¹ Nittis’s painting pictures Princess Mathilde’s residence at 20 rue de Berry, where she lived from 1871 until her death. There she entertained dignitaries and politicians on Tuesdays and hosted an intimate circle of artists on Wednesdays. Her Sunday music salon was the largest gathering of the week and is probably the inspiration for the painting. For more on Princess Mathilde’s weekly receptions, see Murat, Caroline L., My Memoirs, ed. Leighton, Robert (New York: Putnam, 1910), 67–83.Google Scholar

² Tunley, David, Salons, Singers, and Songs: A Background to Romantic French Song 1830–1870 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 18–41.Google Scholar

³ Goodman, Dena, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 2–11.Google Scholar

⁴ Ronyak, Jennifer, ‘“Serious Play”, Performance, and the Lied: The Stägemann Schöne Müllerin Revisited’, 19th-Century Music, 34 (2010–11), 141–67 (p. 141).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ Johnson, James, Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), 9–34.Google Scholar

⁶ Gerhard, Anselm, The Urbanization of Opera: Music Theater in Paris in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Whittall, Mary (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 1–20.Google Scholar

⁷ Krims, Adam, Music and Urban Geography (New York: Routledge, 2012), xiv–xvi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ Tunley, Salons, Singers, and Songs, 18–42; Chimènes, Myriam, Mécènes et musiciens: Du salon au concert à Paris sous la III^e République (Paris: Fayard, 2004), 204–10.Google Scholar

⁹ Paintings by Jean Beraud, Charles Giraud and Giuseppe de Nittis offer detailed depictions of Parisian salons and reception rooms. Guest diaries that chronicle salon culture abound. Authors that devote attention to the visual aspect and social interactions of the salon include Virginie Ancelot, Count Viel Castel and Princess Caroline Murat.

¹⁰ Howard, Deborah, ‘Introduction: Music-Making in Residential Space’, The Music Room in Early Modern France and Italy: Sound, Space, and Object, ed. Howard, Deborah and Moretti, Laura, Proceedings of the British Academy, 176 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1–7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Tarek Berrada, ‘Music at Home: Spaces for Music in French Seventeenth-Century Residential Architecture’, ibid., 291–308.

¹¹ Tunley distinguishes between the aristocratic, bourgeois and music salons as distinctly different types of gatherings. Tunley, Salons, Singers, and Songs, 18–27. Also, Louis Epstein has tested the theory that musical taste was discernible through the geography of salon locations. See Epstein, ‘Mapping the Salon’, The Musical Geography Project, <https://musicalgeography.org/project/mapping-the-salon/> (accessed 10 August 2020).

¹² For a comprehensive history of the Parisian hôtel, see Michael Dennis, Court and Garden: From the French Hôtel to the City of Modern Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986). See also Villaverde, Manuel, ‘L’hôtel particulier, une ambition Parisienne’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 71 (2012), 572–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ Anne Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, ou La formation du Tout-Paris: 1815–1848 ([Paris]: Fayard, 1993), 282.

¹⁴ Lefeuve, Charles, Les anciennes maisons de Paris sous Napoléon III, 5 vols. (Brussels: Coomans, 1873), i, 81.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Apponyi, Rodolphe and Mietton, Nicolas, Les français envient notre bonheur: Journal, 1826–1848 (Paris: Tallandier, 2008), 638.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Martin, Meredith, ‘The Ascendancy of the Interior in Eighteenth-Century French Architectural Theory’, Architectural Space in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. Baxter, Denise Amy and Martin, Meredith (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 15–34.Google Scholar

¹⁷ On distribution and interior design, see Martin, ‘The Ascendancy of the Interior’. See also Courtonne, Jean, Traité de la perspective pratique, avec des remarques sur l’architecture (Paris: Jacques Vincent, 1725), 92–7.Google Scholar

¹⁸ de Mézières, Nicolas Le Camus, Le génie de l’architecture, ou L’analogie de cet art avec nos sensations, ed. Middleton, Robin, trans. Britt, David (Santa Monica, CA: Getty, 1992), 32.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Dennis, Court and Garden, 61.

