La Princesse de Navarre (Voltaire)

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Data
Title: La Princesse de Navarre
Genus: libretto
Original language: French
Author: Voltaire
Publishing year: 1745
Premiere: February 23, 1745 in the Grande Écurie
Place of premiere: Versailles
people
  • Constance , Princess of Navarre
  • Le Duc de Foix
  • Dom Morillo , baron in the country
  • Sanchette , daughter of Morillo
  • Leonor , lady-in-waiting to the princess
  • Hernand , the Duke's squire
  • An officer of the guard
  • An alkali
  • A gardener
  • entourage
Frontispiece and title page from La Princesse de Navarre, 1745
Jean-Michel Moreau : Illustration to the Princesse de Navarre, 1783

La Princesse de Navarre (The Princess of Navarre) is a libretto for a comedy ballet in three acts by Voltaire that was written from April 1744 onwards . The piece set to music by Jean-Philippe Rameau was premiered on the occasion of the festivities for the wedding of the Dauphin with the Infanta of Spain on February 23, 1745 in the converted Grande Écurie of Versailles . Jean-Jacques Rousseau edited the libretto at the end of 1745 into the one-act version Les Fêtes de Ramire , which was premiered on December 22, 1745.

action

The action takes place in the gardens of Baron Murillo in Navarre . Constance, Princess of Navarre, has fled to the country castle of Murillo from her false adviser Don Pedro and her enemy the Duke of Foix. The stupid baron advertises the princess with rural festivals, but she has fallen in love with the supposed soldier Alamir. However, Alamir is the Duke's incognito, who initially only wants to take the princess hostage. With the marriage of the princess to the duke, the enmity of the ruling houses ends, an allusion to the marriage of the dauphin and the infanta.

Literary source and biographical references

Voltaire's school friend Louis François Armand de Vignerot du Plessis was commissioned by the king in 1744 to organize the festivities in Versailles on the occasion of the marriage of the Dauphin and the Infanta as a representative spectacle. In addition to Rameau's comic opera Platée , a comedy ballet based on a libretto by Voltaire was also planned. Voltaire began writing the text in April 1744. Working with Rameau, he was forced to swap his apartment in Paris for a shabby attic in Versailles. In his letters he complained about having been appointed a court jester at the age of 50. Voltaire's unloved older brother Armand died in Paris five days before the performance. Towards the end of the year a new performance of the work as a one-act opera ballet was planned. Since Voltaire and Rameau were working on Le Temple de la Gloire , the commission went to a protégé of Richelieu and Rameau's acquaintance, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was about to establish himself as a music theorist in Paris. Rousseau revised both Voltaire's text and Rameau's music for the piece Les Fêtes de Ramire . Since Rousseau was delayed, Rameau took over the musical revision himself and cut Rousseau's works down to a recitative. Rousseau, however, saw the new version as his own work and was angry that his name did not appear on the title of the print. The text of Les Fêtes de Ramire was subsequently neither included in the work of Voltaire nor that of Rousseau.

Performances and contemporary reception

For the festivities, a theater was specially built by the Slodtz brothers in the old stables, the Grande Écurie. The Princesse de Navarre premiered on February 23, 1745. The king ordered the performance to be repeated, which speaks for a positive reception. As a token of recognition, Voltaire and Rameau received a follow-up commission for a court festival on November 27, 1745, at which their opera-ballet Le Temple de Gloire was premiered. At Richelieu's request, Princesse de Navarre was performed again in Bordeaux on November 26, 1764 . Voltaire wrote a second new prologue for the piece.

Going to press

The text of the Princesse de Navarre was published by Ballard fils in Paris in 1745 with a frontispiece by Pierre-Antoine Baudoin (1723–1769). The one-act version Les Festes de Ramire , edited by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, was also published by Ballard at the end of the same year.

Additions

The text Princesse de Navarre is preceded by the announcement and the prologue. The text is followed by a brief divertissement as an encore , qui termine le spectacle

First editions

  • La Princesse de Navarre, Comédie-Ballet, Feste donnée par le Roy en son Château de Versailles, le Mardi 23 Février 1745 , (Paris), Ballard fils, (1745), 8 °, XVI, 106 p. Online
  • Les Festes de Ramire, ballet donné á Versailles le 22 December 1745 , (Paris), Jean-Baptiste-Christophe Ballard, (1745), 4 °, XVI, 14 p. Online

literature

  • Theodore Besterman : Herr und Gelehrter (1742–1746), in: Voltaire, Winkler, Munich, 1971, p. 229 f.
  • Catherine Kintzler: Rameau et Voltaire: les enjeux d'une collaboration orageuse , Revue de musicologie, 1981, 2, pp. 139–166.
  • Manuel Couvreur: La Princesse de Navarre , in: Dictionnaire Voltaire, Hachette Livre, 1994, p. 180.
  • Siegfried Detemple: The Princess of Navarra , in: Voltaire: The works. 300th birthday catalog. Reichert, Wiesbaden 1994, p. 73 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Manuel Couvreur: La Princesse de Navarre , in: Dictionnaire Voltaire, Hachette Livre, 1994, p. 180.
  2. ↑ Herr und Gelehrter (1742–1746), in: Voltaire, Winkler, Munich, 1971, p. 229 f.
  3. ^ Siegfried Detemple: The princess of Navarra , in: Voltaire: The works. 300th birthday catalog. Reichert, Wiesbaden 1994, p. 72.