Much ink has been spilt discussing the current woes and travails of the classical music industry. The word ‘elite’ is a thing of wonder in the world of sport but is bandied about as a pejorative when it comes to music. In a strange way, I think that French Baroque opera shines a light on this very contemporary issue. These lavish works, with their origins at the French Court of Louis XIV, are full of nymphs and shepherds, gods and goddesses and can seem very remote from our everyday. Whilst they may have been written for royalty alone to enjoy, they stand at the height of human artistic endeavour and can now be enjoyed by everyone. Combining singing, dancing and instrumental playing, they leap off the page and touch the soul. They may require ‘elite’ performers, but their appeal is for all, and this is what gives me hope for the future of their place in the UK’s music making.

Opera is largely said to have been ‘invented’ at the end of the Sixteenth Century in Italy. The extensive celebrations for the marriage of Ferdinando de Medici and Christine of Lorraine in 1589 in Florence included six intermedii, musical interludes of solos and madrigals, which were interwoven into a performance of a play by Bargagli, La Pellegrina. The music was so lavish that it threatened to eclipse the play entirely. Opera was born! In fact, the first work to be styled an opera was Jacopo Peri’s Dafne in 1597 (now sadly lost) and the first surviving opera is Peri’s Eurydice from 1600. Interestingly all of these early Florentine musical dramas focus on the transformative power that music can have on our lives, as does Monteverdi’s first opera L’Orfeo, written for the Court of Mantua, in 1607.

Italian opera was cooking nicely throughout the Seventeenth Century, feeding an operatic musical hunger in the public that culminated in the building of the first public opera house in Venice in 1637. Monteverdi continued to thrive, as did his younger colleagues, Francesco Cavalli and Francesca Caccini, amongst many others.

So whilst all this was happening in Italy, what of France?

As we have already heard, musical taste abounded at the Kings' court. France was blessed with monarchs who were passionate about the arts and French culture. Louis XIII cultivated music and the arts and, in 1635, founded the Académie Française, the august institution still monitoring and nurturing the French language. Louis resisted the Italian would-be interloper, opera, preferring the measure and reason of the Ballets de Cours, with their songs and stately dances, over the Italian dramatic outpouring of emotions. It was only when Louis came upon a young musician and dancer from Florence by the name of Jean-Baptiste Lully (né Lulli) as they danced together in a court entertainment that a subtle shift began to take place.

'I encourage singers, players and dancers not to be put off by the information overload. Once these elements have been absorbed, the result produces one of the most natural styles of musical delivery imaginable'

Lully soon became a royal composer and oversaw the musical production of two Italian operas by Cavalli at court. Lully also wrote Comèdie-Ballets, which took the form of incidental music to many plays by Molière, including Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, thus mirroring the way opera had come into being in Florence a century earlier. Lully went on to develop his own operatic style and created the genre known as Tragédie en musique, or Tragédie lyrique, which developed narrative, always in French, through récits (sections of dialogue set to music), airs (songs), dances and instrumental symphonies. Notable examples include Atys, Psyché and Armide. In 1672, Lully became the director of the newly-founded Académie Royale de Musique (now the Paris Opera), and he commanded a royal monopoly on operatic output until his untimely death (from gangrene after stabbing himself in the toe with his own conducting pole!) in 1687.

Other notable French operatic composers flourished after Lully’s death, including Marc-Antoine Charpentier, André Campra, Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and Montéclair, but it wasn’t until Jean-Phillipe Rameau burst forth onto the operatic scene at the tender age of 50, that the genre got a much-welcomed rejuvenation. Welcomed by some, that is. A pamphlet war raged between the traditional Lullyistes and the Rameauners for ten years. Jean-Phillipe’s daring harmonic style and his originality caused quite a stir. Nevertheless, like Lully, Rameau composed for both the court and the Académie Royale de Musique and developed the Tragédie en Musique, maintaining the inclusion of orchestral music (divertissements or entr’actes) between the Acts, as a nod to the earlier court spectacles and to allow the audience a musical sorbet in between the intense drama. These operas are epic in scale and some notable examples include Hippolyte et Aricie, Dardanus and Les Borréades.

Lully's Armide at the Palais-Royal Opera House in 1761 | Watercolour by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin

Why don’t we perform these French operatic masterpieces in the UK more often?

The simple answer is that they are challenging to do well. The singers and instrumentalists need to understand the intricacies of the ‘agrémens’ (the special French ornamentation that adorns the melodic lines), the practice of 'notes inégales’ (whereby adjacent notes of equal length are swung to give a lilting rhythm) and also the different dance genres, written with specific choreographies in mind. I encourage singers, players and dancers not to be put off by the information overload. Once these elements have been absorbed, the result produces one of the most natural styles of musical delivery imaginable, and despite their grand origins, these great operas can reach everybody.

My dream is for more opera companies to mount productions from the French baroque canon. Some will remember the glory days of Lina Lalandi’s English Bach Festival and her ambitious productions of Lully and Rameau and, more recently, English National Opera’s Castor et Pollux, English Touring Opera’s Dardanus and Glyndebourne’s Hippolyte et Aricie. We have been fortunate to benefit from visiting productions from France; William Christie and Les Arts Florissants brought a staging of Rameau’s Les Paladins to the Barbican and we have heard concert performances but all too rarely. These monumental works really benefit from staging and can rival any West End show for spectacle and sheer entertainment. 

Laurence Cummings and Academy of Ancient Music launch their new season with concert performances of two mythological mini-masterpieces of baroque opera: Charpentier’s Actéon and Rameau’s Pygmalion. Performances take place on Tuesday 8 October (West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge) and Wednesday 9 October (Milton Court Concert Hall, London). aam.co.uk

Laurence Cummings's French opera playlist

1) Marche pour la cérémonie des Turcs from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Lully

2) Lieux funeste from Act 4 of Dardanus - performed by John Mark Ainsley, Les Musiciens du Louvre and Marc Minkowski

3) Passacaille from L’Armide by Lully - performed by Les Arts Florissants

4) Entrée de Polymnie from Les Boréades by Rameau - performed by Ensemble Connect