²⁰ Narrow corridors were used sparingly in the hôtel to provide passage into the more private areas of the household. See Neuman, Robert, ‘French Domestic Architecture in the Early 18th Century: The Town Houses of Robert de Cotte’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 39 (1980), 128–44 (p. 133).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²¹ ‘A l’une des extrémités d’appartement, est placé le buffet aussi pour partager la foule, et à l’autre, il y a des tables de jeux et une avec des gravures.’ From Rodolphe Apponyi, Vingt-cinq ans à Paris, 1826–1850: Journal du Comte Rodolphe Apponyi, attaché de l’ambassade d’Autriche-Hongrie à Paris, 4 vols. (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1913–26), i (1913), 40 (entry for 3 January 1827).

²² ‘Un concert a eu lieu ce soir chez nous. Les deux grandes galléries étaient comblées.’ From Apponyi, Vingt-cinq ans à Paris, ii (1913), 305 (entry for 30 December 1832).

²³ On the architectural dimensions of an hôtel, see Lambell, Ronald, French Period Houses and their Details (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1992), 50, 89 and 114.Google Scholar

²⁴ On the history of the appartement, see Marcus, Sharon, Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 135–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁵ On the appartement’s derivation from the hôtel, see Monique Eleb-Vidal and Anne Debarre-Blanchard, Architectures de la vie privée: Maisons et mentalités XVII^e–XIX^e siècles (Brussels: Archives d’architecture moderne, 1989), 11. See also Patrick Celeste, ‘L’immeuble et son interior’, In extensio, 9 (November 1985), 75–6. The similarities between hôtel and appartement construction are evidenced in the 45 floor plans compiled in Pierre Henri Gélis-Didot’s 1893 anthology which consistently incorporate the architectural innovations found in the hôtel, such as massée reception rooms. See Gélis-Didot, Pierre Henri, Paris Mansions and Apartments, 1893: Facades, Floor Plans, and Architectural Details (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2011).Google Scholar

²⁶ ‘Chaque salon aristocratique ou bourgeois qui peut contenir une centaine de personnes en y adjoignant la salle à manger, la chambre à coucher et le cabinet de travail débarrassé, a son compositeur d’avenir, son ou sa pianiste très-distingué, son Thalberg ou sa Pleyel, son Vieuxtemps ou son Servais, son Dorus, son Leroy, son Jancourt, son Garimond, ses chanteurs de romances et de chansonnettes rivalisant Mmes Sabatier et Ponchard, ou Levassor’ (emphasis added). From Henri Blanchard, ‘Auditions musicales’, Revue et gazette musicale, 21/7 (15 February 1852), 2–3.

²⁷ Seventeenth-century hôtel designs embedded bedrooms into the foot traffic of the residence and even used staged bedrooms for receiving guests. This interior organization was later discontinued in eighteenth-century hôtel plans. See Dennis, Court and Garden, 69.

²⁸ Marcus, Apartment Stories, 21. The distribution of rooms in the bourgeois appartement was the subject of debate and innovation as architects introduced features such as narrow corridors to discourage public circulation to private chambers. The architects César Daly and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc advocated for the strategic separation of public and private rooms. See Marcus, Sharon, ‘Haussmannization as Anti-Modernity: The Apartment House in Parisian Urban Discourse, 1850–1880’, Journal of Urban History, 27 (2001), 723–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ ‘Les sièges placés dans le salon d’honneur où se passent comédie et musique sont entassés sur plusieurs rangs dans toute la pièce, de manière à la couvrir entièrement sans aucun espace libre qui puisse servir à circuler […] On aperçoit à distance les femmes que l’on connaît, on voit ses amis aux embrasures des portes, car les hommes sont relégués dans les pièces qui entourent le grand salon, puisqu’on s’est arrangé pour avoir un peu plus de monde que l’appartement n’en peut contenir; il est de première nécessité qu’il y ait quelques invités qui ne puissent pas pénétrer; cela rend la soirée tout à fait mémorable’ (emphasis added). Ancelot, Virginie, Les salons de Paris: Foyers éteints (Paris: J. Tardieu, 1858), 221.Google Scholar

³⁰ Henri Blanchard, ‘Auditions musicales’, Revue et gazette musicale, 21/11 (14 March 1852), 2–3.

