Tag Archives: Louis XIII

From “Ballet de Cour” to “Comédie-Ballet”

10 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by in Ballet, France, Grotesque, Italy, Theatre, Wars of Religion

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Wedding_ball_of_the_Duc_de_Joyeuse,_1581Wedding of Anne de Joyeuse with Marguerite de Vaudémont, 24 September 1581 in Le Louvre. On the left under the dai are Henri III, Catherine de Médicis, and Queen Louise. French school 1581-1582. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

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Le Ballet comique de la Reine (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Molière (15 January 1622 – 17 February 1673), born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, spent several years performing outside Paris. His first troupe, l’Illustre Théâtre, established in 1643, went bankrupt and, in 1645, Molière was imprisoned. He had to leave for the provinces.

Les Précieuses ridicules, a one-act play which premièred on 18 November 1659, was Molière’s first Parisian success and he would produce several other plays, about thirty-four, eleven of which were comédies-ballets, ten with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully and one, with music by Charpentier. However, preceding the comédie-ballet, was the ballet de cour.

The Ballet de Cour

Circé ou le Balet comique de la Royne (1581)

The first ballet, a ballet de cour, was Circé ou le Balet comique de la Royne (1581). It was commissioned by Catherine de’ Medici, and choreographed by Balthasar Beaujoyeulx, or Baldassarre da Belgioioso. As we have seen frequently, the Renaissance began in Italy and, consequently, many ‘French’ institutions find their origin in Italy. Dissemination was often due to marriages.

The Ballet comique de la Reine was performed on 15 October 1581 at the court of Catherine de’ Medici. It was part of the wedding celebration of the Duc de Joyeuse‘s, a court ‘mignon,’ a dandy, marriage to Queen Louise’s sister, Marguerite of Lorraine). The text of the ballet was written by Nicolas Filleul de la Chesnayne. Girard de Beaulieu wrote the music.

The Ballet comique de la Reine was created for the wedding celebration of Queen Louise’s sister, who married le Duc de Joyeuse (1561 – 1687), a court ‘mignon,’ a dandy. The text was by Nicolas Filleul de la Chesnayne. Girard de Beaulieu wrote the music. And, as noted above, Beaujoyeux, or Belgioioso, was its choreographer.

Louise was married to Henri III of France, a son a Henri II and Catherine de’ Medici, who was assassinated by Jacques Clément, a Catholic fanatic. As for Anne de Joyeuse (1561 – 1687),  he perished at the hands of French Calvinist Protestants, called Huguenots, 800 of whom he had slaughtered. In fact, the French wars of religion are the backdrop to the creation of the ballet de cour.

sans-titre

“Les Fées de la forêt de Saint-Germain” (First performed in February 1625)
“Entrée des Esperlucates ”
“Grand Ballet de la douairière de Billebahaut” (First performed in February 1626)

Daniel Rabel: the “grotesque” in the ballet de cour

  • Daniel Rabel
  • the grotesque

Daniel Rabel (1578 – 3 January 1637) was a man of many talents. Wikipedia describes Rabel as “a Renaissance French painter, engraver, miniaturist, botanist and natural history illustrator.” As a painter, Rabel produced grotesque depictions of ballet, but beginning in 1617 until his death in 1637, Rabel was a set designer for theatres and for ballets de cour.

In our context the term grotesque (from grotto) is not pejorative. The ‘grotesque’ is an aesthetics as is the ‘baroque.’ Medieval gargoyles and misericords are acceptably ‘grotesques.’ Beverly Minster, a 12th-century cathedral, has a fine collection of grotesque misericords. In the 19th century, Hugo would revive the grotesque. His 1831 novel, Notre-Dame de Paris features Quasimodo, a hunchback. The “grotesque” is associated with the Middle Ages and the 19th century.

Le Roi danse

“Les Fées de la forêt de Saint-Germain” was danced at the Louvre in February 1625, with Louis XIII himself in the role of a “valiant fighter.” (See Daniel Rabel, Wikipedia.) Louis XIII also danced in the ballet he composed, the Ballet de la Merlaison.

Louis XIII and his brother, Gaston d’Orléans, danced in the Ballet du Sérieux et du Grotesque. Louis XIV was also a dancer. On 23 February 1653, Louis XIV danced in the Ballet de la Nuit, at the Petit-Bourbon, a theater.

