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An unrecognized key to understanding the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully-that Lully conceived his operas as theatrical vehicles with the stage, its multiple aspects, and his Académie Royale de Musique repertory troupe's performers in mind-provides the central tenet of the book Made for the Stage: The Operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully (1673-1686). Over five chapters, this perspective expands our current understanding of how his opera's librettos were constructed, the deployment of his musico-dramatic settings, his dramatic use of preludes and ritournelles, and spectacle's role in his works. This stage-centered focus reveals the ramifications of Lully's unmistakable creative and authoritative involvement in all aspects of his operas and thereby invites scholars, performers and students to consider his works anew. Banducci's well-developed, persuasive and original argument that Lully and his librettist structured their operas to suit the strengths and weaknesses of particular singers has far-reaching implications.
About the author
Antonia L. Banducci specializes in French baroque opera. For a facsimile edition of André Campra's tragédie en musique, Tancrède (Paris, 1702), she provided the scholarly contextualization and an extensive glossed list of rare prompt notes used in Madame de Pompadour's 1748 court production of the opera. A former Fulbright scholar, she has published articles in Early Music, Eighteenth-Century Music, and the Journal for Seventeenth-Century Music. She has presented papers at national meetings of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music and at international meetings, conferences, and seminars in Europe. She recently served a three-year term as Secretary of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music.
Summary
An unrecognized key to understanding the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully-that Lully conceived his operas as theatrical vehicles with the stage, its multiple aspects, and his Académie Royale de Musique repertory troupe's performers in mind-provides the central tenet of the book Made for the Stage: The Operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully (1673-1686). Over five chapters, this perspective expands our current understanding of how his opera’s librettos were constructed, the deployment of his musico-dramatic settings, his dramatic use of preludes and ritournelles, and spectacle’s role in his works. This stage-centered focus reveals the ramifications of Lully’s unmistakable creative and authoritative involvement in all aspects of his operas and thereby invites scholars, performers and students to consider his works anew. Banducci’s well-developed, persuasive and original argument that Lully and his librettist structured their operas to suit the strengths and weaknesses of particular singers has far-reaching implications.
