These sequences are certainly atmospheric. But the atmosphere is one generated by the characters, not one that descends from without. That is also true of the atmosphere in Act 3, where it is compounded of declarations of freedom and sexual intoxication. And of avoidance. The intimate conversation that follows “Depuis le jour” is not going very well. After Louise’s ecstatic proclamations of happiness (rather more convincing than Father’s in Act 1), Louise talks of the life she has escaped, of the girls in the atelier with whom she felt nothing in common, and of the scene at home, where Mother cuffed her about and Father did nothing to stop her. Julien is of course sympathetic, but also threatened by the part of Louise that has not entirely thrown off her parents. He begins to mock them, to accuse them of prejudice and selfishness (“égoisme,” and I cannot help recalling the three “Egoisms” of Iris, with their confessions and self-justifications), and finally calls the Father’s “an egoism even blinder than the others.” At which Louise signals displeasure and withdrawal. The lovers are at their first moment of alienation. But fortunately, Julien has the romance of The City to help him out of the ugly little ditch he’s dug. Without Paris, Louise wouldn’t be Louise, and without Louise, Paris wouldn’t be Paris! She’s swept up in an instant, up there at the top of the Butte, with the lights  coming on below. They actually kneel and pray to The City, as to a patron saint, for protection, and as they sing out their freedom and swear their vows of “Toujours!“, The City answers, “Libre!“, in voices that are generated by two young people who sense the hum, and need to believe. It is a great, transcendent effect, this Apotheosis of Light, born of a religion that to Louise and Julien seems new, but is at least as old as Ahura-Mazda. We could even say it’s an Inno al sole, as in Iris (two years earlier), or a migration of souls toward The Light, as in, sure enough, Pelléas et Mélisande (two years later, with, sure enough, Mary Garden in one of her most famous assumptions).

Many operas devote significant stage time to the life that surrounds the central story, and in some these scenes actually draw our attention away from the story, in a way that threatens to lose the name of action. Such scenes invite cutting. But in Louise, there is not much point in trying to distinguish between action scenes and genre scenes. The incidental becomes central, “atmosphere” is the action; plot and character are bonded with the “genre” life in an almost unique way. In Act 2, the protagonists assume background positions, and their plot barely inches forward in the swirl of life around it. The first scene is given over to the life of the streets, and as the tasks and calls of vendors and peddlers build into a symphony of sounds and sights, Julien joins in with his paean, “Ah, chanson de Paris!“, in it and in a sense of it, but in another sense not—he’s a bard, not a beggar, and his song soars above theirs. Yet the scene ends with the fading calls of the Old Clothes Man and the distant cries of the Bird-Food Vendor and the Artichoke Vendor—a magical moment, as the feel of The City reigns. In Scene Two, Louise is almost lost to us as the sewing and cutting and sizing moves along, the girls chattering of matters of importance to each in her own life, but of none to Louise, or us, or in the scheme of things. Julien is heard with his serenade, but from without, and to decreasing effect. The act ends with the girls’ laughter at the sight (not shared with us) of Louise going off with her serenader.