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Théâtre Musical

Antonio Vivaldi
Jean-Féry Rebel
Georg Frideric Handel
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer

Les Boréades
Francis Colpron
Hélène Plouffe
Susie Napper
Marie Bouchard

Musical Theatre
Schmelzer, Rebel, Vivaldi, Handel

“At the heart of Baroque art is the will to present a spectacle, theatries that is somewhat more than theatre.” - Claude Roy, Arts baroques, 1963.

Whether it be in the grand and pompous portraits, the more modest prints or paintings of an intimate character, artists of the Baroque period strove to depict their subjects in a both realistic and idealistic manner. In a way, they magnified the essence of the person so as to propose the image of an accomplished human nature. Far removed from the psychological portrait that had tempted Renaissance artists, the 17th- and 18th- century masters, using an often breathtaking pictorial technique, ascribed to their models an abstract grandeur evoking more their social standing than their emotions or moods. This they achieved by adorning them with opulent garb, affording them flattering postures and alluding to their office by means of such objects as books, compasses, maps or weapons and armour. For in that era, man—we deliberately use this term, since it is men who, at the apex of social and political structures, embody this ideology far more than do women—is in a state of perpetual representation, where being and appearing are one and the same.

It is well known that the Baroque is an art of illusion, of the ephemeral, of movement, of sensual pleasure; and these different aspects make it an essentially theatrical art. Indeed, spectacle is everywhere. Not only does the stage imitate life in society, transposing it to visible and invisible worlds, real or fantastical, given for all to see, but social activity is itself organised as a vast and continuous theatrical representation, well-rehearsed to boot, where everyone is at once actor and spectator. This social theatrics of court life, whether inmundane actions or during lavish ceremonies, is replete with allegory, symbolic reference and mythological transposition. As with the portraits, it proposes an idealised view of people, events and objects.

Every gentleman’s education involves, apart from the study of belles-lettres and questions of faith, tuition in horsemanship, arms drill and dance. While the latter had been but an entertainment and an exercise during the Renaissance, it became during the 17th century an embodiment of both cosmic harmony and political order. To dance properly the courante, the chaconne or the minuet (which are, lest one forget, collective dances) procures not only mere amusement; it shows the mastery of a sort of social diplomacy where one should `keep his step’ and avoid `faux pas’. These expressions are to be understood literally: they originally meant that the feet, and by extension the entire body, must realise the figures and gestures, or `steps’, that correspond to the choreography of each dance, that conform to each particular situation, thereby harmonising with those of the partner. Moreover, the dance figures seen on stage are identical to those practised in the ballroom by aristocrats of both sexes. In fact, up until the beginning of the 18th century, the most proficient dancers of the nobility often joined with the professionals during various theatrical performances, ballets de cour, masques and other court entertainment.

Thus, writes Marcel Brion, “court life unfolds according to a theatrical perspective and ethic; each gesture, each expression is bound to a dramatic or comic action and becomes part of a ballet contrived by that supreme game master, etiquette. It is etiquette that determines exactly which role is allotted to whom and how it is to be carried out, in all circumstances of life.” Even the business of war adheres to this concept. Fencing is executed as a dance step, and actual warfare, taking nothing away from its destructive effectiveness, sets foe against foe as in a gigantic choreography. The troops, on foot or horseback, clash following established and well-ordained rules.

Art of movement par excellence, music will also come to abide by the principle of representation; first of all, of course, by uniting with theatre to create that most baroque of inventions, opera; then, by the support it lends the various dance rhythms displayed in feasts and balls, as well as on stage; finally, and perhaps to a greater extent, through its illustration of natural phenomena (storms and animal calls) and the manifold human occupations, either by means of trivial imitation or delicate evocation. In this way, music offers a `tone-show’ of natural occurrences, and allows one to laugh at, or be touched by, the sounds that represent, with a kind of theatrical objectivity, what one who practises such and such a trade or activity is like.

Les Boréades invites us to witness certain aspects of this musical theatre, drawn from the repertories of four countries. The oldest work on this disc is by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, a virtuoso violinist who was for thirty years a member of the imperial chapel in Vienna. It is a balletto entitled Fechtschule (school of fencing), commissioned in 1668 by the bishop palatine Carl von Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn. The prelate, a great patron of the arts and music lover, desired for his court in Olmütz, near Vienna, “all kinds of nice dance tunes, of the sort that are particular to carnival time”. Schmelzer includes in the suite a depiction of two professions: the fencer and the barber!

The world of opera is illustrated by several excerpts, in instrumental version, taken from an Italian opera and an English masque. Composed near the end of his life on a libretto by Apostolo Zeno revised by Goldoni, Griselda is among the last of Antonio Vivaldi’s fifty or so operas. It was premièred in the spring of 1735 at the San Samuele theatre in Venice, with, as namesake, Anna Girò, a singer with whom the Red Priest never parted. Vivaldi’s vocal writing as it evolves throughout his stage works shows the growing influence of instrumental music, while the orchestra’s participation and the will to uphold dramatic interest reveal the composer’s concern in expanding the expressive scope of opera seria.

George Frideric Handel had been living in England for some time when he was appointed by the Duke of Chandos as composer in residence to his opulent estate at Cannons. There, Handel had at his disposal a small group of musicians: a few strings without violas, two wind players who could handle both recorders and oboes, and a few singers. In 1718, on a text by John Gay after Pope and Dryden—the subject was taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses—Handel composed Acis and Galatea, an English- language masque, or sort of short opera, produced for the duke’s court. Its elegiac and sensual mood as well as its light and tender melodies pleased forthwith, and it became for the remainder of the century one of the composer’s most popular works.

As for the dance, it is herein represented by Jean-Féry Rebel, pupil of Lully, first violin at the Opéra and future director of the Concert spirituel. His ballet Les Caractères de la danse is a succession of the principal dance rhythms of the time, quite like what Lully had done in the dance lesson of Molière’s Bourgeois gentilhomme. Rebel’s dance suite was first performed in 1715 by Françoise Prévost, who suggested action by combining mime and postures with the dance steps. The work soon became popular, and was executed anew in a different style by Marie Sallé, who was to dance it in London in 1725 with Handel conducting, and again several years later in everyday attire at Versailles. Finally, La Camargo performed the work as her début at the Opéra in 1726, “with all the vivacity and intelligence one can expect from a young person of 15 or 16 years”, as reports Le Mercure galant.

All these scenic expedients, sumptuously supported by music, reveal the Baroque’s incipient affirmation of individualism, glorification of the ego and desire for power, control and knowledge, soon to culminate in the spirit of the Enlightenment. But what strikes us most today is perhaps the verve, the sense of dignity and the love of life which arise from this theatrical and `spectacular’ conception of human existence.

Each era creates its own symbol that figuratively answers the question of the meaning of life, and whereby it reveals the key to its secrets. The answer of the Baroque age is that the world is a theatre. One can have a grander idea of the world, but hardly of theatre. No other era has devoted itself more intensely to this art than the Baroque, and no other has understood it more profoundly. Moreover, there exists no field in which the Baroque has revealed itself more completely than in theatre. Baroque man had made it an all-inclusive picture and a perfect symbol of the world.” - Richard Alewyn, Aus der Welt des Barock, 1957.

— © François Filiatrault 1997
translation: Jacques-André Houle