Zémire et Azor La Belle et la Bête sur la scène lyrique

Beauty and the Beast inspired Zémire et Azor, an opéra-­comique performed at the court in Fontainebleau and then in Paris. Grétry wrote the music, Marmontel the libretto. It follows the ­tale’s plot but the moral aspects are stressed rather than the ­story’s magical and unsettling ones ; the ­monster’s attraction and the mystery of the metamorphoses are softened. If there is a loss of wonder as one passes from the tale to ­Marmontel’s libretto, the music has its own magic.