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Moliere's Unsung Partner
| Article
# : |
19513 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1991 |
1,639 Words |
| Author
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Curtis Cate
Historian and biographer Curtis Cate was greatly aided in the
preparation of this article by Liane Villemont and Jacques
Deschamps of l'Institut national de l'audiovisuel. |
Slowly they advance from the wings and depths of the enormous stage, their feathered headdresses and pastoral costumes undulating suavely to the strains of stately music. Flora, two Zephirs, Daphne and Climene, Tircis and Dorilas, and a host of shepherds and shepherdesses, all the familiar figures of classical mythology (such as one sees on the walls and ceilings of Versailles), are here assembled in this Virgil-inspired eclogue by Monsieur Moliere and his maitre de musique, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, to pay homage to the martial triumphs of France's Grand Monarque. Instantly we are carried three centuries back in time to 1673, the grand siecle of Louis XIV--so pompous, so stilted, so elegant, yes, but oh, so graceful and merry! For though this poetic prologue lasts all of twenty-five minutes--a veritable feast for ballet-loving eyes--it is simply a Baroque introit for what is to follow: a three-act comedieballet entitled Le Malade imaginaire, in which the absurd obsessions of a one-track-minded hypochondriac are artfully exploited and his nefarious designs countered by a more levelheaded brother and clever maid.
Few who were lucky enough to see the premiere of Le Malade imaginaire, a comedy with ballet inserted between acts as staged at Paris' Chatelet Theater, are likely to forget the occasion. For what they were witnessing was nothing less than the first complete presentation in more than three hundred years of Moliere's last play, as he originally wrote it, with the elaborate musical accompaniment of Charpentier. Even Louis XIV, for whose personal enjoyment this comedieballet was originally designed, never saw it in its entirety, for fascinating reasons worth recalling because they illustrate once again how easily the great ones of this world can be blinded by the scheming sycophants and courtiers who surround them.
Full credit for the Chatelet Theater premiere, the performances that followed--first in Paris, then during a tour of the provinces, and finally the version shown on French television--must go to William Christie, a versatile American pianist, harpsichord player, conductor, and connoisseur of Baroque music who had already won international acclaim for his productions of Rameau's Atys (1987) and Purcell's Fairy Queen (1989); to his stage manager, Jean-Marie Villegier (now director of the National Theater at Strasbourg); and not least of all to Francine Lancelot, a gifted choreographer who once studied under Mary Wigman. The wonders accomplished by this enterprising trio would not have been possible, however, if not for the accidental discovery, made in 1987 by the American musicologist John Powell, of two Charpentier scores that had long been presumed lost forever. In fact, they had been gathering
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