¹ ‘Dites-moi ce que c'est qu'un larynx, qui ne peut plus servir à rien? Qu'est-ce qu'un chanteur, qui ne peut plus chanter?’ Edouard Monnais, ‘Le Foyer. Comment finissent les artistes. Un chanteur et un souffleur’, La Revue et gazette musicale de Paris (15 August 1839).

² Roger, Gustave (1815–1879), Carnet d'un ténor, avec préface de Philippe Gille et notice biographique par Charles Chincholle, 4th edn (Paris, 1880), 182–3Google Scholar.

³ Duprez, Gilbert (1806–1896), Souvenirs d'un chanteur (Paris, 1880), 177Google Scholar. For the original French text with citations drawn from Duprez's and Roger's memoirs, see the digitised memoirs which are easily accessible via BnF Gallica or archive.org.

⁴ Duprez, Souvenirs, 179, emphasis in original.

⁵ Duprez, Gilbert, La Mélodie, études complémentaires vocales et dramatiques de l'Art du chant, ouvrage divisé en 2 parties (Paris, 1874)Google Scholar; Sur la voix et l'art du chant, essai rimé (Paris, 1882); Joyeusetés d'un chanteur dramatique (Paris, 1884); Graines d'artiste, silhouettes vocales (Paris, 1884); Récréations de mon grand âge, par l'octogénaire G. Duprez (Paris, 1888); Choses drôles. Quatre petits contes historiques en vers sur des artistes de son époque (Paris, 1889). Decades earlier, Duprez had published his first vocal method, L'Art du chant (Paris, 1846).

⁶ Théophile Silvestre, ‘G. Duprez. Étude d'après nature. À M. Alfred Bruyas, à Montpellier’, in Duprez, La Mélodie, ii. Silvestre's biographical portrait of Duprez was initially published in five separate instalments in Le Ménestrel, from 24 August 1873 to 21 September 1873.

⁷ Quoted in Desler, Anne, ‘“The Little That I Have Done Is Already Gone and Forgotten”: Farinelli and Burney Write Music History’, Cambridge Opera Journal 27 (2015), 216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ In this article, I have opted to use the term ‘memoir’ to refer to Duprez's and Roger's writings, even though, as I discuss below, they differed in style and scope: Duprez's book follows the standard autobiographical model, while Roger's text is in diary form. Smith and Watson provide an excellent introduction to the vocabulary used to describe different types of life writing, the latter a generic term used by scholars to encompass the various forms that self-life writing can take. The term ‘memoir’ (mémoire) was frequently used in nineteenth-century French life writings. According to Smith and Watson, memoirs were ‘recollections by the publicly prominent who chronicled their social accomplishments. These recollections often bracketed one moment or period of experience rather than an entire life span and offered reflection on its significance for the writer's previous status or self-understanding.’ Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, ‘Life Narratives: Definitions and Distinctions’, in Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, 2nd edn (Minnesota, 2010), 3–4.

⁹ Lejeune, Philippe, Autobiographie en France, 3rd edn (1971; Paris, 2014)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Hector Berlioz, Mémoires de Hector Berlioz, membre de l'Institut de France, comprenant ses voyages en Italie, en Allemagne, en Russie et en Angleterre, 1803–1865 (Paris, 1870). For the English translation, see Berlioz, The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, ed. and trans. David Cairns (New York, 1975). On critical approaches to Berlioz's memoirs, see Peter Bloom, ‘Berlioz Writing the Life of Berlioz’, in Berlioz: Scenes from the Life and Work, ed. Bloom (Rochester, 2008), 201–20; Pierre Citron, ‘The Mémoires’, in The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz, ed. Peter Bloom (Cambridge, 2000), 125–45; Béatrice Didier, ‘Les Mémoires: Berlioz et l’écriture de soi’, in Berlioz écrivain, ed. Didier et al. (Paris, 2001), 6–16.

