For nearly 80 years, Louis XIV (1638–1715)—who was the absolute ruler of France from 1661 until his death—dominated French culture as a means of shoring up his control of a growing, yet fragile, empire. As a child, he learned the importance of the arts in maintaining an image of royal authority. Louis XIV first established his reputation as the “Sun King” on the ballet stage as a boy, dancing the role of Apollo, god of the sun, in the Ballet du roy, des festes de Bacchus (1651). After seeing Francesco Cavalli’s Italian opera Ercole amante in 1662, produced in honor of his wedding, Louis XIV realized the power that operatic spectacle could have in keeping cultural and political control both in Europe and abroad—as long as it embraced French cultural values.
Thus, with the eventual appointment of violinist and dancer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687) as the head of the Académie Royale de Musique, Louis XIV ensured that all musical spectacles produced in France would endorse his reign and political agenda. From 1669 until his death in 1687, Lully and librettist Philippe Quinault became the gatekeepers of the tragédie en musique. This “tragedy in music” is now generally classified as opera, but in their time, these works set themselves apart from the operas being produced elsewhere in Europe. Lully’s tragédie en musique imposed musical and theatrical conventions that were expected, if not required, of the genre. In borrowing from a long tradition of the spoken theater in France, these tragedies were set as five acts sung through in the French language. The tragédie en musique also included a prologue glorifying Louis XIV. The plots—drawn largely from classical mythology—centered on a male hero as a symbolic stand-in for the king. Musically, Lully’s tragédies en musique emphasized declamatory singing over florid arias, which were associated with Italian music (and which Louis XIV deemed distasteful). Every act included a divertissement, a spectacular scene that brought together solo and choral singing, instrumental music, and most importantly, dance—the art form that Louis XIV embraced as a young boy. Lully composed 13 tragédies en musique between 1673 and his death in 1687, establishing French musical and theatrical traditions that would both influence and haunt composers long after the deaths of both composer and king.
This evening’s program offers selections that illustrate Lully’s musical traditions, as well as the ways in which composers broke with those traditions as means of distinguishing themselves and bringing new dramatic depth to operas. Even 18th-century French audiences still expected to hear tragédies that conformed to Lully’s musical style. Both Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) and Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704) attempted to bring elements of fashionable Italian music into their works, often resulting in criticism. Although both found some success, the decades-long battle to push the tragédie en musique beyond established musical traditions demonstrates the long shadow that both Lully and Louis XIV cast on the history of French opera.
The program opens with excerpts from one of the first tragédies en musique after Lully’s death in 1687. Médée premiered in 1693 at the Paris Opéra to personal compliments from Louis XIV and some acclaim from the Parisian newspaper Le mercure galant. Many musicians and intellectuals, however, criticized Charpentier for creating a spectacle that relied too heavily on Italianate musical devices (such as excessive dissonance), an unnatural setting of the French language, and a plot that emphasized the plight of the tragic heroine over the male hero.
Librettist Thomas Corneille sketched a complex portrait of the sorceress Médée (Medea), who is left humiliated by a cheating husband. At the core of the opera is Médée’s emotional journey from heartbreak to revenge. Charpentier illustrates this through gloriously dissonant music and lyrical airs, inspired by his compositional training in Rome. Despite his Italian education, the overture to Médée shows that Charpentier was equally as fluent in French musical style. Drawing upon Lully’s established conventions, the overture includes two parts: first, a slower-paced, duple-meter opening highlighting regal, march-like rhythms; and second, a quicker, imitative section in which the strings pass a melody between them.
In Act I, we find Médée and Jason, her husband, in the city of Corinth, after she has helped him capture the golden fleece. They now have children together. Médée reveals in the opening scene that she suspects Jason is in love with another. When she confronts him, he denies it—a lie that will result in death and destruction by the end of the opera. In these opening scenes, speech-like singing (recitative) highlights the proper declamation of the French language. Yet as a testament to his Italian inspiration, the melodies explore wide vocal ranges and transition seamlessly from recitative to airs and duets that revel in vocal lyricism and instrumental drama. In these opening scenes, Médée’s inner struggle between love and rage is on full musical display.
