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Echoes of Paris in the antipodes: French theatre and opera in Melbourne (1850-1914)

journal contribution
posted on 2008-12-01, 00:00 authored by C Sowerwine, Gabrielle WolfGabrielle Wolf
In the heart of Melbourne, almost opposite Victoria’s opulent Houses of Parliament, is the equally opulent Princess Theatre, built in 1885, one of five nineteenth-century theatres still in use today. Its strong architectural references to Second Empire style in Paris (1852–70) make it a metaphor for French impact on Melbourne theatre life, repertory and performance culture as well as on its architecture. This article explores that impact in the period before World War I, drawing not only on reviews in newspapers and periodicals but also on two major sources for performance in Melbourne: the J.R. McEwen Papers in the State Library of Victoria, which contain a chronological list of stage productions in Melbourne from 1855 to 1970,2 and Gisèle Muglia-Smith’s directory of French plays performed in Australia.
A number of historians, including Paul de Serville and Anita Callaway, have pointed to nineteenth-century Australians’ taste for French culture. Ros Magee and Ross Thorne have explored the influence of French architecture on Australian theatre design. Several contributions to the Companion to Theatre in Australia mention French impact on the content of Australian cultural production. Many other scholars refer to French influence in their studies of Australian theatre and opera. None has considered, however, the breadth and variety of French influences on Melbourne theatre. That is the point of this study.
Throughout the nineteenth century, French culture strongly influenced Melbourne theatre, both directly because, in the colonies, Paris enjoyed so much prestige—the “capital of the nineteenth century” (in Walter Benjamin’s famous words )—and indirectly because Paris weighed so heavily on British culture, which was in turn the pre-eminent source of colonial culture. The colonies looked to London and Paris all the more desperately because of what Geoffrey Blainey called “the tyranny of distance”.

History

Journal

Australian Journal of French Studies

Volume

45

Issue

1

Pagination

81 - 97

Publisher

Liverpool University Press Online

Location

United Kingdom

ISSN

0004-9468

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

Liverpool University Press Online, 2008

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