The difficulties that building an opera theatre at Versailles were a consequence of this situation. Although the foundations (at the far end of the North wing) for a ballet and opera theatre had started in 1688, war and the difficulties at the end of the reign ensured that the project would not be completed. Conditions for such spectacles at Versailles therefore remain unusual. When performances cannot take place in the open air during the summer months—outside the palace or in the gardens themselves—the King accepts a modest little theatre or salle des comèdies. Versailles is above all a place for the increasingly pleasurable annual stays of the young monarch. From October 1663 Louis and his retinue settle themselves at the palace for the hunting season. Molière’s players present his plays, Le Prince Jaloux, L’École des Maris, Les Fâcheux, L’Impromptu de Versailles as well as Corneille’s Sertorius. It is a place for holidays, hunting and theatre, where music has not yet found its niche. Here also the King and Mademoiselle de la Vallière follow their amorous pursuits.

Lully and Molière

Between 1662 and 1663 the wings of the communal services (stables and kitchens) are rebuilt. Teams of workers are busy on the first orangerie, the beginning of the gardens planned in accordance with Le Nôtre´s drawings. Versailles becomes a vast worksite under constant transformation. Lully and Molière, who first met in 1661 for the comedy Les Fâcheux, performed at Vaux, begin a fruitful co-operation. For Les plaisirs de l’Ile Enchantée, the first grand divertissement at Versailles, performed during the summer of 1664, they create Le Mariage forcé and La Princesse d’Elide. The French court dances, laughs and dreams thanks to “the two great Baptistes.” Every play has associations with the park, a suitable setting for love and jollyfication, in which the subject secretly alludes to the beloved, Mademoiselle de La Vallière. She who had the year before inspired the first Versaillesque escapade of the King. Magic reigns supreme. Carlo Vigarani creates the sets for a magnificent “opera of chivalry” in which Roger and the knights are prisoners of the charms of the beautiful Alcina. Thereafter Molière and Lully conceive all the royal entertainment. 1665 sees L’Amour médecin. At the same time, Lully produces the King’s ballets, choreographed by Beauchamps and for which Vigarani contributes scenic effects and the machinery—Ballet de la Naissance de Venus (January 1665, Palais-Royal), Ballet de Créquy ou le triomphe de Bacchus dans les Indes (1666). After a period of court mourning for the death of Anne of Austria, Lully creates at Saint-Germain, the Ballet des Muses. This half ballet, half pastoral comedy-ballet, is a new genre introduced in 1654 by de Beys and La Guerre.