# Are You A Passionate Fan of The Operas Of Lully?



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Here is an excerpt from an article titled "Some Forerunners of The Lully Opera" by Donald Jay Grout.



> Unless we are willing to assume that the French public of the late 17th century was extraordinarily easy to please - a supposition hardly tenable -- then we must admit that there is more to Lully's operas than greets the musician's ear. Anyone who plays through the whole score of a Lully opera is likely to emerge from that experience (if he survives it at all) with a confused impression of page upon page of music void of imagination, pale in colour, thin in harmony, monotonous in invention, stereotyped in rhythm, limited in melody, barren of contrapuntal resource and so cut into little sections by perpetually recurring cadences that all sense of movement seems lost in a desert of cliches, relieved all too rarely by oases of real beauty.
> 
> Of course the music is not really as bad as all that. Apart from the recitatives, there are many places of charm and even grandeur, as well as occasional passages of strong dramatic force. But if we compare it, simply as music, with what was being written by contemporaries in other countries -- Buxtehude, Corelli and Provenzale, for example -- we cannot help realizing that Lully's musical gifts were scarcely of the first order. Must we then attribute his success in France merely to ignorance or to chauvinism? Hardly that, although both these factors were undoubtedly operative.



And Joseph Kerman famously said:



> "Lully's recitative is bloodless, its vigor carefully paced, its passion channeled, its nobility stereotyped and labored. Its greatest pride was justness of declamation, a characteristically French virtue which does not mask its dryness of expression"




First question:

1) Are there any Lully devotees here who would like to comment on any of the above?

Besides Rameau's _Castor and Pollux_ I know basically nothing about French baroque operas but later this year I am planning on studying Lully in depth beginning with _Atys_.

Second question:

2) Are there any operas by Lully that you feel are on a par with the best of Monteverdi, Rameau and Handel?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Rameau is my guy. Lully, far less so.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

PetrB said:


> Rameau is my guy. Lully, far less so.


Seen elsewhere: Rameau was asked why he didn't actively study the music of the previous generations. Without hesitating he replied, "Why should I? They don't study any of my music."


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

I like Lully pops.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

The worst waste of time I ever purchased was a blu-ray of a performance of Atys. Everything was perfect except the music.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Back in the 1980's during the big revivals of _Atys_ John Rockwell wrote in The New York Times:



> "Lully was the great operatic composer of the high French Baroque, the man who defined French opera in the age of Louis XIV. His works are rarely heard today, but that omission may be ending now that the French early-music movement has grown so confident and accomplished"
> 
> [....]
> 
> Like all tragic operas of the Baroque, the drama of ''Atys'' is carried by the recitatives, and the arias and ballets become occasions for contemplation or divertissement. Lully's recitatives are particularly urgent and emotionally intense.




And here are more opera critics from The Times and Opera magazine:

2. When William Christie and Les Arts Florissants presented Lully's "Atys" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for the first time, in 1989, it was as if a curtain had been pulled aside to reveal an alternative operatic universe. The work was so different in sound, spirit and look from the 19th-century Italian operas that dominate the mainstream opera world that it seemed almost a different art form

3. "Atys" was a watershed, the first opera of its genre - the "tragédie lyrique. The music had a certain quality to it that really took me by storm. It had something indefinable. I was immediately hooked."

4. After a three-century eclipse, Atys is now becoming another musical touchstone.... It was revealed as a masterpiece of expression and form. It is suffused with an almost painful eroticism, each recitative becoming a lyrical window onto a character's interior life.

5. Atys is not grandly public music of pomp and significance. Its drama is based upon recitatives, melodic sighs, courtly dances and arias that are less melodies than poised expressions of sentiment.

6.. "Atys" is first and foremost superb music, probably the most imaginative and distinctive of all Lully's operas.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

On the other hand:

E. Thomas Glasow wrote in 2002:

"The music of this big daddy of French Baroque opera still seems incredibly resistant to widespread public appreciation.... A case in point: I attended a concert performance in Rochester, New York, of -- wonder of wonders -- Lully's Thésée, billed as the North American premiere (I believe it) and performed on period instruments by the Eastman Collegium Musicum under Paul O'Dette (who, soon thereafter, led the first American staged production of the work for the Boston Early Music Society). A surprisingly large crowd turned out for Eastman's underpromoted event, but by intermission time (following the prologue and first two acts, played nonstop) a substantial number of audience members who left their seats ostensibly to "stretch their legs" never returned to hear the rest of the opera, and many of those who did stay had difficulty suppressing yawns. Indeed, it would seem that Lully's musical setting of Quinault's elegant alexandrine verse has yet to become the general public's cup of tea instead of the handful of _connoisseurs'_ demitasse of chamomile"

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/opq/summary/v018/18.1glasow02.html


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Itullian said:


> I like Lully pops.