¹¹ Richard Wagner, Mein Leben, ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin (Munich, 1976); Wagner, My Life, trans. Andrew Gray (Cambridge, 1983). See John Deathridge, ‘Wagner Lives: Issues in Autobiography’, in The Cambridge Companion to Wagner, ed. Thomas S. Grey (Cambridge, 2008), 1–17; Jerome R. Sehulster, ‘Richard Wagner's Creative Vision at La Spezia, or The Retrospective Interpretation of Experience in Autobiographical Memory as a Function of an Emerging Identity’, in Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture, ed. Jens Brockmeier and Donal Carbaugh (Amsterdam, 2001), 187–218.

¹² Viv Gardner, ‘By Herself: The Actress and Autobiography, 1755–1939’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Actress, ed. Maggie B. Gale and John Stokes (Cambridge, 2007), 175. The prevalence of singer autobiographies has been somewhat overstated, particularly during the nineteenth century. After mentioning Michael Kelly's Reminiscences (1826), which were apparently ghost-written, Susan Rutherford states: ‘Similar autobiographies, either penned by the singer or ghost-written, soon became a standard closure to a performing career.’ There remains, nevertheless, a gap of almost one hundred years between Kelly's memoirs and the subsequent batch. Susan Rutherford, ‘Voices and Singers’, in The Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies, ed. Nicholas Till (Cambridge, 2012), 128.

¹³ Marie Sasse, Souvenirs d'une artiste (Paris, 1902).

¹⁴ Pauline Viardot, Souvenirs (unpublished manuscript; Houghton Library). Hilary Poriss has presented her research on Viardot's unfinished memoirs at several conferences, including the North American Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music (Merrimack College, 2015) and the AMS national meeting (Louisville, 2015). I would like to thank Poriss for sharing her working papers and presentations with me, in addition to her transcription and translation of the memoirs.

¹⁵ Delphine Ugalde, Mémoires (unpublished manuscript; Paris, Mutuelle nationale des artistes dramatiques). I am currently preparing an edition of this material.

¹⁶ Victor Maurel, Dix ans de carrière (Paris, 1897). Maurel's book contains the baritone's writings on vocal art, pedagogy and the singing profession; staging manuals for Mozart's Don Giovanni and Verdi's Otello; letters; and other writings, many of which had been published previously. Léon Kerst's preface notes that it is nevertheless a kind of memoir of the artist's intellectual life (Maurel, Dix ans, xiii).

¹⁷ Examples include the following: Michael Kelly (ghost-written by Theodore Hook), Reminiscences of Michael Kelly of the King's Theatre and Theatre Royal Drury Lane (London, 1826); Joseph Wood, Memoirs of Mr. and Mrs. Wood (Philadelphia, 1840); Henry Phillips, Musical and Personal Recollections During Half a Century (London, 1864); Sims Reeves, Sims Reeves: His Life and Recollections Written by Himself (London, 1888); Karl Johann Franz Formes, My Memoirs: Autobiography of Karl Formes (San Francisco, 1891); Francis Walker, Letters of a Baritone (London, 1895); Mathilde Marchesi, Marchesi and Music: Passages from the Life of a Famous Singing Teacher (New York, 1897); Emily Soldene, My Theatrical and Musical Recollections (London, 1897).

¹⁸ Thérésa [Emma Valladon], Mémoires de Thérésa, écrits par elle-même (Paris, 1865). Her memoirs were a huge success, selling 75,000 copies. On autobiographies by dancers and singers on the popular stage, see Marie-Ève Thérenty, ‘Le Récit de vie de vedette, l'invention d'un genre: Rigolboche, Thérésa, Paulus’, Belphégor 11 (2013), 1–14. See also her article on Thérésa's mediatisation, ‘Thérésa Trimm: Le mariage du café-concert et de la petite presse’, in Presse, chansons et culture orale au XIXe siècle. La parole vive au défi de l’ère médiatique, ed. Élisabeth Pillet and Marie-Ève Thérenty (Paris, 2012), 41–63.

¹⁹ Albert Wolff admitted to inventing the anecdotes about Thérésa's father. See Thérenty, ‘Le Récit de vie de vedette’, 8.

²⁰ ‘en se mirant dans son histoire, l'individu ne cherche pas à établir sa contingence, mais sa nécessité, en assumant et en remodelant son passé’. Lejeune, L'Autobiographie, 45.

