Autobiographical Voices: Performing Absence in Singers’ Memoirs

Abstract

This article explores the emergent genre of singers’ autobiographies in late nineteenth-century France. The moment singers took up the pen is telling, as it coincides with their dislodgement in the operatic marketplace from creator and collaborator to interpreter. In their life writings, Gilbert Duprez and Gustave Roger demonstrate a strong preoccupation with revising their public images and the histories that had been written about them. I argue that what critics felt was a flaw – the tenors’ predominant focus on relationships in their autobiographies, rather than on art – reveals how Duprez and Roger sought to reconstruct their artistic identities beyond the voice, locating their most profound contributions in their exchanges and actions within the musical community.