³¹ Madame Verdurin, a bourgeois salonnière aspiring to higher social status, is characterized by her attentiveness to salon performances. On her affected immersion in music, see Proust, Marcel, La prisonnière from À la recherche du temps perdu (Paris: Nouvelle revue française, 1923), 59–79.Google Scholar

³² Virginie Ancelot wrote, ‘L’on est placé, à mesure qu’on arrive, tant qu’il y a des sièges vacants, et, si vous avez à vos côtes des femmes que vous ne connaissez pas.’ Ancelot, Les salons de Paris, 221.

³³ Murat, My Memoirs, 77–8.

³⁴ The Hôtel du Châtelet, designed by the architect Mathurin Cherpitel and built in rue de Grenelle in the 1770s, was designated as the official residence of the archbishop of Paris from 1849 to 1905. Georges Darboy was archbishop of Paris from 1863 to 1871. ‘Une porte à deux battants, toute grande ouverte en face de la cheminée, laisse voir un jeune prêtre et un sous-lieutenant qui jouent au billard [… Les femmes] vont et viennent et se placent à leur guise. Les jeunes filles se sont naïvement rapprochées de la porte du billard […] On ouvre la porte de la galerie et une excellente musique de chambre se fait entendre. Un huissier distribue le programme des morceaux choisis par Monseigneur. On écoute d’abord religieusement, puis les conversations reprennent avec ce brouhaha discret produit par une nombreuse réunion de gens bien élevés. Les jeunes hommes ont abandonné le billard pour venir écouter la musique.’ ‘X.’, ‘Chez Monseigneur’, La vie parisienne, 6/23 (6 June 1868), 407.

³⁵ On the gender politics of the French salon, see Goodman, The Republic of Letters, as well as Jolanta Pekacz, ‘The Salonnières and the Philosophes in Old Regime France: The Authority of Aesthetic Judgment’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 60 (1999), 277–97. On gendering the repertory of the salon, see William Cheng, ‘Hearts for Sale: The French Romance and the Sexual Traffic of Musical Mimicry’, 19th-Century Music, 35 (2011–12), 34–71. See also Kallberg, Jeffrey, ‘The Harmony of the Tea Table: Gender and Ideology in the Piano Nocturne’, Representations, 39 (1992), 102–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁶ On the inattentiveness of members of opera audiences, see Cormac Newark, ‘Not Listening in Paris: Critical and Fictional Lapses of Attention at the Opera’, Words and Notes in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Phyllis Weliver and Katharine Ellis (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013), 35–53. See also Ellis, Katherine, ‘Researching Audience Behaviors in Nineteenth-Century Paris’, The Oxford Handbook of Music Listening in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Thorau, Christian and Ziemer, Hansjakob (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 37–54.Google Scholar

³⁷ Applying Theodor Adorno’s theories on listening to his study of nineteenth-century audiences in Amsterdam, Daryl Cressman argues that concertgoers engaged structural listening, intellectually navigating the past, present and future of the work to understand the formal whole. See Cressman, ‘Listening, Attentive Listening, and Musical Meaning’, Building Musical Culture in Nineteenth-Century Amsterdam: The Concertgebouw (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), 29–48.

³⁸ Auguste Franchomme, Oeuvres de Chopin traduites pour le violoncelle (Paris: Gérard, 1870).