²¹ Smith and Watson, ‘Life Narratives: Definitions and Distinctions’, 13.

²² Smith, ‘Performativity, Autobiographical Practice, Resistance’, in Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, ed. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (Madison, 1998), 110.

²³ Smith, ‘Performativity’, 108.

²⁴ ‘Mais c'est là, je le répète, le vice commun à presque tous les livres de ce genre. L'acteur les écrit pour jouer encore une fois, pour paraître devant son public, et semble mettre je ne sais quel entêtement et quelle amertume à justifier ce propos qu'il ne reste rien des acteurs après leur vie et leur exemple.’ Henry Fouquier, ‘Causerie dramatique’, XIXe siècle (27 July 1880).

²⁵ Karen Henson, Opera Acts: Singers and Performance in the Late Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2015), 122.

²⁶ See Alan Armstrong, ‘Gilbert-Louis Duprez and Gustave Roger in the Composition of Meyerbeer's Le Prophète’, Cambridge Opera Journal 8 (1996), 147–65.

²⁷ Thomas Postlewait, ‘Theatre Autobiography: Some Preliminary Concerns’, Assaph C 16 (2000), 170.

²⁸ Lejeune, L'Autobiographie, 58. See also Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique (Paris, 1996).

²⁹ Duprez, Souvenirs, 1–2.

³⁰ The school was later renamed Institution royale de musique religieuse in 1825, and then Institution royale de musique classique in 1830. On Choron and his school, see Katharine Ellis, ‘Vocal Training at the Paris Conservatoire and the Choir Schools of Alexandre-Étienne Choron: Debates, Rivalries, and Consequences’, in Music Education in Europe (1770–1914): Compositional, Institutional, and Political Challenges, ed. Michael Fend and Michel Noiray (Berlin, 2005), 125–44.

³¹ On Nourrit, see Louis Quicherat, Adolphe Nourrit: Sa vie, son talent, son caractère, sa correspondance, 3 vols. (Paris, 1867); Henry Pleasants, The Great Tenor Tragedy: The Last Days of Adolphe Nourrit As Told (Mostly) By Himself (Portland, OR, 1995); J.Q. Davies, ‘In Search of Voice: Nourrit's voix mixte, Donzelli's bari-tenor ’, in Romantic Anatomies of Performance (Berkeley, 2014), 123–51.

³² Duprez, Souvenirs, 137–8.

³³ Edouard Monnais declared: ‘Une voix parfaitement pure, égale, sonore; une prononciation excellente, une déclamation extraordinaire, telles sont les qualités qui frappent tout d'abord dans l'artiste nouveau. Pas un mot perdu, pas une phrase négligée, pas une période sans charme ou sans vigueur.’ (‘A perfectly pure, equal, ringing voice; excellent pronunciation, extraordinary declamation, these are the qualities of the new artist that first strike [the listener]. Not a word lost, not a phrase neglected, not one section without charm or vigour.’) ‘Débuts de Duprez dans Guillaume Tell ’, La Revue et gazette musicale de Paris (23 April 1837).

³⁴ Duprez, Souvenirs, 73–4.

³⁵ Duprez, Souvenirs, 75.

³⁶ This passage has been often misread, with scholars believing that Duprez was describing his first experience performing the opera, when he was describing his first experience reading the score. Gregory Bloch, for example, claims: ‘The tenor wrote that he was so carried away by “the manly accents, the sublime cries” … of Arnold's Act IV aria that the ut de poitrine simply happened, without any conscious effort.’ Bloch, ‘The Pathological Voice of Gilbert Duprez’, Cambridge Opera Journal 19 (2007), 13. Davies, likewise, misinterprets this passage (Romantic Anatomies, 180). That Duprez was describing his preparation is confirmed by the sentence that follows: ‘Eh! parbleu, m’écrirai-je en terminant, j’éclaterai peut-être; mais j'y arriverai!’ Duprez, Souvenirs, 75.

³⁷ Duprez, Souvenirs, 75–6.

³⁸ ‘dans le second, qui est le côté le plus complet, son but est d'exprimer, à l'aide des paroles, les passions et les sentimens humains’. Duprez, L'Art du chant, 106.

