Jean-Baptiste Lully (jan 1, 1632 – jan 1, 1687)

Description:

A transplanted Italian who served King Louis XIV to produce what came to be called tragedie lyrique (lyric tragedy). French opera was limited to the court, reflecting the absolute power fo teh king. These operas featured elaborate court ballets, as in Lully's Atys.

The musical style cultivated in France during the seventeenth century was quite distinct from what developed in Italy; indeed, the two countries in some respects came to represent contrasting poles.

Nowhere else in Europe had operas become classics in this way; nor had any other composer of operas been exalted into a symbol not only of royal taste but of royal authority as well.

Opera had had a hard time getting started in France, in part because it had to be accepted by its ruling aristocracy before it could succeed as art. Like their English counterparts, wo also possessed a glorious tradition of spoken theater (as the Italians did not). French aristocrats had difficulty taking seriously what the Italians called "dramma per musica". To their minds, the art of music and the art of drama simply did not mix, and the combination risked being a threat to reason.

French opera had to glorify its kind but also be high status....It was not easy to reconcile the claims of court pageantry with those of dramatic seriousness. Only a very special genius could bring it off--Giovanni Battista Lulli. He was brought to France at age 13, and made friends with the teenage King.

A musical sun king, the absolute autocrat of French music, which he recreated in his own image...His style did not merely define an art form, it defined a national identity.

The ultimate theatrical representation of power, the Lullian tragedie lyrique, offered a sumptuously outfitted metaphor for the authority of the court. The monumental mythological and heroic-historical plots, some chosen by the king himself, celebrated universal order and the supremacy of divine or divinely appointed rulers. Sacrificial themse predominated, as in Lully's Alceste, his successful second tragtedie lyrique. It was adapted from Euripides'Greek tragedy by Philippe Quinault, a court poet who became Lully's principal Librettist.

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