Overview
Rebecca Harris-Warrick retired in 2021 from Cornell University, where she taught music history for majors and non-majors covering repertoire from the Middle Ages to the present, as well as graduate musicology seminars, first-year writing seminars, and practical courses in early dance. She served for six years as Director of Graduate Studies for the Field of Music (1996-2001) and chaired the Music Department from 2002 to 2005 and from 2006 to 2008.
She brings to her primary specialization in the field of French baroque music an interdisciplinary background in musicology, performance, dance history, and literature. Her research also extends beyond the baroque into later periods of operatic history, particularly in France, and she has prepared critical editions of theatrical works by Gaetano Donizetti and Jean-Baptiste Lully. In addition to her musicological work she has performed as a baroque flutist and studied both renaissance and baroque dance. As a result, much of her scholarly work has been informed by her interests in performance and, conversely, some of her research has been brought into practice on the stage, such as in productions of operas at the Boston Early Music Festival and by Opera Lafayette. At Cornell she organized several performances of fully-staged baroque operas and ballets, all of which brought together both students and professionals: in 2003 Lully’s Carnaval Mascarade (first performed at the Paris Opera in 1675); in 2007 a program entitled “Harlequin’s Capers,” which included the first performance since 1734 of a ballet from the stage of the Théatre Italien in Paris, Jean-Joseph Mouret’s Pygmalion; in 2012, “Les Voyages de l’Amour: Operatic Flights from 18th-Century France,” with works by Clérambault, Campra and Rameau; in 2022 “The Pleasures of the Quarrel: Three Parisian Operatic Hits from the Contested Season of 1753,” a mash-up of works by Mondonville, Orlandini, and Dauvergne, all of which played a role in the infamous “Quarrel of the Buffoons”. (A subtitled video may be found on the Music Department’s YouTube channel.)
Rebecca Harris-Warrick is currently a member of the editorial boards for the Les Oeuvres complétes de Jean-Baptiste Lully and the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, and on the governing board for the Association pour un Centre de Recherche sur les Arts du Spectacle aux XVIIe et XVIIIe Siècles (ACRAS). She has served on the Council of the American Musicological Society (1995-98), the Board of Directors and Editorial Board of the Society of Dance History Scholars (1993-99), and as Associate Editor of the Cambridge Opera Journal (1998-2003). Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1985, 1991), the Mellon Foundation (1989), and the Guggenheim Foundation (2001). She continues to collaborate frequently with scholars in Europe, particularly France.
Research Focus
- Primary specialization in the field of French Baroque music
- Interdisciplinary background in musicology, performance, dance history, and literature
- Her research also extends beyond the Baroque into later periods of operatic history, particularly in France.
- In addition to her musicological work she has performed as a Baroque flutist and studied both Renaissance and Baroque dance.
Publications
Books
Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera: A History. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
- Appendix 3 (online): “Notated choreographies danced at the Opéra (1693-1713).”
Rebecca Harris-Warrick and Carol G. Marsh. Musical Theatre at the Court of Louis XIV: “Le Mariage de la Grosse Cathos”. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Principles of the Harpsichord by Monsieur de Saint Lambert, translated and edited by Rebecca Harris-Warrick. Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Rebecca Harris-Warrick and Bruce Alan Brown, eds. The Grotesque Dancer on the Eighteenth-Century Stage: Gennaro Magri and his World. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. (Author of the Introduction and co-author with Carol G. Marsh of two chapters.) Full book available to download here.
Co-editor, with Jean-Noël Laurenti and Marie-Françoise Bouchon, of the book La Danse française et son rayonnement (1600-1800) : Nouvelles sources, nouvelles perspectives. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2023.
Critical Editions
Critical edition of the opera La Favorite for the Donizetti Critical Edition, Roger Parker and Gabriele Dotto, Coordinating Editors. Milan: Casa Ricordi, 1997.
Critical edition, with James R. Anthony, of the ballet Les Amours Déguisés in Les Oeuvres complètes de Jean-Baptiste Lully, Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 2001.
Member since 1996 of the Editorial Board for Les Oeuvres complètes de Jean-Baptiste Lully (Hildesheim: Olms Verlag); supervising editor of its first volume (2001) and participant in several volumes since then.
Selected Articles
“Ballroom Dancing at the Court of Louis XIV.” Early Music 14/1 (1986), 40-9.
“La Mariée : The History of a French Court Dance.” In Jean-Baptiste Lully and the Music of the French Baroque: Essays in Honor of James R. Anthony. Ed. John Hajdu Heyer. Cambridge University Press, 1989, 239-58.
“A Few Thoughts on Lully's hautbois.” Early Music 18/1 (1990), 97-106.
“Contexts for Choreographies: Notated Dances Set to the Music of J. B. Lully.” In Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), Actes du Colloque/Kongreßbericht, Saint-Germain-en-Laye--Heidelberg 1987. Ed. Jérôme de La Gorce and Herbert Schneider. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1990, 233-55.
“Paris,” sections 1-3 (the operatic history of Paris up until the French Revolution). The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1992. Vol. 3, 855-65.
