Academic literature on the topic 'Opera royal (Versailles, France)'

Philippe Hersant (b. 1948 in Rome, graduated Paris Conservatoire, studied with André Jolivet), has been working with the French national radio station France-Musique since 1973 and has received many honours as composer in France. In February 2004 Radio France presented a ‘retrospective’ of his prolific output as well as the première of his Violin Concerto, a Radio France commission. His new opera, Le Maine Noir, based on Anton Chekov's story, will be premièred in May 2005.

Nowadays, Versailles is mainly a tourist attraction, which draws 8.1 million visitors per year (figure 2018, Versailles Annual Activity Report). However, it was built in the second half of the 17th century to serve as the centre of the French monarchy and exemplifies a symbolic vision of the ideal monarchy, according to Louis XIV. The Hall of Mirrors is the focal point of the political representation displaying the French wealth and power of the Grand Siècle. The Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678) is the main subject of the historical decoration, painted by Charles Le Brun. The Dutch Republic is an essential part of the political theory depicted here, and serves as a counter-example to the idealised absolute monarchy embodied by the Sun King himself. Hence, the small Dutch Republic, then in its heyday, is a crucial partner to France in this elegant albeit conflictual pas de deux. The manner of portraying the Republic is significant for the understanding of the royal credo of Louis’s France, and emphasises the essential role of the Dutch Republic in 17th-century Europe.

Little by little we are building up a reliable picture of what a seventeenth-century Parisian theatre looked like. In Theatre Research International we published an important article by Graham Barlow's on the Hôtel de Bourgogne in our first volume, and we return to the subject with the eye-opening reconstruction of the Palais Royal by Christa Williford in this, our last issue. In the intervening twenty-five years we have published articles on the problem of law and order in the auditorium, on actors and acting in seventeenth and eighteenth-century France; on the interaction between tragedy and the emerging opera, on theory, on dramatic literature, on the morality of actors and actresses, even on publicity; but nothing, specifically, on the identity of the spectator. And without a clearer impression of who patronized the Parisian theatres, we are in danger of missing important clues, not only concerning the theatrical performance, but also in our reading of the dramatic text—which will inform our theatrical decisions.

Gaspare Vigarani, the Italian architect and set designer, was hired in 1659 to build a new theatre in the Tuileries Palace for the festivities celebrating Louis XIV's marriage in 1660. This theatre, the ill-fated albeit magnificent Salle des Machines, was not completed in time for the wedding celebration. It opened in February 1662 with a production of Cavalli's opera Ercole amante. His sons Carlo and Ludovico had assisted Vigarani in creating the scenery and machinery for this production. In 1663, Carlo was invited back to France to supervise royal entertainments, a function he exercised until 1680. In 1673, he joined the composer Lully at the newly created Académie royale de musique, where he designed scenery until 1680. Jean Berain, who was named to the post of “dessinateur de la chambre et du cabinet du Roi” in 1674, had assisted Vigarani early in his career and designed costumes for Lully's operas. He succeeded Vigarani as set designer at the Opera in 1680, a post he would hold until 1710.

While receiving remarkable animals as presents was a common practice among European monarchs, the rhinoceros of Louis XV (Rhinoceros unicornis) became one of the most famous. The live male Indian rhinoceros was a gift to the King from Jean-Baptiste Chevalier, French governor of Chandannagar in West Bengal. It left Calcutta on 22 December 1769, and arrived in the port of Lorient, Brittany, six months later on 11 June 1770. From there it was transported to the royal menagerie in Versailles, which had been built in response to increasing interest in zoology and Louis XIV's passion for the exotic, in 1664. When the rhinoceros died in 1793, having been in captivity in France for more than 20 years, its skeleton and stuffed hide were preserved and have been held since then in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris. Here it remains on exhibition as an almost three-hundred year old relic of R. unicornis, an invaluable source for museum studies and the history of taxidermy. Why the original horn of this rhinoceros was replaced by a much longer one, and why, in turn, this was replaced by a short one is discussed.

