Further tensions were generated as a result of the contrasting expectations of elite and popular audiences and the concomitant aesthetic issues related to writing works intended to function as mass entertainment. Located far from the center of French theatrical activity, the Béziers festival was implicated in the contentious fin-de-siècle debates over cultural decentralization and regional identity and was criticized from the outset for not sufficiently adopting a regionalist mandate of highlighting local history, culture, and traditions. This article, which draws extensively upon unpublished archival material and contemporaneous press reports, examines the origins, challenges, and decline of this unlikely cultural and musical enterprise.

Performances were held in this Mediterranean town's modern, open-air bull-fighting arena and initially featured works inspired by Greek myths that were played in front of audiences that regularly exceeded ten thousand spectators.

Regionalist Frictions in the Bullring Regionalist Frictions in the BullringĪbstract Founded by entrepreneur and mélomane Castelbon de Beauxhostes in 1898, the Festival des Arènes de Béziers was an annual festival of lyric theater that featured important premieres by major French composers, including Camille Saint-Saëns, Gabriel Fauré, Henri Rabaud, and Déodat de Séverac.

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