, a role usually played by a jealous or self-sacrificing lover. Moreover, instead of a couple, Holmès has Mirko and Aslar lying dead and entwined at the end of the opera.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ See Offen, Karen, ‘Depopulation, Nationalism and Feminism in fin-de-siècle France’, American Historical Review, 89 (1984), 648–76,CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed and Silverman, Deborah, “New Woman”, Feminism and the Decorative Arts in fin-de-siècle France’, in Eroticism and the Body Politic, ed. Hunt, Lynn (Baltimore, 1991), 144–63.Google Scholar

⁵¹ F-Pn N.a.fr.16260, f.21; this is the only sketch material for La Montagne that I am aware of.Google Scholar

⁵² The divertissement was choreographed by Joseph Hansen; I have been unable to find any documents relating to the piece except for Bianchini's costume designs at F-Po D.216(49) and a vocal score used during rehearsals (ibid. Matériel.1895, headed ‘Régie / La Montagne Noire / Danses / Danse’) in which the duration of the ballet is marked by a red pencil line beneath the staves, but no details of the choreography are given.

⁵³ Some of the stars have titles: La Lyre, L'Epi and Le Lion, for example. Holmès writes that ‘Elles sont costumées selon leurs noms, et portent chacune au front une étoile étincelante. L'étoile devra être électrique’.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ F-Pn N.a.fr.16260, f.21v.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Massenet's ballet is presented as the dream of the hero, Athanaël, in which he encounters (among others) ‘les Sept Esprits de la Tentation’ (the seven deadly sins) and ‘Démon à figure de femme, la Perdition’. As they attempt to seduce him, the ‘Etoile de la Rédemption’ appears, though it is only with a vision of the heroine that Athanaël manages to escape.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ See, for example, the series Chefs-d'œuvre de l'opéra français published in this period.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ See, for example, Pougin, Arthur, Rameau: Essai sur sa vie et ses œuvres (Paris, 1876).Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Chrysale, J., 9 02 1895.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ This is taken from the review cited in n. 29.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ La Liberté, 10 02 1895 (Les Griffes d'or was a song published by Grus in 1899).Google Scholar

⁶¹ Le Figaro, 8 02 1895.Google Scholar

⁶² See the review of Ludus pro patria in La Liberté of 12 05 1888 quoted earlier.Google Scholar

⁶³ Le Journal des débats, 16 02 1895.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Le Ménestrel, 10 02 1895. The idea of Holmès as a woman like any other emerges before the première in previews detailing the history of female composers at the Opera. See, for example, Charles Darcours' article ‘Les Femmes auteurs à l'Opéra’ in Le Figaro of 27 January 1895, in which he describes how few and unsuccessful Holmès' predecessors were.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Le Ménestrel, 10 02 1895.Google Scholar

^{66 9}02 1895.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Darcours was not the first to describe Holmès as Brünnhilde.Google Scholar The most well-known instance is Theuriet's, André ‘Souvenirs d'une nuit d'été' (in his Le Journal de Tristan, impressions et souvenirs [Paris, 1883], 78) in which he claims that when the artist Henri Regnault first met the composer he cried, ‘C’est une déesse, c'est une Walkyrie’; the comparison was made by others, not least because of Holmès' reputation as a wagnérienne.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ La Montagne was last staged on 26 04 1895. The Musical Courier of 16 April 1896 notes that ‘There is some talk of producing … “La Montagne Noire” at Covent Garden this season’, while Emma Calvé's claim that ‘J’ai toujours rêvé de chanter le beau rôle de Yamina! Mais voilà! je ne reviens pas en Amérique l'an prochain!' in a letter to Holmès dated Chicago, 9 April {F-Pn N.a.fr.16261, ff.41–42, here 41), suggests that a run at the Metropolitan was also considered.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Letter of 9 06 1895 quoted in Gefen, Augusta Holmès, 224.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Among the composer's papers are several plans for operas, suggesting a greater interest in the genre both before and after La Montagne than has been thought: see F-Pn Rés.ThB.56, which includes material for Norah Greena, La Merrow, Le Fils d'Olivier and La Belle Roncerose, and Rés.Vma.Ms.1061 for Marie Stuart.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Le Ménestnl, 1 02 1903.Google Scholar

⁷² ‘Augusta Holmès, Pioneer’, in Smyth's, A Final Bunting of Boats Etc. (London, 1928), 126–36, here 132–4.Google Scholar

⁷³ See Zola, Emile, Nana (in Les Rougon Macquart [1880; Paris, 1970], III, 391).Google Scholar

⁷⁴ See Berthelot, René, ‘“Trois anges sont venus ce soir…” ou le roman d'Augusta Holmès’, Musica, 105 (12 1962), 20–24, here 24, and Pichard du Page, Une Musicienne versaillaise, 43; Holmès died on 28 January 1903.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ The monument, sculpted by Auguste Maillard, was inaugurated on 12 07 1904. The dedication on the grave is now missing; the erroneous date of birth (1849 instead of 1847) is still clear.Google Scholar