Eva Zaïcik

An ancient hero, a dragon, a young goddess: love and glory are at the heart of Lullys first opera, first performed in front of Louis XIV. As in his previous works - divertissements, ballets de cour and comédies- ballets - Lully makes the voices and the orchestra sparkle, multiplying the pieces which stand out and that were appealing to the court. But with the help of the librettist Philippe Quinault, he introduced the dramatic force of French classical tragédie in an exclusively musical work: and here the audience was bewitched by the mythical love stories so sumptuously portrayed.

Allegri’s Miserere, its heartbreaking harmonies, its verses alternately chanted and ornamented, its seraphic voices: sheer Baroque magic. Since its composition in Rome in 1630, the work has constantly been transformed. Le Poème Harmonique approaches the score through the prism of its metamorphoses, the ornaments and transpositions added since the time when Mozart himself transcribed the piece, then jealously guarded by the Vatican, which punished publication of it with anathema.

An ancient hero, a dragon, a young goddess: love and glory are at the heart of Lullys first opera, first performed in front of Louis XIV. As in his previous works - divertissements, ballets de cour and comédies- ballets - Lully makes the voices and the orchestra sparkle, multiplying the pieces which stand out and that were appealing to the court. But with the help of the librettist Philippe Quinault, he introduced the dramatic force of French classical tragédie in an exclusively musical work: and here the audience was bewitched by the mythical love stories so sumptuously portrayed.

Armide was Lully and Quinault's last tragedie lyrique: undoubtedly Quinault's finest dramatic achievement, and the culmination of the tragedie en musique conceived by Lully, who died the year after its creation. Never has language appeared so beautiful and tragic in Lully's music, and the drama of this Christian knight falling in love with the sorceress who refuses to kill him was so deeply felt that it remained on stage for a century! Here, Vincent Dumestre passionately conducts Lully's last masterpiece, whose eponymous character, played by the immense Stephanie d'Oustrac, never ceases to bewitch us.

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 acquaintance 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.