La princesse de Navarre

Template:Rameau operasLa princesse de Navarre (The Princess of Navarre) is an operatic work by Jean-Philippe Rameau with words by Voltaire, first performed on 23 February, 1745 at La Grande Ecurie, Versailles. It was commissioned to celebrate the marriage of the Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain to the Dauphin of France, Louis-Ferdinand. La princesse de Navarre opened the wedding festivities, while another new Rameau opera, Platée, closed them. The piece takes the form of a comédie-ballet, effectively a play with a large amount of incidental music, recalling the collaborations of Molière and Lully in the 17th century.

Voltaire was a great admirer of Rameau, even considering him too good a composer for such a task. Nevertheless, Rameau wrote around an hour of music for the play, including an overture and three divertissements (musical interludes which ended each act). Little of it has much bearing on the main action of the drama which concerns the complicated love life of the eponymous mediaeval princess. Voltaire found Rameau to be a demanding and critical collaborator, leading the dramatist to declare: "Poor Rameau is mad...Rameau is as great an eccentric as he is a musician". The production was a spectacular one, involving no less than 180 "extras". Voltaire complained about the acoustics of the hall in which it was staged claiming "the ceiling was so high that the actors appeared pygmies and they couldn't be heard". Nevertheless, the music was a critical success. Much of the material was reworked to produce another opera, Les fêtes de Ramire, later the same year.

Recordings

• La princesse de Navarre English Bach Festival Chorus and Orchestra, Nicholas McGegan (1 CD, Erato, 1980)

Sources

• Cuthbert Girdlestone Jean-Philippe Rameau: His Life and Work (Dover paperback edition, 1969)
• The New Grove French Baroque Masters ed. Graham Sadler (Grove/Macmillan, 1988)
• The Viking Opera Guide ed. Amanda Holden (Viking, 1993)
• Booklet notes to the McGegan recording by Lionel Sawkins