Ercole amante (Hercules in Love, French: Hercule amoureux) is an opera in a prologue and five acts by Francesco Cavalli. Its Italian libretto is by Francesco Buti, based on Sophocles' The Trachiniae and on the ninth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses . The first performance took place on 7 February 1662 in the Salle des Machines of the Tuileries in Paris.
Cardinal Mazarin commissioned the opera to celebrate the June 1660 wedding of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain, but preparations for the staging were on a grand scale and caused a twenty-month delay, irritating the composer. Worse for him, eighteen ballet entrées and intermèdes by Isaac de Benserade with music Jean-Baptiste Lully were inserted, mostly at the ends of Cavalli's acts, to cater to French taste. These were not merely diversions but also served to further the plot, [1] and in the event they met with greater approval from the audience than Ercole amante itself, helping boost Lully's position at the French court.
After its premiere the opera was given another seven times: 14 and 18 February; 18, 22, 25, and 29 April; and 6 May. The theatre was built specifically to present the opera, and if the construction costs of the theatre are included, it was the most expensive of the French court's theatrical productions mounted up to that point. [2]
| Role | Voice type | Premiere cast, 7 February 1662 [3] |
|---|---|---|
| Cinzia, prologue | soprano castrato | Giuseppe Meloni |
| Ercole | bass | Vincenzo Piccini |
| Deianira, Ercole's wife | soprano | Leonora Ballarini |
| Hyllo, son of Ercole | tenor | Giuseppe Agostino Poncelli |
| Iole | soprano | Anna Bergerotti |
| La bellezza | soprano | Anne de La Barre |
| Giunone | soprano castrato (en travesti) | Antonio Rivani |
| Mercurio | tenor | Signor Tagliavacca |
| Nettuno | bass | Paolo Bordigone [4] |
| Venere | soprano | Hylaire Dupuis |
| Tevere | bass | Signor Beauchamps |
| Shade of Eutyro | bass | Paolo Bordigone |
| Licco | contralto castrato | Giuseppe Chiarini |
| Shade of King Laomedonte | tenor | Signor Vulpio |
| Shade of Bussiride | contralto castrato | Signor Zanetto |
| Shade of Queen Clerica | soprano | Anne de La Barre |
| Pasithea | soprano | Signora Bordoni |
| Sonno | silent actor | |
| Paggio | soprano | |
Louise is a “musical novel,” or “roman musical,” in four acts and five scenes by Gustave Charpentier. It can be considered an opera. The composer himself penned the French libretto with contributions from Saint-Pol-Roux, a symbolist poet and the inspiration of the surrealists. It is an atmospheric story of working-class life in Paris, with the city itself invoked along the way: young Louise, a seamstress living with her parents, loves Julien, an artist; she desires freedom, associated in her mind with him and the city. Musically the work is verismo, it marks the beginning of naturalism in French opera.
Cendrillon (Cinderella) is an opera—described as a "fairy tale"—in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Caïn based on Perrault's 1698 version of the Cinderella fairy tale.
Christophe Rousset is a French harpsichordist and conductor, who specializes in the performance of Baroque music on period instruments. He is also a musicologist, particularly of opera and European music of the 17th and 18th centuries and is the founder of the French music ensemble Les Talens Lyriques.
Les Arts Florissants is a Baroque musical ensemble in residence at the Théâtre de Caen in Caen, France. The organization was founded by conductor William Christie in 1979. The ensemble derives its name from the 1685 opera Les Arts florissants by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The organization consists of a chamber orchestra of period instruments and a small vocal ensemble. Current notable members include soprano Danielle de Niese and tenor Paul Agnew, who has served as assistant conductor since 2007. Jonathan Cohen is also on the conducting staff; Christie remains the organization's Artistic Director.
French opera is both the art of opera in France and opera in the French language. It is one of Europe's most important operatic traditions, containing works by composers of the stature of Rameau, Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc and Messiaen. Many foreign-born composers have played a part in the French tradition, including Lully, Gluck, Salieri, Cherubini, Spontini, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Offenbach.
Scylla et Glaucus is a tragédie en musique with a prologue and five acts, the only surviving full-length opera by Jean-Marie Leclair. The French-language libretto by d'Albaret is based on Ovid's Metamorphoses, books 10, 13 and 14. It was first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris on 4 October 1746.
The French musical ensemble Les Talens Lyriques was created in 1991 in Paris, France, by the harpsichordist and orchestral conductor Christophe Rousset. This instrumental and vocal formation derives its name from the subtitle of Les fêtes d'Hébé (1739) an opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau.