Signed on 28 June 1919 in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles, this peace treaty established a new political order in Europe. Poland gained the Poznań lands, excluding Wschowa, Babimost, Międzyrzecz and Skwierzyna, and a larger part of the Royal Prussia (a total of 45 463 km2 and a little over three million inhabitants). Determining Polish borders was a process largely affected by the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, who was reluctant in his attitude towards Poland. He opposed any solution that would increase the role of France in Europe. The final shape of the borders was to be a task of the Allied and Associated Powers. After a heated debate, the Legislative Sejm of Poland ratified a peace treaty with Germany on 31 July 1919. It took effect on 10 January 1920. The peace treaty also arranged a plebiscite in parts of Eastern and Western Prussia, which was to determine the Polish or German affiliation of Warmia, Masuria and Powiśle. Only after that event the Boundary Commission began its delimitation works. The results of the plebiscite were unfavourable for Poland as it gained only small territories. The commission in the field focused on establishing the borders in the light of the peace treaty, so along the former German-Russian border until the Vistula river and then along it up to the Free City of Danzig.

The ‘notice préliminaire’ to L.-H. Lecomte's unfinished Histoire des théâtres de Paris includes a list of eighteen major fires occurring between 1789 and 1900, each of which resulted in the total destruction of a theatre. The date of each disaster is given, as also the date at which the theatre was rebuilt, either on the same site or in a new location. But beyond these brief particulars, Lecomte gives little information on the circumstances and none at all on the probable causes of each catastrophe and the precautions taken subsequently to avert a recurrence. It is the purpose of this paper to flesh out the bare bones of Lecomte's statistics, and to extend the picture to embrace similar disasters befalling provincial playhouses in France over the same period. There had of course been spectacular fires before the Revolution at Paris theatres, notably that which destroyed the opera house located in the Palais-Royal on 6 April 1763 (incidentally severely damaging the palace itself), although, since it occurred during the Easter break, the theatre was fortunately empty at the time. The Opera was eventually rehoused on the same site, but on 8 June 1781 the building once more went up in flames and was reduced to a pile of smouldering rubble. Again there were no victims among the spectators, since it was only when they had left after the evening's performance that the fire broke out; but many of the dancers were still changing into their outdoor clothes at the time and two of them failed to follow the example of the others and make their escape across the roof and down to the street. A total of a dozen or fifteen people perished as a result of this fire, including one elderly woman living in the Cour des Fontaines who died of shock at witnessing the fearsome spectacle.

A court in exile: the Stuarts in France, 1689–1718. By Edward Corp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xvi+386. ISBN 0-521-58462-0. £55.00.Vienna and Versailles: the courts of Europe's dynastic rivals, 1550–1780. By Jeroen Duindam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xi+349. ISBN 0-521-82262-9. £60.00.Intrigue and treason: the Tudor court, 1547–1558. By David Loades. Harlow: Pearson, 2004. Pp. x+326. ISBN 0-582-77226-5. £19.99.Queenship in Europe, 1660–1815: the role of the consort. Edited by Clarissa Campbell Orr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xvii+419. ISBN 0-521-81422-7. £60.00.Court culture in Dresden: from Renaissance to Baroque. By Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002. Pp. xv+310. ISBN 0-333-98448-X. £47.50.Over the last three decades, the royal or princely court has become an established feature of the historiographical landscape of early modern Europe. The subject of a forest of monographs and theses, the theme of a plethora of university undergraduate courses, it has even gained an Anglo-American academic society (and accompanying journal) dedicated to ‘court studies’. While the first wave of Anglophone court historians, writing in the 1970s and 1980s, considered it necessary to state explicitly, as David Starkey did in his introduction to the seminal The English court, that the study of the early modern court was a legitimate historical activity, such a stance is no longer necessary. Indeed, few political historians would now omit the court from their narratives, even if their principal focus was directed elsewhere. In The English court, Starkey presented his enterprise, and that of his co-contributors, as part of a broader process of historical revisionism. But, by the late 1990s, court studies had itself become subject to its own internal forces of revisionism. The books reviewed here not only illustrate the diversity of projects undertaken by scholars of the court; they also critique the interpretations and approaches of an earlier generation of court historians.

