'Thais': adaptation, degeneration and intermediality

Rowden, Clair Sophie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0148-7864 2014. 'Thais': adaptation, degeneration and intermediality. Dix-Neuf 18 (2) , pp. 134-149. 10.1179/1478731814Z.00000000049

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Abstract

This article examines several forms of intermedial adaptation arising from the creative and reception processes of the opera Thaïs, premièred at the Paris Opéra in March 1894. With a libretto by Louis Gallet and a score by Jules Massenet, the opera was based on the 1890 novel by Anatole France. Written in an age of Symbolist and post-Wagnerian aesthetics, the opera used innovative orchestral interludes to capture the philosophical tenets of the novel, and, in a social and medical climate preoccupied with decadence and degeneration, it depicted Thaïs as a mystical hysteric. Press reception of the opera in caricatural and parodical forms treated these and other reception issues via temporal and geographical re-contextualizations of the opera’s story, producing complex intertextual discourses and meta-discourses. Within these intermedial processes, each version of the Thaïs story used and adapted the conventions of the previous genre to fit the new, thereby creating a network of narratives in an exploration and understanding of communication and meaning, convention and genre.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Music
Subjects:	M Music and Books on Music > ML Literature of music
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Anatole France, Louis Gallet, Jules Massenet, Jean-Martin Charcot, libretto, opera, adaptation, intermediality, parody, hysteria
Publisher:	Maney Publishing
Last Modified:	28 Oct 2022 09:03
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/73102

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