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Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Lully: Cadmus et Hermione
Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:
This tragédie en musique was the first collaboration of the composer Jean Baptiste Lully with librettist Philippe Quinault. Starting in 1673 with Cadmus et Hermione, Lully and Quinault created thirteen such works, their partnership ending only with Lully's strange death in 1686 from a foot infection. Together they furthermore created French baroque opera, establishing a model for this genre that lasted nigh on a century afterwards.
All the elements of the genre are in place in Cadmus et Hermione, including the ballet sequences that Lully's patron, King Louis XIV, insisted upon. Cadmus et Hermione remained so popular with the public that in various adaptations it continued to be revived at least until 1737.
There's a brand new and definitive recording of this, the very first great French opera, made in the splendid 250-year-old opera house in the royal palace at Versailles. It was made in November of 2019 for release on CD in a deluxe package in 2021 through Chateau de Versailles Spectacles. Vincent Dumestre is the leader of the period instrumentalists of Le Poème Harmonique and the choral Ensemble Aedes.