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The “Tragédie en Musique” Cadmus et Hermione, premiered in Paris in 1673 in the presence of Louis XIV with great expense and success, is in a sense the prototype of French Baroque opera in the style of Jean-Baptiste Lully and represents a perfect synthesis of the most important forms that French musical theater had produced up to that time: solo airs, ensembles, chorus, instrumental music and ballet, here moreover for the first time combined with sung monologues and dialogues rather than spoken ones as before. In the libretto composed by Philippe Quinault (the first of a total of eleven for Lully), the preference for the so-called “merveilleux,” the marvelous, which distinguishes French opera from the spoken theater of the time, clearly emerges. Hermione, daughter of Mars, the god of war, and sister of Cupid, the god of love, was promised by her father to the giant Draco, but she loves Kadmos, the mythical founder and king of Thebes. The latter is ready to take on any danger (including a dragon) to free his beloved from the power of the evil giant. The main plot of the opera is spiced up with interventions of the gods – as in the Trojan War in favor of both sides – and comic elements at the level of the servants. In the new production at CHATEAU DE VERSAILLES, Vincent Dumestre and his ensemble Le Poème Harmonique once again prove to be congenial interpreters of early French opera, delivering here a convincing musical realization of this groundbreaking masterpiece. Reviews Fanfare March/April 2022 “entirely up to the standard of excellence that one has come to expect from the Chateau de Versailles series. The orchestra of the Poème Harmonique is powerful yet discrete when needed…the voices are all well matched, and the diction is clear and precise. For lovers of French Baroque opera, this is a must. Opera August 2021 “This performance is yet further testimony to the extremely high standards encountered today in French Baroque opera repertoire. The musicians of Dumestre’s Le Poème Harmonique are old hands at it: his handling of the score is well paced and thoroughly idiomatic, and he draws splendid singing and playing from both choir and orchestra. |
