DENIS ROUVRE
An American in
Paris brings the French Baroque Stateside again
William Robin
I
n the age of composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Les Arts Florissants (1685), kings and queens grandly subsidized opera. The lavish Baroque productions, modeled on classical tragedy, celebrated in turn the glory of the monarchy in song and dance. It is said that Louis XIV strolled the halls of his palace humming tunes from Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Atys, which became known as “the opera of the king.” Though no comparable royal patronage exists today, not too long
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ago the French Baroque did, in fact, inspire a monumental act of philanthropy, one spurred by the artistic brilliance of a group named for Charpentier’s opera. In 1987, the ensemble Les Arts Florissants performed a legendary revival of Atys at the OpéraComique in Paris. When it brought the production to the Brooklyn Academy of Music two years later, Atys was declared the hottest ticket of the season. “It was as if a curtain had been pulled aside to reveal an alternative operatic universe,” the New York Times later wrote. “The work was so different in sound, spirit and look from the
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