Seduced by the prettiness I was I was. It _is_ great, _and has tremendous *charm*_ -- but I require more 'bite' than merely pretty to keep me engaged and coming back for more -- Ergo, Rameau, yea, Lully, naysomuch.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Revenant said:


> The worst waste of time I ever purchased was a blu-ray of a performance of Atys. Everything was perfect except the music.


Armide is better, but only on DVD


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

PetrB said:


> Seduced by the prettiness I was I was. It _is_ great, _and has tremendous *charm*_ -- but I require more 'bite' than merely pretty to keep me engaged and coming back for more -- Ergo, Rameau, yea, Lully, naysomuch.


Yes, no comparison once you start listening to Rameau.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Revenant said:


> The worst waste of time I ever purchased was a blu-ray of a performance of Atys. Everything was perfect except the music.


I have an Atys somewhere. I fell asleep listening to it. I listened to Phaeton once whilst programming my mum's then new TV and it was better.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

*Great thread*. :tiphat: 
It's nice to see some discussion of Lully at last - when Taggart & I joined TalkClassical, we were *amazed* to find *no Composer Guestbook on Lully* - a situation that Taggart speedily remedied.

*I am in love with Jean-Baptiste Lully*, but that sort of feeling is an instinct, not based on reason. I agree with *all that PetrB says* about charm & mere prettiness. Moreover, I still don't really know all that much about his music, so I am with Itullian on *the Lully Pops*.

*I much prefer Lully's ballet music & overtures to his opera. *
I think it's because he was a *dancer and so am I* that I love his music. For me it has *a vigour*, a compulsive *shape & rhythm*, and yet paradoxically sometimes a trace of *elegant languor *creeps in that is a commentary on the tragic nature of the universe. Lully's orchestral music is *lithe*. It doesn't develop; it is a collection of tunes, but then, I'm a *tunes* person, and I breathe the more easily for Lully. 

*Now, his opera*: I haven't sampled much, but the elegant languor seems to have taken over *Atys*, which I listened to recently on YouTube. I loved it, but I treated it as wallpaper & didn't watch the action. It is not Lully's natural medium, but it is *a dream of elegance*, and perhaps that is what captured the original audiences, who were also suckers for the classics and whatever pleased the King. I can well see that if you're not in love with Monsieur Lully, you might get a bit bored.

On the other hand, I was riveted by watching *Cadmus & Hermione* on YouTube. The production is so beautiful, and the appearance of the smug Sun in a chair, the dances & songs of the satyrs, and of the evil Python-King (can't remember his name) are all very interesting. Of course, it isn't an opera technically - *Cadmus et Hermione* is a *tragédie en musique*, a form invented by Lully, which is less dramatic than opera and more based on narration and spectacle.

So - I agree with all the points made against him, but when all's said and done, Lully's 'charm' is irresistible for me. As J. M. Barrie says about charm in 'What every woman knows' - * 'If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have.'*

Actually, charm is too small a word for my Jean-Baptiste - what Lully has is - *Charisma!*

*Madame la Marquise*

_(PS - That passionate enough for you?)_


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

I have listened to several of Lully's operas, have attended also some performances in the theater, and even a wonderful perfomance of _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme _by Le Poéme Harmonique, a group devoted to restore the pieces and offer them to the audience in as closer as possible version to the premiere (in this case, it's a piece from 1670), not only in the instruments, and the singing, but also in the staging.

I just love it. Granted, this is probably difficult to appeal (at least at first sight) to the Romantic Opera fan, but we can find great music and, if you enter into the codes of the period, also great drama.

This is a very nice performance of _Persée_, complete in youtube, by Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel given some ten years ago. If you are not hooked by the beautiful duet at the beginning... well, maybe this is not for you (at least, for now)


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Xavier said:


> 5. Atys is not grandly public music of pomp and significance. Its drama is based upon recitatives, melodic sighs, courtly dances and arias that are less melodies than poised expressions of sentiment.


