The Genre of Opera and the Disaffection of French Composers in favor of the emerging Genres: the case of Radio in the Thirties

Despite the huge contribution of European composers at the beginning of the 20 th century to the genre of opera, one can't deny the fact that, apart from Germanic countries, the decline and erosion of the genre started in the twenties. In the wake of the genres recently inspired from the naturalistic and symbolist theatre, new means of musical dramaturgy however emerge owing to new initiatives and experiences born from the voluntarism of some pioneer musicians. More out of conviction than financial interest, those involved themselves in the kind of collaboration initiated by new media and cultural expressions. This approach even overtook the Germanic boarders, since Dmitri Shostakovich composed the original soundtrack of the silent movie The new Babylon by movie makers Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg in 1928-1929. One can therefore wonder about the circumstances in which the radio, movie and theatre industries can have triggered the composers' curiosity in order to counterbalance the then obstructed sector of the opera. As far as Radio in the thirties is concerned, some tools pride us with a few answers. In the frame of a thesis of musicology dealing with the broadcasting of music in France in the thirties, we have, on the one hand, built samplings of the musical programs, and on the other hand, monitored some 800 specialized press clippings in which the protagonists of the music and broadcasting sectors, musicians and mediators, expressed themselves on the ties between these two means of expression. As for the programs as such (5 360 sequences corresponding to 3 350 hours of broadcasting), we have extracted the programs of two representative stations of the double public / private network: Radio-Paris, the great cultural station which became " Le Poste national " in 1933, and Radio-LL, which was to be followed by the no less famous prewar station of Radio-Cité. Based our analysis on the data provided, we are going to detect, at first, what elements drew the composers of operas toward this medium; then, we'll be surveying the statements on the issue of a " new art " ; the " [specifically] broadcasting art " ; and we'll finally screen the proportion and the nature, in our samplings, of the broadcasting of some of the masters of the lyrical genre