Cette thèse analyse la participation de la haute noblesse au cérémonial royal dans ses diverses manifestations aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Les courtisans, spectateurs et acteurs de la représentation monarchique, sont au cœur d'un processus d'évolution du cérémonial délaissant en partie les grands rituels, pour développer des manifestations plus quotidiennes s'étendant à la famille royale dont les naissances, mariages et obsèques deviennent des évènements ritualisés et s'ancrant dans une étiquette de cour complexe codifiant étroitement les relations sociales. A partir de 1682, la vie aulique s'inscrit dans un monde clos. Pour la haute noblesse, loger à la cour, servir dans la Maison du roi sont autant de critères de définition et de légitimation permettant de vivre dans la commensalité du roi, d'avoir une fonction à la cour, d'organiser le cérémonial. Enfin, la vie aulique consacre le triomphe des apparences définissant l'identité sociale et entraînant une intense compétition pour le prestige.

Quoique etant une realite historique et sociale, la fete de cour louis quatorzienne est desormais uniquement reperable par la litterature qu'elle a suscitee. Celle-ci est par ailleurs revelatrice des choix esthetiques d'un pouvoir qui concoit les fetes, particulierement celles offertes a versailles, comme une vitrine du royaume. En outre, l'etude du phenomene festif a travers cette litterature fonctionnelle revele les premices des importantes mutations du regime trop souvent presentees comme le fait de la seconde periode du regne
Although a real historic and social phenomenon, the "fete de cour" during the reign of louis xiv can now only be traced through the literature it gave rise to. Moreover this literature reveals the aesthetic choices of a regime which intended the celebrations, particularly those given at versailles, as a royal showcase. The study of the celebrations through this functional literature gives a glimpse of the beginnings of important changes in the regime, changes which are too often presented as a feature of the second period of the reign

La présente thèse tente d'aborder, pour la première fois, une analyse comparative du rôle que la musique liturgique a joué dans le processus de construction de l'image sacrée des souverains de la maison Bourbon de France et d'Espagne dans le cadre des cérémonies religieuses célébrées aux cours de Madrid et de Versailles pendant les dernières décennies de l'Ancien Régime, ainsi que du rôle que l'exemple de la Chapelle pontificale a joué dans ce processus. Le but principal de cette étude a été d’apporter un cadre conceptuel et un modèle d'analyse qui permettraient d'aborder une étude globale de la musique sacrée destinée à ces cérémonies, sous un angle plus proche de l'histoire culturelle que de la musicologie traditionnelle, mais toujours partant de l’analyse des aspects performatifs qui permettaient dévoiler l’interaction réciproque entre la musique avec le contexte cérémonial, politique et historique duquel a fait partie. Tout au loin de six chapitres on examine les éléments qui conformaient les cérémonies de la liturgie d’État, conçues à cette époque comme des représentations sacrées : les différentes scènes où avaient lieu, les acteurs, le cérémonial, ainsi que le fonctionnement des différents styles de chant utilisés pour solenniser aussi bien les cérémonies ordinaires que les extraordinaires célébrées à Rome, à Madrid et à Versailles entre 1745 et 1789. Cela comprenait non seulement les œuvres de musique sacrée produites ad hoc par les maîtres de chapelle, mais aussi d’autres musiques, comme le plain-chant, le contrepoint où le faux-bourdon, qui faisant partie de ce même système de représentation étaient parfois exécutés par l’improvisation ou la mémorisation
This thesis attempts, for the first time, to address a comparative analysis of the role that liturgical music played in the process of building the sacred image of the sovereigns of the Bourbon House of France and Spain as part of the religious ceremonies celebrated in Madrid and Versailles during the last decades of the Ancien Régime, as well as the role that the example of the Pontifical Chapel played in this process. The main purpose of this study was to provide a conceptual framework and analytical model that would allow a global study of sacred music for these ceremonies to be approached from a perspective closer to cultural history than traditional musicology, but always starting from the analysis of the performative aspects that revealed the reciprocal interaction between music and the ceremonial, political and historical context of which it was a part. Along six chapters, we examine the elements that shaped the ceremonies of the State liturgy, conceived at that time as sacred representations: the different scenes in which they took place, the actors, the ceremonial, as well as the functioning of the different styles of singing used to solemnize both the ordinary and extraordinary ceremonies celebrated in Rome, Madrid and Versailles between 1745 and 1789. This included not only sacred music works produced ad hoc by the choirmasters, but also other music, such as plainchant, counterpoint or faux-bourdon, which were sometimes performed by improvisation or memorization as part of this same system of representation

