Tragédie lyrique

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The tragédie lyrique or tragédie en musique is a genre of French opera of the late 17th and 18th centuries .

Jean-Baptiste Lully can be regarded as the inventor of the tragédie lyrique , who in the 1670s , together with his librettist Philippe Quinault, developed this form into a form that essentially lasted well into the 18th century. It was fed by elements of ballet de cour , pastoral and machine theater . The performance of a tragédie lyrique was a spectacle in which many art forms were involved: besides music and poetry, these were the ballet , the costumes , the sets . This splendid courtly opera genre is differentiated from the more bourgeois drame lyrique in the run-up to the French Revolution .

The work begins with a French overture , a form established by Lully. It consists of a fast middle section, which is framed by solemn sections with dotted rhythms. This is followed by a prologue with praise to the ruling king and often with allusions to the politics of the day, followed by five acts.

Towards the end of the 18th century, under the influence of the reform operas Christoph Willibald Gluck and Antonio Salieris, the tragédie lyrique gave way to the increasing importance of the opéra comique and found a successor to the “seria” genre in the grand opéra . Jules Massenet used the genre again around the turn of the 20th century for his thoroughly composed operas.

Works of the genre (selection)

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Jean-Philippe Rameau

Further

literature

  • Michele Calella : The ensemble in the tragédie lyrique of the late ancien régime (= writings on musicology from Münster. Vol. 14). Verlag der Musikalienhandlung Wagner, Eisenach 2000, ISBN 3-88979-086-0 ( Also : Münster, Universität, Dissertation, 1997).

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