³⁹ Auguste Laget, for example, quotes an article by Franc-Marie from La Patrie (1 July 1861), in which the journalist relates how two tenors died trying to imitate Duprez in the cabaletta from Guillaume Tell. Laget, Le Chant et les chanteurs (Paris, 1874), 25–8. On contemporary interpretations of Duprez's voice as ‘pathological’, see Bloch, ‘The Pathological Voice’.

⁴⁰ On Roger's life and career, see Auguste Laget, Roger (Toulouse, 1865); Louis Pécaud, ‘Roger’, in Le Panthéon des comédiens, de Molière à Coquelin aîné, preface by Coquelin aîné (Paris, 1922), 247–51; see also press clippings, biographical articles and obituaries in Bibliothèque–Musée de l'Opéra (F-Po), Dossier d'artiste, Roger.

⁴¹ Roger, Carnet, 6, 32–3; 12–13.

⁴² Armstrong, ‘Gilbert-Louis Duprez and Gustave Roger’, 58.

⁴³ Roger, Carnet, 52–5. Jeanne Castellan was Giulietta.

⁴⁴ Lejeune clearly distinguishes between memoir and autobiography, L'Autobiographie, 13. Other scholars include memoirs within the larger category of life writing, and some use the genres interchangeably, see Smith and Watson, ‘Life Narratives: Definitions and Distinctions’, 2.

⁴⁵ Philippe Gille (1831–1901) was a Parisian playwright and librettist; Charles Henri Hippolyte Chincholle (1843–1902) a French writer and journalist.

⁴⁶ Viv Gardner, ‘The Three Nobodies: Autobiographical Strategies in the Work of Alma Ellerslie, Kitty Marion and Ina Rozant’, in Auto/Biography and Identity: Women, Theatre and Performance, ed. Maggie B. Gale and Viv Gardner (Manchester, 2004), 16.

⁴⁷ Roger writes of his troubles with the Opéra administration to his friend Fiorentino: he enlists the critic's help while he renegotiates another contract. None of this exchange ever makes it into his diary, however. See Roger's letters to Fiorentino on 1 January 1855, from Hanover, and 5 June 1855, from Weimar. Roger, ‘Lettres d'un ténor à Fiorentino’, Souvenirs et mémoires (15 May 1900), 398–400 and 402–7.

⁴⁸ Excerpts of Roger's Carnet appeared in Le Figaro on 16 April and 20 June 1872, and on 18–20 and 26 July 1875. Revisions involved word changes to the cutting or adding of entire entries. There is no indication who might have carried out the revisions to the final published volume, whether Roger, his widow, Fanny, or a friend.

⁴⁹ Auguste Laget claimed Roger was unsure whether to imitate Rubini or Duprez, the two most celebrated tenors of his day, before finally deciding to adopt the voix sombrée. Laget, Roger, 7. On lighter modes of tenor vocal production, see Henson, ‘Victor Capoul, Marguerite Olagnier's Le Saïs, and the Arousing of Female Desire’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 52 (1999), 419–63; and Sean Parr, ‘Vocal Vulnerability: Tenors, Voix Mixte, and Late Nineteenth-Century French Opera’, this issue, 138–164.

⁵⁰ Roger discusses his reception at the Opéra, noting that the public prefers colossal singing rather than sensitivity, nuance and colour (Carnet, 329–30). See also Johannes Weber, Meyerbeer, notes et souvenirs d'un de ses secrétaires (Paris, 1898), 81; and Laget, Roger, 26.

⁵¹ See Armstrong, ‘Gilbert-Louis Duprez and Gustave Roger’.

⁵² Roger, Carnet, 17–18, emphasis in original.

⁵³ Roger, Carnet, 23.

⁵⁴ Roger, Carnet, 116–17.