De la fin du 18e siècle jusqu’au milieu du 20e siècle, la plupart des opéras de Mozart ont été joués en français sur les scènes parisiennes. Condition essentielle aux représentations, la traduction a donc joué un rôle décisif dans la diffusion des œuvres lyriques de Mozart en France. Cette thèse étudie les traductions françaises des deux plus célèbres opéras de Mozart en langue allemande, Die Entführung aus dem Serail und Die Zauberflöte, représentées sur les scènes parisiennes entre 1798 et 1954. S’appuyant sur de nombreuses sources encore inédites, cette étude cherche à comprendre comment les traducteurs affrontent les multiples enjeux que représente la traduction des livrets allemands pour le public français. Loin de n’assurer que le transfert d’une langue à l’autre, les traductions remodèlent sans cesse le livret comme la partition des opéras mozartiens, donnant souvent naissance à des œuvres entièrement nouvelles. En croisant l’approche historique et les méthodes de l’analyse textuelle, il s’agit de mettre en lumière les spécificités de chaque traduction, d’éclairer les choix des traducteurs et d’interroger l’évolution des traductions au fil du temps. En permettant au public français de découvrir et d’entendre les opéras de Mozart, les traductions façonnent la réception française de ces œuvres en même temps qu’elles en témoignent. Ce qui est en cause est tout autant la situation particulière du monde lyrique français et ses rapports avec les pays de langue allemande, que la conception de la traduction et de l’œuvre d’art
The two German operas of Mozart, Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Die Zauberflöte were performed primarily in French from the end of the 18th century until the middle of the 20th century. Cultural conventions and market conditions required that the libretti of German operas be translated into French. In consequence, translation was a vital element in the diffusion of Mozart’s operatic corpus in France. This dissertation is the first to focus on all four sequential translations of Die Entführung aus dem Serail and the five of Die Zauberflöte, performed in Paris between 1798 and 1954. Based on a number of unpublished manuscripts and unknown publications, this scholarly study of the process of translation discloses the transformations of the original works into new versions of Mozart’s operas, not only in the libretti but also in the music. What matters most is to understand how these translations were made and how they evolved over time, as well as exploring the way translators approached the particular difficulties presented by the need to translate texts meant to be sung. What we see is not only a set of changes in the nature of translations, but also a shift in the professional and popular understanding of what constitutes a work of art. Translation both transmitted and framed the meanings of Mozart’s operas at the same time as they made them available to the French musical world. In this context we can see how fruitful it is to braid together musicological research and the insights of literary scholarship in German studies
In Frankreich wurden Mozarts Opern vom Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts bis in die zweite Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts hinein in erster Linie auf Französisch aufgeführt. Um kulturellen Konventionen Genüge zu tun und Markttauglichkeit zu sichern, mussten deutsche Opernlibretti ins Französische übertragen werden, damit das Publikum die Werke verstehen konnte. Folglich waren Übersetzungen eine unumgängliche Voraussetzung für die Verbreitung von Mozarts Opernschaffen in Frankreich. Die vorliegende Dissertation untersucht zum ersten Mal alle Übersetzungen der beiden bekanntesten deutschsprachigen Opern Mozarts, Die Entführung aus dem Serail und Die Zauberflöte, die zwischen 1798 und 1954 auf Pariser Bühnen zu hören und zu sehen waren. Die Studie zieht eine Reihe unveröffentlichter Handschriften und in Vergessenheit geratener Veröffentlichungen heran und zeigt, dass die Übersetzer nicht nur am Text, sondern auch an der Musik Veränderungen vornahmen, die die neuen Fassungen gleichsam zu eigenständigen Werken machten. Das vorrangige Ziel der Arbeit besteht darin zu verstehen, wie die jeweilige Gestaltung der Übersetzungen zustande kam, und wie sie sich im Lauf der Zeit entwickelten. Dabei wird nicht nur ein Wandel in der Übersetzungsart festgestellt: vielmehr wird auch sichtbar, dass sich bei den Übersetzern wie beim Publikum die Auffassung verändert von dem, was ein Kunstwerk ist, und wie man mit ihm umgehen sollte. Indem sie Mozarts Opern der französischen Musikwelt zugänglich machten, bestimmten die Übertragungen das Verständnis der Werke mit, so dass sie aufschlussreiche Quellen zur französischen Mozart-Rezeption darstellen. Um diesen Verschiebungen und wechselseitigen Wirkungen nachzugehen, werden die Methoden der Übersetzungskritik mit den Grundlagen historischmusikwissenschaftlicher Forschung zusammengeführt