Louis XIV
Louis XIV

Louis XIII’s Le Ballet de la Merlaison

You may remember that Louis XIII, the Sun-King’s father, wrote the Ballet de la Merlaison. Louis XIII was a composer and he composed a ballet. Consequently, the creation of ballet is associated with both Louis XIII and his son, Louis XIV. However, Louis XIII’s Ballet de la Merlaison is a ballet de cour as had been Circé ou le Balet Comique de la Royne. As noted above, Louis XIII performed in the ballet he composed.

Other ballets de cour were performed before 1661, when Molière created Les Fâcheux, (the Bores), to music by Lully. King Louis XIII, the Sun-King’s father (Louis XIV), was a composer and, as noted above, he played a role in “Les Fées de la forêt de Saint-Germain.” Louis XIII composed the Ballet de la Merlaison, a ballet de cour.

Maurice_Leloir_-_Le_ballet_de_la_Merlaison

Le Ballet de la Merlaison by Maurice Leloir, in Dumas père’s The Three Musketeers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Comédie-ballet

  • Le Bourgeois gentilhomme: comédie ballet and “play-within-a-play”
  • Jean-Baptiste Lully
  • Molière

For a long time, little attention was given Molière’s contribution to ballet, and my book, if ever it is published, will not improve matters as I will discuss only one comédie-ballet: George Dandin (1668). However, one cannot ignore Le Bourgeois gentihomme (14 November 1670), where the ballet is both entertainment and a play-within-a play. Monsieur Jourdain is deceived into marrying his daughter Lucile to Cléonte who has disguised himself into the son of the Mufti, le grand Turc. This is a case of comedy rescuing comedy.

Molière wrote the text of his comédies-ballets, and the text may be read independently of the divertissements, for which he also wrote the text. However, these ballets inject laughter into Molière’s comedies several of which are somber works. The ballets are, to a large extent, part of the comic text.

Except for The Imaginary Invalid (1673), the music of Molière’s comédies-ballets was composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully, born Giovanni Battista Lulli. Pierre Beauchamp (30 October 1631 – February 1705) was Molière’s choreographer.

All three, Molière (playwright), Lully (composer and dancer) and Pierre Beauchamp (choreographer), are major figures in their respective profession and Molière’s comédie-ballet a significant step in the creation of ballet. Lully was named director of Académie Royale de Musique in 1669 and worked with Philippe Quinault, his librettist. The Académie Royale de Musique developed into the Paris Opéra and the smaller Opéra Garnier. Since 1989, performances have been held at the 2700-seat theatre Opéra Bastille.

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L’Opéra Garnier

 

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L’Opéra Garnier, Le Grand Foyer

Comédie-ballet and le style galant

Several ballets de cour and the related comédies-ballets were staged. It would seem that Voltaire La Princesse de Navarre (1745) is that last comédie-ballet. It was performed to music by Jean-Philippe Rameau (25 September 1683 – 12 September 1764). (See Comédie-ballet, Wikipedia.)

A few years earlier, Rameau had composed Les Indes galantes with libretto by Louis Fuzelier. It was performed by the Académie Royale de Musique at its theatre in the Palais-Royal, in Paris, on 23 August 1735. The ‘style galant’ had entered comédie-ballet heralded by André Campra‘s L’Europe galante, written to a text by Antoine Houdar de la Motte on 24 October 1697. It was an opéra-ballet, which we are not discussing, not a comédie-ballet.

We close with Rameau’s Les Indes galantes, which was not an opera but a turning-point in the history of ballet in the galant style. Specialists were now developing ballet.  

Conclusion

  • Les Fâcheux (The Bores) the first comédie-ballet (1661)
  • Vaux-le-Vicomte

Molière wrote eleven comédies-ballets, the first of which was Les Fâcheux (The Bores), created by Molière and Lully and performed at Vaux-le-Vicomte, Nicolas Fouquet’s magnificent castle. Fouquet invited a newly-crowned king Louis XIV to a lavish feast at Vaux, which took place on 17 August 1661, but Louis grew jealous. We have read that story. Louis XIV used ballets to cultivate the image of the Sun-King. Therefore, to a certain extent, ballet was put into the service of absolutism.

