Opera in the Novel from Balzac to Proust

The turning point of Madame Bovary which Flaubert memorably set at the opera is only the most famous example of a surprisingly long tradition one common to a range of French literary styles and sub-genres. In the first book-length study of that tradition to appear in English Cormac Newark examines representations of operatic performance from Balzac''s La Comdie humaine to Proust''s la recherche du temps perdu by way of (among others) Dumas pre''s Le Comte de Monte-Cristo and Leroux''s Le Fantme de l''Opra. Attentive to textual and musical detail alike in the works the study also delves deep into their reception contexts. The result is a compelling cultural-historical account: of changing ways of making sense of operatic experience from the 1820s to the 1920s and of a perennial writerly fascination with the recording of that experience.