Opera Production and Civic Musical Life in 1870s Montreal

This article explores the origins and productions of the Société Canadienne d'Opérette et d'Opéra de Montréal, a short-lived opera company active in the late 1870s. Headed by Calixa Lavallée and Frantz Jehin Prume, the Société was established in part as a result of a decree that forbade the use mixed choirs throughout the archdiocese, and consequently made obsolete Lavallée's choir at Saint-Jacques Church. Following the success of their first production, Lavallée and Prume realized that the company might be used as a stepping-stone to the creation of a government-funded music school, modelled on the Paris Conservatoire. This article explores the social and political context in which the Société was created, and details the staging and reception of its productions of Gounod's Jeanne d'Arc and Boieldieu's La Dame blanche. In selecting these works for performance, the organizers responded to demands and constraints of a society accustomed to popular entertainment from the US and under pressure from the conservative and influential Catholic Church. They were works that were feasible to produce and likely to be successful in a city whose population was divided by religion, language and cultural traditions.