There is your very clear reason why this music will never have a mass popular audience. Just as the majority of classical fans are biggest on the mid to late romantic large orchestral works, they are inversely not so interested in the chamber works, lieder, etc. It is the big, the grandiose, the most overtly dramatic, which pulls the masses in.

Ditto for the average opera fan: they want the high drama, the spectacle, and the larger orchestra, the bigger voices, and extended tunes and arias.

Sure, this form, Lully and then Rameau, is a fully legitimate and effective form of musico-dramatic entertainment, but what it has in polite and genteel manners and ways, it also lacks in the later dramatic or comedic gestures as found in Handel, Mozart, or the later generations of opera most people feel a connection with.

To expect a fan base who thrill to and clamor for seats to performances of those works from later eras, with their more overt aesthetic vs. that fan base queuing in line demanding to see these earlier French Baroque masterworks (or a Monteverdi opera if done more in 'chamber' proportions, small chorus, etc.) i.e. the masses urgently wanting to attend these early opera seria comprised of gentle recitatives, short-length arias more akin to chansons, very brief choruses, and peppered throughout with balletic interludes is, I think, wildly naive.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Xavier said:


> Back in the 1980's during the big revivals of _Atys_ John Rockwell wrote in The New York Times:
> 
> [/font][/size]
> 
> ...


In the end, when the hype and over-adjectivized and unspecific generalities about "poised expressions", etc., in my opinion you are left with boring and singularly uninspired music. What a difference from Rameau who was truly an inspired talent. Again, just my opinion. The only thing by Lully that ever held my attention was the aria _Bois epais_ from Amadis. Too few and far between.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Bravo, schigolch - another Lully-lover! :tiphat:
Thank you so much for posting the _Persée_, which I'm going to put on my Facebook page & watch in the Easter holidays. 
Thanks, PetrB :tiphat: for your insights into the French Baroque style (here & in pms) and thanks for reminding me about _Cadmus et Hermione _ - I just coaxed Taggart into ordering it for me from Presto (a firm we found out about from moody :tiphat.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

schigolch said:


> I have listened to several of Lully's operas, have attended also some performances in the theater, and even a wonderful perfomance of _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme _by Le Poéme Harmonique, a group devoted to restore the pieces and offer them to the audience in as closer as possible version to the premiere (in this case, it's a piece from 1670), not only in the instruments, and the singing, but also in the staging.
> 
> I just love it. Granted, this is probably difficult to appeal (at least at first sight) to the Romantic Opera fan, but we can find great music and, if you enter into the codes of the period, also great drama.
> 
> This is a very nice performance of _Persée_, complete in youtube, by Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel given some ten years ago. If you are not hooked by the beautiful duet at the beginning... well, maybe this is not for you (at least, for now)


I actually enjoyed this.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

We have just watched our recently-purchased dvd of *Cadmus et Hermione*, 
and it was *absolument fabuleux*!









The choruses, especially 'O Mars' - the duets of the principals - the colour & spectacle - the dancing - the reflections on l'amour - were *totally engaging*.

A year or so ago we watched *'La Boheme'* & you know what - we were *bored*. 

So -* 'Are you a Passionate Fan of the Operas of Lully?'*

*We are!*

(Next stop, Persée.)


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Ingélou said:


> We have just watched our recently-purchased dvd of *Cadmus et Hermione*,
> and it was *absolument fabuleux*!
> 
> View attachment 40455
> ...


La Boheme bores me too.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> [snip, snip] The choruses, especially 'O Mars' - the duets of the principals - the colour & spectacle - the dancing - the reflections on l'amour - were *totally engaging*.[/SIZE] [snip]


How about the music?? :devil:


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

The glories of Lully's music are so obvious as not to be worth stating! :angel:


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> The glories of Lully's music are so obvious as not to be worth stating! :angel:


Wise course of action, if I may say (_write_) so. Sinner that I am, the miracle of his glories was denied me while sitting through the blu-ray of Atys. :devil:


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Oh Revenant, I hope maybe one day you will appreciate La Gloire de Lully - I am minded of the lines in 'Midsummer Night's Dream' - 
*'There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubins.
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.'*


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> Oh Revenant, I hope maybe one day you will appreciate La Gloire de Lully - I am minded of the lines in 'Midsummer Night's Dream' -
> *'There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
> But in his motion like an angel sings,
> Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubins.
> ...


