Opera dream

Early nineteenth-century France had experienced a short-lived but intense “guitaromanie”, a “guitar mania”. Later, the 1880s and 1890s saw an astonishing craze for the mandolin. The instrument’s popularity had begun with the 1878 Paris Exhibition, during which event Spanish and Italian mandolinists had performed before French audiences to great acclaim. And French music publishers lost no time in providing transcriptions, for a single instrument with piano accompaniment or for several mandolins.

Operettas were the first to be transcribed, followed soon by more serious operatic works, by Berlioz, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Bizet, and others.