Palazzetto Bru Zane - Centre de Musique Romantique Française

While critics in the late eighteenth century deplored the decline of opera, France, at the time of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, had the idea of making a return the great age of the Sun King, Louis XIV.

Drawing on librettos by Quinault originally written around 1680 for Lully, France thus reminded Europe of its former greatness in the literary field. And it was foreign composers who set those fine works in Paris: Gluck wrote the music for Armide, Paisiello for Proserpine, Johann Christian Bach Amadis, Piccinni Atys... Furthermore, many composers – mostly French this time – set the texts of Racine, Corneille and Voltaire, adapting their most famous lines to opera: Andromaque (Grétry), Chimène ou Le Cid (Sacchini), Phèdre (Lemoine), Sémiramis (Catel), and so on until Olympie (Spontini) in 1819.

At the same time, the cantata with orchestral accompaniment was also revived: those composed in the 1780s for the concert societies (e.g. Cherubini’s Clytemnestre and Circé) were followed from 1803 by those written for the Prix de Rome, with Hérold and Halévy among the earliest winners to have retained their fame. From Hérold, with his Ariane of 1811, to Halévy, with Herminie of 1819, composers used themes from the past to create truly modern works.