³⁹ Princess Mathilde lived at 10 rue de Courcelles from 1848 to 1857, at 20 rue de Courcelles (now destroyed) from 1857 to 1870, and at 20 rue de Berry (now destroyed) from 1871 until her death in 1904.

⁴⁰ ‘Quatre salons communiquant par une vaste serre. Dans celui du milieu, le piano autour duquel se groupaient les chanteurs, avec le quatuor instrumental à gauche, et à droite un piano-orgue sur lequel improvisaient Saint-Saëns ou Cohen. Au premier accord chacun des auditeurs avait choisi sa place, les plus musiciens près du piano échangeant des compliments avec les exécutants, les autres dispersés soit dans la serre, soit dans les salons voisins ou la poésie des fleurs et de leur parfum se mêlait au charme de la musique.’ François-Sappey, Brigitte, ‘La vie musicale à Paris à travers les Mémoires d’Eugène Sauzay, 1809–1901’, Revue de musicologie, 60 (1974), 159–210 (p. 205).Google Scholar

⁴¹ It is widely established that London and Parisian society salons were similar. See Weber, William, Music and the Middle Classes: The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna between 1830 and 1848 (New York: Routledge, 2017), 38–40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Guides such as the anonymous The Young Lady’s Book: A Manual of Elegant Recreations, Exercises, and Pursuits (London: Vizetelly, Branston & Co., 1829) taught English ladies Parisian social practices (pp. 405–7).

⁴² Marshall, Nancy Rose, Warner, Malcolm and Tissot, James, James Tissot: Victorian Life, Modern Love (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 99.Google Scholar

⁴³ The sociologist Erving Goffman theorized that walls and doors create situational boundaries. Goffman, ‘Communication Boundaries’, Communication Theory, ed. C. David Mortensen (New York: Routledge, 2017), 213–25.

⁴⁴ Gaylin, Ann, Eavesdropping in the Novel from Austen to Proust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 9–12.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Kramer, Lawrence, ‘Franz Liszt and the Virtuoso Public Sphere: Sight and Sound in the Rise of Mass Entertainment’, Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 68–99 (p. 77).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Gooley, Dana, ‘The Battle against Instrumental Virtuosity in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Franz Liszt and his World, ed. Gooley, Dana and Gibbs, Christopher H. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 75–112.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Pierre Girod, ‘Un demi-siècle d’opéra de salon’, Histoire de l’opéra français, ed. Hervé Lacombe, 3 vols. (Paris: Fayard, 2020) ii, 560–70. Also, see the data set of salon operas compiled by Mark Everist, ‘France: Musiques, Cultures, 1789–1918 – Music in the Second Empire Theatre’, <http://fmc.ac.uk/mitset/> (accessed 15 July 2021). Other discussion of salon opera has centred on the work of Pauline Viardot. Rachel Miller Harris, ‘The Music Salon of Pauline Viardot: Featuring her Salon Opera Cendrillon’ (DMA dissertation, Louisiana State University, 2005); Lauren Rebecca Berman, ‘Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon and its Relevancy for the Developing Opera Singer’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Arizona State University, 2017).

⁴⁸ Jules Lovy, ‘Causeries musicales: Soirées’, Le ménéstrel, 21/18 (2 April 1854), 2.

⁴⁹ Piat, Jean, Gustave Nadaud, 1820–1893: Sa vie et son œuvre (Roubaix: Musée de Roubaix, 1993).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ d’Onquaire, Galoppe, Le spectacle au coin de feu (Paris: Lagny, 1863), 2–5.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Henri Blanchard, ‘L’opéra de salon’, Revue et gazette musicale, 18/6 (9 February 1851), 44.

⁵² A number of salon operas, including Charles Manry’s La bourse ou la vie (1856), Gustave Nadaud’s Porte et fenêtre (1857), Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin’s L’amour à l’épée (1858) and Paul Bernard’s L’accord parfait (1863), are set in Parisian residences.

