Music for King's Gardens in Versailles: William Christie

O wydarzeniu

In 2013, as part of the year dedicated to Le Nôtre – the gardener to Louis XIV – to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his birth, William Christie will be conducting two exceptional concerts at the Grand Trianon of the Palace of Versailles.

William Christie, as we all now know, is passionately dedicated to gardening, plants, flowers, horticulture and everything to do with gardens. On his estate in Vendée he has devoted years of work to producing an outstanding reconstruction of the French‐style formal garden, which last year became a musical garden thanks to the festival that he inaugurated there. When we spoke with William Christie about the 400th anniversary of the birth of Le Nôtre, he immediately volunteered to pay musical homage to this designer of genius. 'Music for the King’s Gardens' was the title that he found for this project, with the concerts to be given pertinently but somewhat exceptionally under the Peristyle of the Grand Trianon. Between the Main Courtyard and the Gardens designed by Le Nôtre, in the warmth and fading light of the summer evening, the Peristyle will recover the splendour and intimate atmosphere that Louis XIV so admired in it. This marble colonnaded portico surrounded by plants will be the magnificent setting for works of music composed by contemporaries of Louis XIV and Le Nôtre.

Le Nôtre regarded gardens as the continuation of architecture by other means. For William Christie, they are also the most sumptuous setting for performing baroque music which evokes the open air, the pastoral world, hunting, nature in all its metamorphoses… So he decided to present three outstanding works here. First of all, two works that are directly linked to the work of Le Nôtre in the Gardens of Versailles: Lully composed 'La Grotte de Versailles' in direct reference to the Thetys Grotto which held the splendid sculpture group of Apollo and the Nymphs (now to be seen in the Grove of Apollo’s Baths). This celebrated Italian‐style grotto, of which only engravings remain, was perhaps the most precious ornament of the Gardens of Versailles in their early state. Built in 1666, it was demolished in 1684 to make way for the extension of the palace. In 1668, Lully and Quinault dedicated a vocal and instrumental work to it. A few years later, Lalande composed 'Les Fontaines de Versailles', a mini‐opera in six scenes, performed in Versailles on 5 April 1683. This also paid homage to the most famous ornaments of the Gardens of Versailles, these fountains whose spectacular water features have come down through the centuries without losing their celebrity. 'Louis brings in the new season accompanied by games and love” reads the libretto: could one imagine a finer homage to the spring and the King? William Christie will combine these two works by musicians who were closest to the King, in an evocation of the gardens of Louis XIV.

When Charpentier composed his pocket‐size opera Actéon in 1684, it was not for the King, but for the Duchesse de Guise, whose musical entertainment he directed. The work was a success and has continued to be performed many times until today. Charpentier, who probably sung the title role at its first performance, based the libretto on the account in Ovid’s Metamorphoses of the passions and the misadventures of the young hunter Actaeon, who loves Diana, the goddess of hunting and virginity, whom he unexpectedly sees bathing in the forest which is her domain. To punish his indecent curiosity, she transforms him into a stag who is then devoured by his own hounds. A baroque parable of the ravages of love, Actéon is one of the masterpieces of the composer and of all the music of the late 17th century.

In this ideal setting, William Christie and his Arts Florissants will give these works a truly memorable rendition.