Now you've reduced me to tears with that beautiful quotation from Shakespeare's most lyrical phase. So I went back and listened to Lully again. Bo-ho-rinngg... They only thing I heard about Lully that I liked is Bois épais from Amadis. So you see I'm not hermetically proof to his glories. But I just found one glory.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

Revenant said:


> Now you've reduced me to tears with that beautiful quotation from Shakespeare's most lyrical phase. So I went back and listened to Lully again. Bo-ho-rinngg... They only thing I heard about Lully that I liked is Bois épais from Amadis. So you see I'm not hermetically proof to his glories. But I just found one glory.







Your loss!


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Most of Lully's _tragédies en musique _were written with his partner, the librettist Philippe Quinault, but_ Psyché_ was the first of the two collaborations between Lully and Thomas Corneille, and it was not very sucessful in its day. But the King insisted that the pair work together again, and one year later they presented _Bellérophon, _that was much more appreciated by the audience, and was offered during the best part of 1679 at L'Académie Royale de Musique, with the scenery provided, for the last time, by Vigarini. The libretto, and the music, got a lot of praise, and the King attended several performances. Also, papers like "Le Mercure Galant" were very generous with the piece. Lully ordered the score printed.

We can watch _Bellérophon_ in youtube, performed in a concert version by Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques:


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Jobis said:


> Your loss!


Oh, assuredly. Must be this damnable muddy vesture of decay enclosing me in and stuff. Uncultured and insensitive me. I needs must weep again.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Come come, now, Revenant, dry your tears. It takes all sorts to make a world. 
I expect there's something you like that I can't abide - or, more likely with me, don't even know about.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> Come come, now, Revenant, dry your tears. It takes all sorts to make a world.
> I expect there's something you like that I can't abide - or, more likely with me, don't even know about.


You mean we should all agree to disagree - in this forum? That would reduce postings by 80%. But I agree with you.


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Lully scholar Patricia Howard wrote in the Cambridge Opera Journal:



> "Three hundred years after his death in 1687 Jean-Baptiste Lully's reputation is entering a new phase. Only a minority of opera-goers today have had the opportunity of seeing one of Lully's operas performed in the theatre. French music, always a degree less accessible to a non-French public than the music of its Italian and Austro-German neighbours, remains the last corner of the seventeenth-century repertory to make a popular appeal to twentieth-century audiences. There are indications, however, in the appearance of a new collected edition, in the small output of new recordings, and in the greater volume of scholarly investigation associated with the tercentenary, that the distinctive sound of Lully's music will soon become at least as familiar as that of his contemporaries Purcell and Cavalli. *And familiarity will surely engender popularity: the music needs no special pleading*"
> 
> http://journals.cambridge.org/actio...9917145D.journals?fromPage=online&aid=1789084




At the end of May when my new subscription begins I will post the entire article... Looks interesting.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

I saw Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme a few months ago and Persée is on in a few weeks. I agree with previous comments that Armide is probably a better place to start if you're going to dive in.

Lully isn't everyone's taste but a person can only endure so much Verdi.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

See also this thread on Baroque Exchange.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

I watched Cadmus and Atys in July.

Atys was a kind of declaimed Racine: sedately soporific, musically meagre, it opened with a right royal bootlicking ("un heros dont la brillante gloire les a presque tous effacez"); the highpoint of the action was the hero lying down for a nap in the middle of the opera; and at the end he's turned into a tree.

"Atys was a favourite with Louis XIV. If this is what French royalty's taste was like, the Revolution might have been a great thing for music..."

I'm an idiot.

I've listened to Roland, Alceste, and Thesee since Saturday. They're glorious: maybe not as imaginative as RAMEAU, but full of beautiful choruses, dances, and elegant declamation.

ADDED: Listened to the prologue and first act of Atys (Christie) to see if it improves on reacquaintance. It doesn't; it drags. Even Lully enthusiast David LeMarrec calls the recording "Très figé, un peu glaçant" ("very frozen, a little chilling"). Certainly it still leaves me cold.


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