⁵⁵ Roger, Carnet, 189–92, entry dated 18 July 1849. This particular moment was often singled out in press reviews of the premiere and subsequent performances. François-Joseph Fétis claimed that Roger was the only tenor capable of such dramatic action: ‘Figurez-vous un ténor italien dans la scène du quatrième acte, obligé d'employer toutes les ressources de la physionomie, de la tenue, du regard, du geste pour fasciner une mère et la contraindre à renier son fils, en même temps que pour attirer, concentrer, absorber l'attention palpitante d'une salle entière! … Dans cette scène prodigieuse, et de l'aveu de tous, Roger est parvenu à réaliser cet idéal que cherchent en commun les auteurs, les artistes et tous les intéressés à la fortune d'une œuvre dramatique.’ (‘Imagine an Italian tenor in the scene from the fourth act, having to use all the resources of physiognomy, behaviour, gaze, gesture to fascinate a mother and impel her to deny her son, at the same time as attracting, concentrating, absorbing the breathless attention of an entire hall! … In this prodigious scene, and by the admission of everyone, Roger was able to produce this ideal that all the authors, artists, and interested parties sought in common for the fortune of the dramatic work.’) [Fétis, père], ‘Le Prophète. Les artistes et l'orchestre’, La Revue et gazette musicale de Paris (29 April 1849).

⁵⁶ Roger, Carnet, 324. Roger's performance of Erlkönig was famous, and motivated Berlioz's orchestration of the song as Le Roi des aulnes, which was sung by the tenor at its premiere on 27 August 1860, in Baden-Baden. See D. Kern Holoman, Berlioz: A Musical Biography of the Creative Genius of the Romantic Era (Cambridge, MA, 1989), 546.

⁵⁷ ‘Carnet d'un ténor, par Roger, ou Souvenirs d'un chanteur, par Duprez, c'est tout un: “– c'est toujours l'histoire artistique d'une époque envisagée par un chanteur à son seul point de vue et dans un but exclusivement personnel … Donc, en général, il ne faut pas trop se fier à ces souvenirs d'acteurs, qui sont le plus souvent des cancans de coulisses, des anecdotes enfilées à la suite l'une de l'autre afin d'amuser le lecteur et défigurées, le plus souvent, pour le plus grand honneur et profit du narrateur.”’ Adolphe Jullien, ‘Trois ténors éteints (Août 1881)’, Musique: mélanges d'histoire et de critique musicale et dramatique (Paris, 1896).

⁵⁸ Henry Fouquier, ‘Causerie dramatique’, XIXe siècle, 27 July 1880. See similar critiques in Pierre Véron, ‘Courrier de Paris’, Le Monde illustré (31 July 1880); Francisque Sarcey, ‘Chronique théâtrale’, Le Temps (26 April 1880).

⁵⁹ Jullien, ‘Trois ténors éteints’, 448.

⁶⁰ Fouquier, ‘Causerie dramatique’, XIXe siècle (27 July 1880).

⁶¹ Lejeune, L'Autobiographie, 49. Although autobiographies have informed scholarly literature on singers, the documents are rarely examined in and of themselves. By contrast, theatre and feminist scholars have been exploring this genre productively for well over fifteen years. See, for example, Gale and Gardner, eds, Auto/Biography and Identity: Women; Grace, Sherrill and Wasserman, Jerry, eds., Theatre and AutoBiography: Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice (Vancouver, 2006)Google Scholar; Hart, Kathleen, Revolution and Women's Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century France (New York, 2004)Google Scholar; Postlewait, Thomas, ‘Autobiography and Theatre History’, in Interpreting the Theatrical Past: Essays in the Historiography of Performance, ed. Postlewait, and McConachie, Bruce A. (Iowa City, 1989), 248–72Google Scholar; Corbett, Mary Jean, Representing Femininity: Middle-Class Subjectivity in Victorian and Edwardian Women's Autobiographies (New York, 1993)Google Scholar. For examinations of autobiography (and biography) in musicology, see the essays in Pekacz, Jolanta, ed., Musical Biography: Towards New Paradigms (Aldershot, 2006)Google Scholar, and Pekacz, , ‘Memory, History and Meaning: Musical Biography and Its Discontents’, Journal of Musicological Research 23 (2004), 39–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶² Postlewait maintains that although individual autobiographies can be unreliable, the documents are quite valuable when studied collectively; ‘Autobiography and Theatre History’, 268–9.