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With kind regards to everyone. ♥

Below are scenes from Belgian filmmaker Gérard Corbiau‘s Le Roi danse (2000)

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Grotesque Musician from the Ballet du Sérieux et du Grotesque, 1627
(Art Gallery of Ontario)

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© Micheline Walker
10 April 2016
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Une éminence grise: Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by in History

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Cardinal de Richelieu, by Philippe de Champaigne *

* Philippe de Champaigne (26 May 1602 – 12 August 1674)

Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac (9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642) is probably the best example of an éminence grise, the name given persons who stand behind the official ruler, and ensure his or her success.  Richelieu was a clergyman, a noble and a statesman.  He became a public figure when he was elected one of the representatives of the clergy of Poitou to the States General of 1614.[i]  He became Secretary of State in 1616, six years after Henri IV was assassinated by François Ravaillac.

Marie de Médicis

In 1610, when her husband Henri IV was assassinated, Marie de Médicis or Marie de’ Medici (26 April 1575 – 4 July 1642), a potentially powerful widow, could have ruled France.  The future Louis XIII (27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) was only nine when his father was killed.  But the French did not like Marie.  She was not very intelligent and there was something vulgar about her: “[t]he queen feuded with Henri’s mistresses in language that shocked French courtiers.” (Wikipedia)

Marie’s main mistake was to befriend the corrupt Concini family, nipping in the bud her chances to govern and leaving room for the then bishop and brilliant Richelieu to enter into the service of Louis XIII and become the chief architect of absolutism.

Cardinal de Richelieu, by Philippe de Champaigne (c.1640)

Absolute Monarchy: one king, one language, one religion

As for Richelieu, he would centralize France and establish absolutism as firmly as he could.   Put in a nutshell, absolutism required the people of France to have one king, to speak one language, and to practice the same religion.  Between 1624 until his death in 1642, Armand Jean du Plessis did achieve the three goals he had set as his objective.

Louis XIII

In theory, Richelieu was nothing more than King Louis XIII‘s chief minister but, in reality, he was king regent and extremely powerful.  Louis de Bourbon was a reluctant and unlikely king and therefore needed Richelieu, which goes a long way in explaining the authority afforded Richelieu.  The relationship between the king and his chief minister was well nigh symbiotic.  In other words, Marie’s intellectual deficiencies and Louis’s inability to rule were ideal circumstances for a bright young Bishop to become a ruler.

Louis XIII was not cut out to be an absolute ruler.  Louis liked to go hunting and he and his minions gathered in his hunting lodge at Versailles.  He was a homosexual and, as I recently discovered, he was also a composer, as was Frederick the Great.

On the Day of the Dupes (November 10, 1630), when the rumour circulated that Richelieu had been killed, Louis XIII took his chief minister to his hunting lodge in Versailles.  According to Britannica, “[a]fter initially agreeing to the cardinal’s dismissal, the king recovered and chose to support Richelieu against the wishes of his mother, his wife, and his confessor.”[ii]  Marie was sent to Blois and Richelieu started to rule unopposed, as did his successor Jules Mazarin, the chief minister from December 5, 1642 until March 9, 1661.

La Fronde

The Fronde, a revolt which began in 1635, at the time of the Franco-Spanish War, was the acid test that confirmed absolutism as exercised by Richelieu/Louis XIII.  The Fronde opposed, on the one hand, the people (les parlements) and the king, and, on the other hand, the nobility and the king, or his chief minister.  Frondeurs actually entered Louis XIV’s bedroom at the Louvre when he was a child.  As a result, Louis XIV’s advisors were “bourgeois” who lived upstairs at Versailles which, as I have mentioned recently, fully explains their being called, le conseil d’en haut.  Here “en haut” meant upstairs.

One language

We have named the three conditions demanded by absolutism: one king, one language and one religion.  I will write about these goals, but not in the order I just used.  We will begin with the linguistic condition.  All of France had to speack and spoke French.

Well, in this regard, we owe the creation of the Académie-Française (1635) to Richelieu.  Very early in the century, Catherine de Vivonne or Madame de Rambouillet, born in Rome, opened her salon.  The people who gathered in her chambre bleue, including aristocrats and Richelieu himself, were by an large honnêtes hommes, a term which as I have written in an earlier blog does not mean honest men.  Honest men would be called hommes honnêtes.  Not only would l’honnête homme speak French, but he would speak it well. 

L‘honnête homme is the perfect gentleman.  He has Italian roots in that he embodies Baldassare Castiglione‘s courtier.  Castiglione is the author of Il Libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier), published in 1528.  During his stay at the Court of Urbino, in what is now Italy, Castiglione observed an “art,” the art of being a courtier, an “honnête homme,” but not necessarily an aristocratic honnête homme.  Aristocrats had to learn honnêteté.

