There are also age-old, immemorial cultural differences at work here.
Much (not all!) French art, for centuries, has prized subtlety & delicacy of touch, simplicity & clarity of utterance, refinement, polish, etc. To artists working within that tradition, the bright-coloured melodies and obvious thrills loved by Transalpine (Italian and German) audiences seem cheap, vulgar, coarse. Contrast the operas of Lully & Rameau with those of Scarlatti & Vivaldi; or those of Massenet & Saint-Saens with those of Verdi & Puccini. Beyond music, think of Racine, Voltaire, Gide; of Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Pierre Bonnard.
Ironically, Cherubini and Spontini (and Lully) were born beyond the Alps; but in France they wrote to please French audiences, and wouldn't have succeeded if they hadn't.
The opera's laws the opera's patrons give,
For composers, who live to please, must please to live.
We in English-speaking countries don't have that artistic tradition, and naturally find it hard to appreciate. To this day, Cherubini & Spontini generally get better reviews in France than they do in our own countries.
If anything, that tradition in France has been strengthened & become all the more entrenched by fierce opposition from a smaller, antithetical French tradition advocating Transalpine values and holding the Mahlerian view that art should be like the world & include everything. Think of Berlioz, Victor Hugo, Delacroix. Think of Messiaen's Des canyons aux étoiles... , recently reviewed in these pages.
Beethoven was an all-encompassing artist, able to reach out and see good in a far greater diversity of traditions than we can. That's part of what makes him Beethoven while we aren't.
Berlioz, by contrast, was a passionately committed partisan for his own individual perspective, always rushing to the barricades to strike down any rival who might impede the career of Hector Berlioz (whether Cherubini or Wagner).
As I said above, I can see and enjoy both points of view, and relish the clash between them. Vive la différence!
Thank you for taking part in the MusicWeb International Forum.
Len Mullenger - Founder of MusicWeb