Amadis of Gual

Johann Christian Bach, the only member of his family to have had any career in the opera house, began writing for the stage in Italy, continued in London and Mannherm and ended in Paris. This work is the last of his operas, written in 1779 to a revision of the libretto by Quinault that Lully had set almost a century before. It was not a success; there were only seven performances and it was never revived. One can, I think, see some of the reasons why it failed to please the French audiences at the time of the Gluck/Piccinni controversies, but there is nevertheless some superlative music here which certainly affects our view of J. C. Bach, whom we tend to regard above all as an elegant, galant composer of courtly, Italianate QG symphonies and chamber music.

In the midst of the artistic debate between the German and Italian styles, as the Age of Enlightenment was lighting its final fires during the reign of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Johann Christian Bach was presenting his Amadis de Gaule to Paris. Reduced and revised from a libretto of Quinault for Lully, this operatic work is shot through from one end to the other with the first frissons of the awakening Romanticism.

Following on acclaimed releases of Bellerophon and Phaeton, Christophe Rousset continues his revival of Lully's tragedies lyriques for the Aparte label with Amadis. One of the composer's finest scores, Amadis is a masterpiece of French Baroque music. It was Louis XIV himself who asked Lully and his librettist Quinault to base an opera on Montalvo's Amadis de Gaula. Avoiding the usual mythological subjects gave the composer and librettist an opportunity to expand the scope of the tragedie lyrique genre.