Anna Renzi was an Italian soprano renowned for her acting ability as well as her voice, who has been described as the first diva in the history of opera.
Il Xerse is an opera by Francesco Cavalli about Xerxes I. The libretto was written by Nicolò Minato, and was later set by both Giovanni Bononcini (1694, Xerse and George Frideric Handel. Minato's plot outline is loosely based on Book 7 of Herodotus's Histories. The opera, Cavalli's twenty-first, consisting of a prologue and three acts, was first performed at Venice on 12 January 1655, at the Teatro SS. Giovanni e Paolo. It was dedicated to the Ferrarese nobleman Marchese Cornelio Bentivoglio.
Psyché is a five-act tragicomédie et ballet, originally written as a prose text by Molière and versified in collaboration with Pierre Corneille and Philippe Quinault, with music composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully in 1671 and by Marc-Antoine Charpentier in 1684. The plot is based on the story of Cupid and Psyche in The Golden Ass, written in the 2nd century by Apuleius. It was first performed on 17 January 1671 before the royal court of Louis XIV at the Théâtre des Tuileries, with ballets by Pierre Beauchamps, Anthoine des Brosses, and Nicolas Delorge, and spectacular scenery and special effects designed by Carlo Vigarani.
Le carnaval de Venise is a comédie-lyrique in a prologue and three acts by the French composer André Campra. The libretto is by Jean-François Regnard. It was first performed on 20 January 1699 by the Académie royale de musique in the Salle du Palais-Royal in Paris. Campra dedicated the work to Louis, Grand Dauphin, heir apparent to the French throne, who enjoyed it and had it staged again in February 1711, shortly before his death. In one critic's assessment: "In a magisterial act of conflation, this composer blends the styles of Lully, Lalande, Monteverdi and Cavalli and manages also to foreshadow Handel and Rameau. He dreamt up a multi-hued score, capable of recapturing in Paris both the carnival spirit in general and that of the legendary Venice in particular."
Les festes vénitiennes, also spelled Les fêtes vénitiennes, is an opéra-ballet by the French composer André Campra. It consists of a prologue and three entrées. All versions of the libretto are by Antoine Danchet. It was first performed on 17 June 1710 by the Académie royale de musique in the Salle du Palais-Royal in Paris. According to the usage of the time, it was originally simply billed as a "ballet", but it is one of the most important and successful instances of the new genre later classified by scholars as opéra-ballet, which had become popular in Paris around the end of the 17th century.
Anne Chabanceau de La Barre (1628–1688) was a French soprano of the baroque era.
Jean-Baptiste Lully was an Italian naturalized French composer, guitarist, violinist, and dancer who is considered a master of the French Baroque music style. Best known for his operas, he spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France and became a French subject in 1661. He was a close friend of the playwright Molière, with whom he collaborated on numerous comédie-ballets, including L'Amour médecin, George Dandin ou le Mari confondu, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Psyché and his best known work, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.
Les Élémens, or Ballet des élémens, is an opéra-ballet by the French composers André Cardinal Destouches and Michel Richard Delalande. It has a prologue and four entrées. The libretto was written by Pierre-Charles Roy. It was styled "the third ballet danced by the king" because the 11-year-old Louis XV performed dance divertissements in it, as he had already done in the previous ballets, L'inconnu by various authors, and Les folies de Cardenio by Delalande, both staged at court in 1720.
Jean Dun, also known as Jean Dun "père", was a French opera singer active at the Paris Opéra where he created many bass roles during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. He was also the bass soloist at the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis in Paris during the time Charpentier was the Master of Music there. His voice is described in contemporary sources as basse-taille, which is closer in quality to that of a modern baritone.
The Théâtre des Tuileries was a theatre in the former Tuileries Palace in Paris. It was also known as the Salle des Machines, because of its elaborate stage machinery, designed by the Italian theatre architects Gaspare Vigarani and his two sons, Carlo and Lodovico. Constructed in 1659–1661, it was originally intended for spectacular productions mounted by the court of the young Louis XIV, but in 1763 the theatre was greatly reduced in size and used in turn by the Paris Opera, the Comédie-Française, and the Théâtre de Monsieur. In 1808 Napoleon had a new theatre/ballroom built to the designs of the architects Percier and Fontaine. The Tuileries Palace and the theatre were destroyed by fire on 24 May 1871, during the Paris Commune.
Jean-Louis Martinoty was a French writer and an opera director.. Renowned for his stagings of baroque operas in the eighties, he was also General Administrator of the Paris Opera (1986–1989).
Francesco Buti was an Italian poet and librettist.
Notes
Sources
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)| Operas |
|
|---|---|
| Related | |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
