Moliere / Lull / Dumestre - Bourgeois Gentilhomme en - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

This is the story of Phaéton, valiant driver of the Sun's chariot, led here by Vincent Dumestre and Benjamin Lazar, armed with a rich partnership of two decades of Lullyist cooperation. Just like at the time, they will make the Versailles Opera resonate with this production of this flamboyant tragédie lyrique which was first presented in Perm in Russia in 2018. Phaëton is a tragédie en musique in a prologue and five acts by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Philippe Quinault wrote the French libretto after a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It can be read as an allegorical depiction of the punishment awaiting those mortals who dare to raise themselves as high as the InchsunInch (i.e. The Sun King). Phaëton was the first lyric tragedy of Lully and Quinault to receive it's world premiere at the Palace of Versailles, where it was given without stage machinery on or about 6 January 1683. The Paris Opera also performed it at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal (beginning on 27 April), where it was very successful with the general public.

Nearly a century after it's composition, Lully's Persée was recreated in 1770 to mark an exceptional event the inauguration of the Royal Opera House at Versailles Palace, built to celebrate the wedding of the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette. For this unique occasion, three composers (Antoine Dauvergne, Francois Rebel and Bernard de Bury) were commissioned to revise Lully's work and adapt it to the new circumstances and the new venue, which was regarded as absolutely extraordinary in it's time. Lovers of Lully's opera will therefore meet their mythological hero again, now with a richer orchestration and more for the chorus and the ballet dancers to do. There were only two performances in 1770, but they were absolutely sumptuous 95 choristers, 15 soloists, 80 dancers, 100 extras, 80 instrumentalists, five sets and 350 costumes. Listeners can now re-live that historic event thanks to a recording conducted by the leading specialist in this repertory, Hervé Niquet.

In 1670, Molière and Lully presented to the King Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, a sumptuous Comédie-Ballet performed by Molière's Troupe, with musicians conducted by Lully, ballets by Pierre Beauchamp, scenery by Carlo Vigarani and Turkish costumes by the Chevalier d'Arvieux. The work was inspired by the ambassador Soliman Musta Aga-Feraga, whom Louis XIV had just kept waiting for long weeks before receiving him, provoking his exasperation which amused the King and the courtiers' sneer, the whole of Paris mocking the outlandish mores of the envoys of the Great Turk. The idea came to Molière of a plot based on fake Turks, ridiculing a Bourgeois aspiring to nobility thus, a masterpiece was born, with the dazzling Cérémonie Turque, and at the end a sumptuous Ballet des Nations. The magnificent music of this pillar of French theatre is recorded here in it's entirety for the first time by Vincent Dumestre Glory be to Lully and to Molière!