⁶³ Duprez, Souvenirs, 77.

⁶⁴ Philip V. Bohlman, ‘On the Unremarkable in Music’, 19th-Century Music (‘Music in Its Social Contexts’) 16 (1992), 203–16. David Gramit applies the concept in his study of music in German autobiographies; see his ‘Unremarkable Musical Lives: Autobiographical Narrative, Music, and the Shaping of the Self’, in Musical Biography, ed. Pekacz, 159–78.

⁶⁵ Duprez, Souvenirs, 117.

⁶⁶ Arthur Pougin's obituary of Duprez is a fortunate exception. Pougin, ‘Duprez’, Le Ménestrel (27 September 1896).

⁶⁷ His most important students from the Conservatoire included Caroline Miolan Carvalho (1827–1895, Opéra-Comique, Théâtre-Lyrique, Opéra), Anne Euphrasie Poinsot (b. 1825), Pauline Eulalie Dameron (1825–1890, Opéra), Mathieu Emile Balanqué (1826–1866, Théâtre-Lyrique), Cécile-Henriette-Eugénie Pijon (Mme Ponchard, b. 1821, Opéra), Célestine Nathan-Treillet (1815–1873, Opéra), and Augustine Eugénie Julienne (b. 1820, Opéra).

⁶⁸ On these weekly concerts, see ‘Petite revue musicale. Les vendredis de M. Duprez’, La Revue artistique et littéraire (1864). Duprez's students from the school included the tenors Sylva and Engel, baritones Agnesi and Morlet, Mlles Masson and Marie Battu (Opéra), Singelée, Marimon, Heilbron (Opéra-Comique), the Devriès sisters (Théâtre-Lyrique) and Emma Albani (Théâtre-Italien); see Duprez, Souvenirs, 242. For an illustration of the concert hall, see the lithograph ‘PARIS-THÉATRE – Théâtre de l’École spéciale de chant dirigée par Léon Duprez. (Dessin de M. Edmon Morin)’, Le Monde illustré (20 February 1875), 133. The image shows a small theatre, with a raised stage that could accommodate small sets and stage action; the orchestra is situated directly in front of the stage, with a conductor directing the performance.

⁶⁹ See the list of works in Sandro Corti, ‘Duprez, Gilbert’, Grove Music Online, www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/08364. Note that Samson is incorrectly listed as an opérette (it was initially written as a two-act oratorio, then expanded to a four-act opera), and it was first performed in 1855, not 1857.

⁷⁰ Duprez practically roars in frustration: ‘How could a singer who, during his twenty-five-year career, was well received in the works of the great composers, who was in contact with the public, who felt and understood such aspirations, not also be capable of putting into practice the experience acquired through all these instances?’ Souvenirs, 237.

⁷¹ Duprez, Souvenirs, 230–1; Pierre Girod, ‘Les Mutations du ténor romantique. Contribution à une histoire du chant français à l’époque de Gilbert Duprez (1837–1871)’, (PhD diss., Université Rennes 2, 2015), 35.

⁷² ‘Un Opéra franco-italien’, La Revue et gazette musicale de Paris (10 June 1877).

⁷³ Duprez, Souvenirs, 236; emphasis in original.

⁷⁴ Postlewait notes that autobiography as travelogue was particularly popular between 1850 and 1950, the epoch during which new modes of travel carried performers around the world, ‘Theatre Autobiography’, 168. On the travel diary and social class in the nineteenth century, see Marian Wilson Kimber, ‘Fanny in Italy: The Female Composer as Travel Writer’, in Musical Biography, ed. Pekacz, 111–33.

⁷⁵ Roger, Carnet, 171.

⁷⁶ Roger, Carnet, 173.

⁷⁷ Roger, Carnet, 222. Desler notes how Farinelli similarly emphasised his connections and intimate friendships with members of the aristocracy to separate his singing career from the (morally dubious) theatre; ‘The Little That I Have Done’, 222–7.

⁷⁸ Roger, Carnet, 305–6.