“From Score into Sound: Questions of Scoring in Lully’s Ballets.” Early Music 20/3 (1993), 354-62.
“The Parisian Sources of Donizetti's French Operas: The Case of La Favorite.” In L'Opera Teatrale di Gaetano Donizetti: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studio 1992. Ed. Francesco Bellotto. Bergamo: Assessorato allo Spettacolo, 1993, 77-92.
“Interpreting Pendulum Markings for French Baroque Dances.” Historical Performance 6/1 (1993), 9-22.
“Magnificence in Motion: Stage Musicians in Lully’s Ballets and Operas.” Cambridge Opera Journal 6/3 (1994), 189-203.
“Recovering the Lullian Divertissement.” In Dance and Music in French Baroque Theatre: Sources and Interpretations. Study Texts No. 3, ed. Sarah McCleave. London: Institute of Advanced Musical Studies, King's College London, 1998, 55-80. Reprinted in Studies in Seventeenth-Century Opera, ed. Beth Glixon. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010, 333-58.
“Editing Lully’s Ballets: Problems and Responses.” Quellenstudien zu Jean-Baptiste Lully. Ed. Jérôme de La Gorce and Herbert Schneider. Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 1999, 23-47.
“The Phrase Structures of Lully’s Dance Music.” In Lully Studies. Ed. John Hajdu Heyer. Cambridge University Press, 2000, 32-56.
“‘Toute danse doit exprimer, peindre...’: Finding the Drama in the Operatic Divertissement.” Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 23 (1999). Ed. Peter Reidemeister. Winterthur, Switzerland: Amadeus Verlag, 2000, 187-210.
“ ‘Reading’ Ballet.” In Performing Verdi. Ed. Alison Latham and Roger Parker. Oxford University Press, 2001.
“Staging Venice.” Cambridge Opera Journal 15/3 (2003), 297-316.
“Lully’s On-Stage Societies.” In Opera and Society in Italy and France from Monteverdi to Bourdieu. Ed. Victoria Johnson, Jane F. Fulcher, and Thomas Ertman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 53-71.
“Ballet.” In Cambridge Companion to 18th-Century Opera. Ed. Anthony R. DelDonna and Pierpaolo Polzonetti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, 99-111.
“Ballet, Pantomime, and the Sung Word in the Operas of Rameau.” In Coll'astuzia, col giudizio: Essays in Honor of Neal Zaslaw. Ed. Cliff Eisen. Ann Arbor: Steglein Publishing, 2009, 31-61.
“Lucia Goes to Paris: A Tale of Three Theaters.” In Stage Music and Cultural Transfer: Paris, 1830-1914. Ed. Annegret Fauser and Mark Everist. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009, 195-227.
“Louis XIV et la danse.” In Le Prince et la musique: Les passions musicales de Louis XIV.” Ed. Jean Duron. Wavre, Belgium: Mardaga, 2009, 117-36.
“Naturalizing Novelty: Italian Opera as Parisian Audiences Saw It in 1729.” In “Virtute et arte” del danzare: Contributi di storia della danza in onore di Barbara Sparti. Ed. Alessandro Piero Pontremoli. Lanuvio, Italy: Aracne Editrice, 2011.
“Reading Roland.” Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, vol. 16, no. 1.
“Comment terminer un opéra?” In Rameau entre Art et Science. Ed. Sylvie Bouissou. Paris: École des Chartes, 2016, 87-101.
With Hubert Hazebroucq, “Do Rameau’s dances ‘impose physical movement’? A collaborative exploration.” In The Operas of Rameau: Genesis, Staging, Reception. Ed. Graham Sadler, Shirley Thompson, and Jonathan Williams. Ashgate Interdisciplinary Essays on Opera. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022, 243-63.
“Dance and Ballet.” In The Cambridge Companion to Seventeenth-Century Opera. Ed. Jacqueline Waeber. Cambridge University Press, 2021, 170-89.
“Le divertissement dans le ballet: frère jumeau ou cousin extravagant du divertissement dans la tragédie en musique?” In Les Métamorphoses du ballet: Histoire et identité d’un genre lyrique (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles). Ed. Alexandre De Craim and Thomas Soury. Château-Gontier: Éditions Aedam Musicae, 2022, 89-120.
With Laura Naudeix, “Ballet masters at work, 1672-1764.” In The Fashioning of French Opera (1672-1791): Identity, Production, Networks. Ed. Barbara Nestola, Benoît Dratwicki, Julien Dubruque, Thomas Leconte. Turnhout, Belgium: Brépols, 2022, 209-220.
“Qui danse, et où, dans un opéra?” In La Danse française et son rayonnement (1600-1800) : Nouvelles sources, nouvelles perspectives. Ed. Marie-Françoise Bouchon, Rebecca Harris-Warrick, Jean-Noël Laurenti. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2023, 323-341.
“Croisements chorégraphiques: opéras à la ville et à la cour au milieu du xviiie siècle.” Bulletin du Centre de recherche du château de Versailles, vol. 26 (2025): L’Opéra de cour en France (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle): Goût, espaces, pratiques.