In 1664 Molière and his troupe played in the gardens of Versailles, in front of the Sun King, La Princesse d'Elide a rewriting of the Desdén con el Desdén by Moreto. As Maria Grazia Profeti pointed out in her writings, Genette's analysis still allows, after some time from the critical works of the critic, to avoid the ever-present and threatening obstacles of moral, formal or aesthetic value judgements accompanied by the more or less declared idea of superiority or inferiority of an author or a culture and dramaturgy. Entering the Molierian laboratory, after having highlighted how much the French hypertext owes to its Spanish hypotext, the essay tries to recontextualize the pièce within the Royal Festivals of the Plaisirs de île enchantée also in the light of the reception of contemporaries: wearing virtually the spectacles of a spectator of the time, and taking into consideration the transvalorizations carried out by the French playwright, he also tries to grasp the meaning that the Molierian play may have assumed for the Sovereign and the public in the context of the political and sentimental biography of the King of France at that chronological height.

This chapter examines how Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck's opera reforms responded to Victorian culture to become the revolutionary icons his contemporaries believed them to be. Gluck was music tutor to Marie Antoinette in Vienna and, after her marriage to Louis XVI, followed her to Paris, where he was a regular at Versailles. He died two years before the Revolution broke out. His music, according to Jean-Baptiste Leclerc, led to the shattering of the throne of France. The chapter considers formal elements of composition as well as frames of comprehension: the role of classicism in the critical understanding of theater; the role of dance in opera; the role of the chorus as a specifically classical element in modern opera. It also analyzes the differences between Vienna and Paris and London as sites for Gluck's operatic success and failure—within the incipient but self-conscious nationalism of the era.

Engravings of Mohammad Reza Beg’s grand audience at Versailles showcased the connections between France and Persia. The images highlighted the Beg’s diplomatic gifts, which represented the luxurious goods that symbolized both the French and Persian crowns. The engravings further linked the Safavid and Bourbon crowns through the inclusion of symbols of royal power, such as the throne and the sword. Yet these representations also suggested Louis XIV’s semblance to an Oriental despot. The painting “Louis XIV Receives the Ambassador Mehemet Reza-Bey” shows how after the death of Louis XIV the crown distanced itself from these negative connotations raised by an association with Persia.

This chapter focuses on exotica in Europe. Many of the botanical and zoological aspects of Versailles were supported by increasingly rigorous scientific studies being carried out in Paris. Since the early 1500s, France’s botanists had sought a permanent facility where living plant specimens could be studied. Indeed, the French were eager to establish a counterpart to the successful research gardens organized in Padua and Pisa. The Jardin du Roi in Paris was meant to make the capital, and by extension France, the world’s pre-eminent center for natural history. Elsewhere in Europe, it was the major banking houses and trading companies that brokered shipments of exotica along with spices, textiles, and other goods. In Italy, wealthy banker and merchant families vied to obtain the latest New World and tropical wonders for their private gardens. The Dutch went further, cannily marketing the entire globe as a rich, alluring repository of exotica, whose possession by nonroyal persons would confer pure delight, free of the burdens of statecraft. From transit pens at the ports of Antwerp and Amsterdam, exotica were sent on to both private and royal customers.