In the salons, one spoke well, hence the creation of the above-mentioned Académie-Française whose mission it would be to regulate the French language.  The French court and courtiers would have to be as civilized as persons attending salons, but the court could not be “précieuse.”  The movement known as La Préciosité was an instance of what Jean Cocteau described as “not knowing just how far one can go too far.”  Chairs are chairs and an armchair, an armchair or fauteuil (fautei).  Neither are “les commodités de la conversation.” 

Ironically, Jean Cocteau’s famous phrase about audacity summarizes l’honnêteté.  An honnête homme knew how far he could go too far.  “Avoir du tact, c’est savoir jusqu’où on peut aller trop loin.” or “Being tactful in audacity is knowing how far one can go to far.” (Jean Cocteau [5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963]).  What a quotation!

The Edict of Nantes, 1598

One Religion

Under Richelieu, being a protestant was a major disadvantage.  One could pay a price.  So despite the Edict of Nantes, promulgated under Henri IV, in 1598, and dictating tolerance towards Huguenots, Richelieu, our éminence grise, but rouge, given his red garments, brought Louis XIII to La Rochelle when it was besieged, in 1627-1628.  That year, some twenty-two thousand Huguenots were starved to death.  Out of a population of twenty-seven thousand Huguenots, five thousand survived.

“[Richelieu] believed that their [the Huguenots] right under the Edict of Nantes to maintain armed fortresses weakened the king’s position at home and abroad. Protestant rebellions in 1625 and 1627 persuaded the cardinal of the need for a direct confrontation.”[iii]  The British tried to rescue the starving Huguenots, but were defeated.

So the Edict of Nantes was revoked long before its official revocation by Louis XIV, on 18 October 1685.

One King

The centralization of France, absolute monarchy in this case, also demanded that France have but one king.  This takes us to La Fronde.  Various grands seigneurs, dukes who had owned large portions of France, resented being disempowered, which was a requirement of absolutism as designed by Richelieu and put into pratice by his chosen successor, Jules Mazarin (1602–1661), born Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino.

La Fronde des nobles was severely repressed.  No one was drawn and quartered by four horses racing respectively east, west, north and south, which had been Ravaillac’s fate, Henri IV’s assassin.  But the story of Cinq-Mars (pronounced: Mar), whose father was a friend of Richelieu, illustrates how ruthlessly Richelieu made everyone in France march to the beat of one drummer.

Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis de Cinq-Mars (1620 – September 12, 1642)  became Louis XIII’s lover and told Louis XIII that Richelieu should be executed.  Cinq-Mars had a powerful supporter in Gaston de France, Henri IV’s and Marie de Médicis’s son and Louis XIII’s brother.  The conspiracy failed and it would appear that Cinq-Mars’s family did not believe Richelieu would have young Cinq-Mars beheaded.  At any rate, they did not hire a good executioner and the head took forever to fall.  This type of torture led to the invention of the guillotine.

Not only was Richelieu pitiless, but he insisted on being transported to Lyons where the executions took place, lying on his death-bed.  He wanted to be a witness to 22 year-old Cinq-Mars’s execution.  François-Auguste de Thou (Paris c. 1607 – Lyon 12 septembre 1642), not a conspirator, but one who knew about the conspiracy and did not tell, was also executed on that day.  As for Gaston de France, or Gaston d’Orléans, he lost his claim to the throne of France.

Conclusion

So, to conclude, Richelieu

  • was the main architect of French absolute monarchy: one language, one religion and one king;
  • he was or seemed an éminence grise, the man behind Louis XIII;
  • he ruled France as though he was the king, which makes him look like an impostor, yet he wasn’t.

In other words, Richelieu ruled, but if he did rule, it was because he could not be king.  He had no claim to the throne of France, nor did his successor, Mazarin.  Both were chief ministers, except that Richelieu was, if not a crowned king, the ruler of France.  And if he was, though unofficially, king of France, it is because circumstances created a breech in an otherwise impenetrable world.  As mentioned above, his relationship with Louis XIII was all but symbiotic.  They were two in one.

There have been several éminences grises. Wikipedia gives a long list of éminences grises.  But Richelieu was no ordinary éminence grise.  There is always more to tell…

 * Henri Motte (1846-1922), peintre historique (Siège de La Rochelle)

(please click on the picture to enarge it and on the titles to hear the music)

____________________

[i] J. H. Shennan. “France.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 28 Feb. 2012. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/215768/France>.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

More on Boëthius & rising to someone’s defense

23 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by in Literature, Music, Sharing

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The Yale, the Aberdeen Bestiary

Aberdeen Bestiary

More on Boëthius

Surfing the net in search of appropriate pictures and music for Boëthius, I was surprised to find that he had many admirers.

