The Harlequin Years: Music in Paris 1917-1929.(Book Review)(Brief Article)

by Roger Nichols University of California Press, 288 pp. $34.95

Paris in the 1920s, for all its allure, was no operatic golden age. Debussy scholar Roger Nichols musters prodigious research to show us an Opera that functioned as something of a dating service for wealthy male patrons. Men in tails roamed freely among the dancers backstage--and even onstage during performances. And the repertoire? "I'd rather hear Faust one hundred times than any modern work twice," one patron responded to a 1929 survey of audience tastes. "We come to the opera to amuse ourselves and see our friends." Astronomical overhead also plagued the Palais Garnier, the Comique and other institutions. Still, by dipping into his own pocket, Opera director Jacques Rouche managed to mount twenty world premieres of French works during the period (most of them since forgotten).

This chatty, well-illustrated volume focuses ostensibly on foreign influences, symbolized in the Harlequin figure seen in the groundbreaking ballet Parade (1917). In practice, though, Nichols primarily illumines the musical institutions of France in the 1920s--its orchestras, opera houses, music halls, conservatories and such salons as the ...