In Act III, “Quel prix de mon amour” is both the highlight and the central climax of the opera, as Médée expresses her fragile emotional state. Charpentier’s air is fully accompanied by five-part strings, and the delightfully dissonant ninth chords that highlight his Italian training underscore Médée’s unresolved feelings. Listen for the shift between major and minor at cadences, another indication of the sorceress’s inner conflict.
Atys (1676) was one of Lully’s early and most popular tragédies en musique for the Académie. Its popularity then and now likely stems from the deep tragedy of the plot as well as the emotional tenderness of its music, especially in the famous sommeil (“sleep”) scene of Act III. In Atys, the titular hero harbors a secret love for the water nymph Sangaride, who is engaged to be married to Celenus. Sangaride returns his affection, but knows she risks the fury of the goddess Cybèle, who also loves Atys. In Act III, Cybèle decides she will reveal her love for him in a dream. We hear excerpts from this divertissement, in which the Pleasant Dreams and the Baleful Dreams sing and dance for Atys, depicting the pleasures and dangers of the goddess’s love. The instruments that accompany this scene include flutes or recorders, used often in French Baroque music to signify sleeping.
In Act IV, Atys and Sangaride quarrel; Atys tries to protect Sangaride from Cybèle’s fury by urging her to marry Celenus, and Sangaride accuses him of no longer loving her. The scene opens with a tender instrumental refrain, followed by charged declamatory recitative between the lovers as they work through their heightened emotions and reconcile. It ends with a tender duet between the two, in which the vocal melodies co-mingle, providing musical tension and resolution. These excerpts demonstrate Lully’s best dramatic writing as the characters vacillate between a wide variety of emotional states. Unlike Italian operas, in which characters sang arias focused solely on one or two emotions, the tragédie en musique offered a more organic display of human expression.
This evening’s concert ends with selections from a number of musical-dramatic works by Jean-Philippe Rameau. Known more for his music theory treatises and keyboard works, Rameau did not compose an opera until 1733, when he was 50 years old. That opera, Hippolyte et Aricie, sparked considerable debate due to musical difficulty and the perception that it broke with too many Lullian conventions for the tragédie en musique. Nevertheless, Rameau continued composing operas such as Platée (technically a comédie lyrique) as well as opéra-ballets like Pigmalion (1748), Les Fêtes d’Hébé (1739), and Les Indes galantes (1735). We hear excerpts from these works tonight, all of which showcase the ingenuity of Rameau’s musical style and dramatic intuition.
Les Fêtes d’Hébé, for example, focuses on the arts as a central plot point. Drawing from Greek mythology, each act showcases poetry, music, and dance. In Act II, the great singer Tyrtée must defeat the enemy’s army with the power of music in order to wed the princess Iphise. Rameau’s vocal writing for Iphise is no less magical than Tyrtée’s voice. Her airs in scenes 1 and 4 sound reminiscent of the interiority of Charpentier’s airs for Médée and include creative instrumental scoring (including winds), a liberal use of dissonance, and distinctly lyrical recitative that often privileges melody over proper textual declamation. This opéra-ballet was one of Rameau’s well-received works, garnering 71 performances in its first run.
Similarly popular was Les Indes galantes, which has also seen successful modern revivals around the world. Rather than retelling a classical myth, this opéra-ballet is set in far-flung, exotic lands like the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and the New World. We hear excerpts from the New World act tonight, in which Spanish and French conquerors arrive on the shores of North America to make peace with the Native Americans. Zima, the daughter of the chief, refuses the hands of both European conquerors in favor of Adario, a warrior in her father’s tribe. The program closes with the famous “Danse des Sauvages,” a rondeau with a memorable and recognizable refrain, followed by the celebratory duet-chorus sung over the rondeau melody.
More than 70 years separate the earliest work from the latest on this evening’s program. William Christie and Les Arts Florissants demonstrate once again the simultaneous musical variety of operatic works in France as well as the musical legacies and traditions that tie it all together.
—Alison DeSimone