⁵³ If additional resources were needed for a production, a circuit of salon vendors would supply hosts with the necessary props. Adolphe Belloir, an ‘entrepreneur des fêtes’, painted screens and constructed other set decorations; and the sculptor Mathurin Moreau provided a variety of costumes. See Émile Barateau, ‘Opéras de salon: Le Docteur Vieuxtemps et la Volière – À deux pas du bonheur’, Le ménéstrel, 22/13 (25 February 1855), 1.

⁵⁴ D’Onquaire, Le spectacle au coin de feu, 93–7.

⁵⁵ ‘Un salon. Porte au fond. Portes à droit et à gauche. Trois chaises et deux guéridons chargé de tapisseries. Sur le guéridon, à gauche, de l’encre et une plume. La scène est vide. Rosine et Isabelle sont enfermées dans leurs chambres à droit et à gauche’ (emphasis added). Nadaud, Gustave, Le docteur Vieuxtemps: Opéra-comique de salon en un acte (Paris: Heugel, [c. 1854]), 9.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ The performance took place at the princess’s Sunday salon, 30 April 1854. See Henri de Viel Castel, ‘Conversation: Une représentation théâtral chez S. A. I. Madame la princesse Mathilde’, Le constitutionnel, 36/122 (2 May 1854), 1–2. Also see Galoppe d’Onquaire, ‘Soirée de S. A. I. Mme Princesse Matilde: 100^e Réprésentation du Docteur Vieuxtemps’, Le ménestrel, 21/22 (30 April 1854), 2.

⁵⁷ The libretto indicates that Géronte speaks in a loud voice throughout the scene so that he is heard by his nieces. ‘Il dit tout cette scène à haute voix de manière à être entendu par ses nièces.’ D’Onquaire, Spectacle au coin de feu, 85.

⁵⁸ The cuckoo motif first appears in the trio’s instrumental introduction in bars 1–7, and it is heard again in bars 56–62, before Géronte turns his attention to Isabelle.

⁵⁹ The opportunistic cuckoo is known to be one of nature’s tricksters because it lays its camouflaged eggs in other birds’ nests.

⁶⁰ Nadaud’s other salon opera works, such as La volière and Porte et fenêtre, also incorporate interspatial scenes, using the sonic seepage between rooms to propel the plot and to add dramatic interest to the scene. Nadaud’s salon operas were in high demand and were heard in the salons of Mme Orfila, Camille Doucet and MM. Rodrigues and Gide, as well as the minister of state Eugène Rouher. See Barateau, ‘Opéras de salon’.

⁶¹ Parisian audiences may even have heard the 1822 Parisian adaptation of Mozart’s Idomeneo, in which the commanding voice of Neptune sounds from offstage, ordering Idomeneo to save his son. See Rushton, Julian, W. A. Mozart: Idomeneo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶² On the limited stage and wing space at the Opéra Comique from 1840 to 1887 at Salle Favart, see Evan Baker, ‘The Scene Designs for the First Performances of Bizet’s Carmen’, 19th-Century Music, 13 (1989–90), 230–42 (pp. 233–4).

⁶³ Offenbach, Jacques, Un mari à la porte (Paris: Heugel, 1859).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Viel Castel, ‘Conversation’, 2.

⁶⁵ ‘Quatre ou cinq talen[t]s de premier ordre, ou protégés par la faveur publique, répètent cent fois dans un hiver, au milieu des réunions du grand monde, les morceaux de musique et les chants qu’ils exécutent ou qu’ils chantent mieux, au Conservatoire, au grand Opéra, ou à l’Opéra Italien. Pourquoi ne les laisserait-on pas reposer l’hiver prochain. Pourquoi ne pas chercher pour nos salons des divertissemen[t]s nouveaux, composés pour nos salons? Pourquoi ne pas laisser se reformer une phalange de littérateurs et d’artistes, élevés et muris dans les serres-chaudes du monde et travaillant pour lui?’ (emphasis added). Ibid.