Tea at Trianon: A Grétry Opera Returns to Versailles

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

Sunday, July 28, 2019

A Grétry Opera Returns to Versailles

Richard Coeur-de-lion returns. From The Star:

In honour of the 250th anniversary of the opening of the royal opera house at the palace, Pynkoski and Lajeunesse-Zingg were being invited to direct Richard Coeur-de-lion (Richard the Lionheart) by Belgian composer André Grétry (1741-1813). From its premiere in 1784 until the turn of the 20th century, Richard was one of the most popular operas in Europe. Grétry set Michel-Jean Sedaine’s libretto about the crusading English king, imprisoned in Austria, in a new, simple style that foreshadowed Romanticism.

The version being presented at Versailles is Grétry’s streamlined, 90-minute version in three acts. It had its premiere in Paris at Christmastime in 1785. The opera was such a hit that by 1797 it had made its way to Boston. It may have also have helped in the demise of Louis XVI and his queen, Marie-Antoinette, during the French Revolution. On Oct. 1, 1789, the royal guards threw a party for the king; after a bit too much wine, they launched into a rousing rendition of “O mon roi” (“O My King”) from Grétry’s opera. Word reached the anti-monarchist revolutionaries in Paris, who five days later forced the royal family to leave Versailles for good. It was also the last time any music from this opera was heard within its walls. (Read more.)