Tea at Trianon: Le Roi at le fermier

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Le Roi at le fermier

An opera beloved by Marie-Antoinette makes a stunning comeback.

“Le Roi,” which had its premiere in 1762 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, has been lovingly resurrected by Opera Lafayette, a Washington period-instrument group that specializes in obscure 18th-century French repertory. It opened in Washington recently and was staged at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Thursday evening on its way to the Opéra Royal de Versailles next month.

The work is based on Robert Dodsley’s “King and the Miller of Mansfield,” a tale of how the king of England loses his hunting party in Sherwood Forest. In “Le Roi” Richard, the young gamekeeper, loves Jenny, the shepherdess (the role played by Marie Antoinette at Versailles), who is abducted but resists the advances of the lascivious Lord Lurewel. Meanwhile the King wanders incognito among the peasants, learning that royalty should listen to their subjects more often. (Read entire post.)