The period of maturity, following Atys of 1676, demonstrates in its writing the concern for greater dramatic effect. It is mirrored during the third period of architectural work which had started in 1678 under Hardouin Mansart. Le Vau’s Italian style terrace is filled in with the Gallery of Mirrors, a prestigious corridor adjoining the King’s and Queen’s appartments. Its decoration, painted by Lebrun in the same vein as the prologues of Lully’s tragedies, celebrates the King’s victories—war against Spain, Aix-La-Chapelle, the conquest of Holland and the capture of Ghent. The work continues with the start of the south wing, completed in 1682, the same year in which Louis XIV makes Versailles the seat of the government and the court. The south wing lodges the host of courtiers and staff at the Sovereign’s service. Persée, Lully’s new opera, performed in July 1682 on the provisional stage at the riding school of the Great Stable, celebrates, with its ambitious and magical decoration, the grandeur of the new extension to the palace.
In January 1685 Roland is performed, followed a month later by the demolition of the grotto of Thetys in order to build the north wing, thus finally establishing the familiar symmetry of Versailles.
Versailles is a show case for performances. Without a theatre worthy of the musical activity, the palace is a permanent site of creativity. Was it not Louis who chose the subject for Psyché and the Amants magnifiques? Did he not suggest Amadis in 1683, Roland in 1684, Armide in 1685? No other place expresses better than Versailles the taste and feeling of an era. The palace has fostered the ascent of music in general, of lyric tragedy in particular.
The lyric tragedy
The difficulty in creating a French opera is not so much the co-ordinating of theatre and music, ballets and machinery, song and chorus as the adaptation of the music to Racine’s idiom and precise articulation so that, through music, the text becomes intelligible. Prior to Lully the question of a total literary, linguistic and musical aesthetic has not been so acutely posed. Lully not only succeeds in this delicate alliance thanks to his librettist Quinault, but he also raises music theatre to the rank of a noble art, an ambition made possible by his status at the Court. Authoritarian to the point of being irascible, he neglects no detail in this project. The form of the lyric tragedy is an introductory overture, then a prologue followed by five acts. Where does it come from and who are its characters?
Lully draws upon several sources. His theatre is a coherent whole made up of diverse elements. The contribution of the classical spoken theatre, as of the tradition of the court ballet is essential. The innovations of Lully and Quinault are the creation of French récitatif, the French overture, the use of choruses, a love of scenic illusion and the enchantment and magic of stage effects. Viewed from both the literary and dramatic angle, classical theatre is the model. Starting from the visual impact of tragedies and machines, of which Corneille’s Andromède (1650) is a remarkable example. Lully places great importance on the mechanics which favour illusion and a hallucinatory state. In Lully’s tragedies the essential element of the marvellous is linked to the greatly enhanced use of machines. This is what distinguishes the theatre of Lully from that of Racine.
The imagination of the decorator contributes to the richness of the spectacle. Like his father Gaspare, Carlo Vigarini (1623-1713) had worked with Lully and Molière at Versailles, in 1664, 1668 and 1674. He collaborates with Lully until 1680, when Jean Bérain, appointed to do the decorations, costumes and machines of Proserpine stages an eruption of Etna. In Phaëton, as well as the final scene of the fall, Bérain astounds the public by portraying Neptune emerging fron the waves. On the other hand tragedy in Lully, more than in Corneille, depicts and expresses the horror of extreme situations—death, tempests, screams, sobs. He assimilates the theatre of Seneca, author of bloody tragedies. Action has a purging virtue. The theatre confirms its cathartic role through the exaltation of extreme feelings.
|
|
|
|