⁷⁹ Charles Monselet, ‘Mémoires des comédiens’, Évènement (24 July 1880), reprinted in Mermet, Émile, Annuaire de la presse française (Paris, 1881), 884–7Google Scholar. Charles Monselet (1825–1888), French journalist, novelist and poet, parodies the lofty anecdotes in Roger's Carnet by writing the diary entries of a poor, untalented actor from the provinces. Hilary Poriss has explored the importance of singers’ tallies of ovations for their artistic development and repertoire choices; ‘Pauline Viardot, Travelling Virtuosa’, Music & Letters 96 (2015), 185–208.

⁸⁰ Letter from Roger to Pier-Angelo Fiorentino, Berlin, 8 July 1852. Roger, ‘Lettres d'un ténor’, 387–8.

⁸¹ ‘les lorgnettes se dirigèrent toutes, par exemple, sur le chef-d’œuvre de mécanique dont l'infortuné se servait pour faire des gestes. Le faux bras de Roger se levait, s'abaissait; mais cela ressemblait à de la mimique de marionnette sinistre, mue par des ficelles. On ne pouvait conservera aucune illusion; on souffrait, on avait envie de crier: Assez!’ Unsigned press clipping (L'Union, 22 September 1879) from Bibliothèque–Musée de l'Opéra, Dossier d'artiste (Roger). Bénédict Jouvin, however, implied that even after the accident, Roger was still well received in Germany: ‘Gustave Roger’, Le Figaro (14 September 1879).

⁸² To raise money a few months after his death, his family held a sale of his art objects, which included a Rembrandt painting, seventeenth-century furniture and a mirror with thirty-one sculpted horses in its large frame, valued at 20,000 francs. See press clippings (La Liberté, 14 September 1879; Paris journal, 17 December 1879) in Bibliothèque–Musée de l'Opéra, Dossier d'artiste (Roger).

⁸³ Roger sent Fiorentino a press clipping about his performance in La Favorite in Hamburg and asked him to give it to Engel to run in his paper. Roger, ‘Lettres d'un ténor’, 407.

⁸⁴ Roger, Carnet, 348.

⁸⁵ ‘Ce qu'il y a de désolant, quand on lit ces souvenirs de chanteurs célèbres, c'est de voir à quel point ces hommes dont les compositeurs ont absolument besoin pour traduire leur pensée, ont peu la prescience des grandes choses, avec quelle hardiesse ils les méconnaissent, comme ils n'ont soif que du succès immédiat, de leur succès personnel.’ Jullien, ‘Trois ténors éteints’, 452.

⁸⁶ Arthur Pougin, ‘Paris et départements’, Le Ménestrel (30 April 1910).

⁸⁷ On this shift, see Rutherford, Susan, The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815–1930 (Cambridge, 2006), 161–204Google Scholar; Henson, Opera Acts, 1–18; Hilary Poriss, ‘Redefining the Standard: Pauline Viardot and Gluck's Orphée’, and Kimberly White, ‘Setting the Standard: Singers, Theater Practices, and the Opera Canon in the Nineteenth Century’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon, ed. Cormac Newark and William Weber (Oxford, forthcoming).

⁸⁸ Jefferson, Ann, Biography and the Question of Literature in France (Oxford, 2007), 91–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁹ Paul d'Estrée, ‘L'Art musical et ses interprètes depuis deux siècles d'après les mémoires les plus récentes et les documents inédits’, Le Ménestrel (3 March 1901).

⁹⁰ Jacky Bratton, New Readings in Theatre History (Cambridge, 2003), 101. Of course, this does not mean that facts should not be corroborated from different sources; rather, Bratton wishes to encourage scholars to look beyond the details to the larger picture and ask different questions of autobiographies.

⁹¹ Maggie B. Gale, ‘Autobiography, Gender, and Theatre Histories: Spectrums of Reading British Actresses’ Autobiographies from the 1920s and 1930s’, in Theatre and AutoBiography, ed. Grace and Wasserman, 192.

⁹² Bratton, New Readings, 101–2.

⁹³ Bratton, New Readings, 102.

⁹⁴ Smart, Mary Ann, ‘The Lost Voice of Rosine Stoltz’, Cambridge Opera Journal 6 (1994), 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.