Live du ballet
A livre du ballet (also livret ) was the printed program for a ballet performance or ballet comedy in France in the 17th and 18th centuries . The libretto of the - initially Italian - operas was also given the name livret and named the actors.
The livret contained the verse du ballet , especially rhymed lyrics. There were also comments on what was danced and sung, explanations, translations and interpretations. Given the frequency of shepherd games in the first half of the 17th century, the livret was key to understanding the metaphors it contained .
In the ballets of Louis XIII. the Livrets had begun to be divided: a descriptive part that explained the plot and a part that was devoted to the rhymes about the noble people involved. At first it was about praise for the military successes mentioned and about gallantry for his companion.
Isaac de Benserade achieved a certain mastery in this field, and for 30 years he devoted most of his life to Vers du Ballet . When it came to describing the actors, he was characterized by a kind of transparent secrecy or refined tactlessness. In 1697, Louis XIV wrote about Benserade's edition of the work:
“The way in which, in the verses he made for the ballets at the beginning of Our reign, he translated the essence of the personalities who danced into the essence of the characters they represented was something of personal secret that he shared nobody had copied and that nobody copied "
Adjusting the actor to the portrayed figure was considered a “pointe” , a term from “precious” literature that meant the most refined gliding of an expression from the literal sense into a metaphor (or vice versa).
Regardless of whether a ballet was composed according to free imagination or the traditional way, it could conceal a complex structure. Wherever looking through this, the score only helped half, Benserade's Livrets succeeded in deciphering the piece.
In addition, the Livrets also had a propagandistic effect: The tension grew before an announced new divertissement and waiting became a test of patience, and members of foreign embassies in particular received a Livre du Ballet in advance. The texts then made their way to the European capitals and conveyed the magnificence of the French royal court.
A few bourgeois theatergoers have been parodied by Molière and Jean-Baptiste Lully in their Bourgeois gentilhomme . The final Ballet des Nations has the Donneur de livre ("book distributor") as its first entrée , in which the awkward situation of being without a book is sung about:
“Hey really, I'm not hiding it,
because I really don't like it;
That my daughter was not given
a book yet ;
That all my pleading did not soften anyone.
She, who loves books so much,
now does not know what ballet one gives,
and is very sad about it;
She would like to see in the book
what will happen at the dance. "
Henry Prunières wrote of this scene that it was perhaps the masterpiece of French musical theater.
literature
- Eberhard Heymann: Dictionary for performance practice of baroque music . Verlag Dohr, Cologne 2006, ISBN 978-3-936655-38-4 , p. 123.
Individual evidence
- ^ Marie-Claude Canova-Green: Les œuvres de M. De Benserade. Une sourece à écarter? In: Jérôme de La Gorce and Herbert Schneider (eds.): Source studies on Jean-Baptiste Lully. L'œuvre de Lully: Etudes des sources (Musicological publications; Vol. 13). Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim u. a. 1999, ISBN 3-487-11040-7 , p. 107.
- ^ Philippe Beaussant : Lully ou Le Musicien du Soleil . Gallimard, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-07-072478-6 , pp. 258-265.
- ↑ Jérôme de La Gorce: Jean-Baptiste Lully , Librairie Arthème Fayard, [Paris] 2002, p. 59.
- ^ A b Molière: The citizen as a nobleman. Comedy with dances in five acts , ( Le Bourgeois gentilhomme , Paris 1670, German), trans. by DLB Wolff, in: Louis Lax (Hrsg.): Molière's entire works , Aachen and Leipzig 1837, p. 307.
- ^ Henry Prunières: L'Opéra italien en France avant Lully , Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, Paris 1913, p. 308.