Among the material I discovered on You Tube is a German-language account of his death.  I have put a link to this website at the very bottom of this post.  It provides a more detailed account of his life than mine. 

For instance, I did not mention that Boëthius was accused of treason when and perhaps because he rose to the defense of ex-consul Cæcina Decius Faustus Albinus who had just been accused of treasonous correspondence with Justin I, the Byzantine emperor.  Boëthius pointed out that if Albinus could be accused of treason, so could he, which is precisely what happened. 

Rising to someone’s defense

So poor Boëthius learned, for the duration of his imprisonment, that one does not question the judgment of the “great.” Given his rank and the nature of his position, it could be that Boëthius believed he was at liberty to defend Albinus.  But the nature of his position also allowed communication between Boëthius and Justin I.  Boëthius was an accomplished Hellenist.   

We are now better protected against false accusations, but the fact remains that  rising to the defense of an unjustly accused person is  dangerous, which may explain why so many of us will not help victims of an injustice.  By and large, people in high places will not lift a finger to help a person who is the victim of an injustice 

Émile Zola: the Dreyfus affair

When Émile Zola published his: “J’accuse” in an effort to help Dreyfus, an army captain falsely accused of treason, he [Zola] was tried and convicted but managed to flee to England.  The traitor was Charles Marie Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy (16 December 1847 – 21 May 1923) who never had to face punitive measures. 

And it goes on and on.  This morning, I posted a short message on President Obama’s Facebook page and was immediately deluged with mostly unsavoury mail.  When President Bush discovered the US was facing a financial collapse, averted by TARP, I lost a third of my pension fund.  President Bush was bailed out by the Democrats and my situation has improved, but I thank God and Lady Fortune for the fact that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States and that I was born in a country that has social programs.              

Finally I thank Boëthius for writing The Consolation of Philosophy (524 ce).  He could not avoid torture and death but he reminded us that the scenario is always the same: from ashes to ashes.  And he also reminded us that life which sometimes brings the worst can also bring the best.  It can be ornamented.  

The above picture has both nothing and everything to do with this blog.  It is a thing of beauty, naïve beauty, and therefore a small pleasure.  When I receive unsavoury messages, I turn to beauty wherein I find a temporary refuge.  Marcus Aurelius looked upon his soul as his best refuge.  It could be that my soul is also my best refuge, but I need a guardian angel as I struggle to reach it.

How does a blogger say to her readers that she is there for them? 

    

Der Tod des Boëthius (524 n. Chr.)
Bourbon Louis XIII  (1601–1643 ): Ballet de la Merlaison
(please click on titles to listen)

22 February 2012

 

Bourbeau & Suzor-Coté: a Discovery

25 Sunday Sep 2011

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Log Hauling
 
Log Hauling, by Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté
 

There are happy and unexpected moments.  For instance, a few days ago, I went in search of information on my grandfather’s family.  He was a Bourbeau and he is my mother’s father. I have used his name when publishing scholarly articles:  Bourbeau-Walker.

The Bourbeaus came to New France in the seventeenth century. They were Huguenots, or French Protestants. Two brothers came to New France: Pierre and Simon. They had survived the Siege of La Rochelle (1627-1628), by Richelieu and Louis XIII. The protestants had chosen La Rochelle as their refuge even though the Edict of Nantes (1598) protected them, at least officially, from persecution in other locations.

However, it is at that point in the history of France that absolute monarchy was consolidated. After King Henri IV was assassinated, in 1610, although still in effect, the Edict of Nantes, which stipulated tolerance of Huguenots, was not always respected. Henri IV, who had converted to Catholicism, had been a Huguenot, which is why he was assassinated. His son, Louis XIII, was too young to be crowned, so a regent was chosen: Richelieu. Richelieu became the chief architect of absolute monarchy in France. It was his belief that the King’s subjects should all speak French and be Catholics: one King, one language, one religion.

During the Siege of La Rochelle, some 22,000 protestants were starved to death, but two Bourbeau brothers were among the 5,000 who survived and the two later moved to New France. In 1685, when the Edict of Nantes was revoked by Louis XIV, the Bourbeaus and other French protestants living in New France moved south, to the English colonies. But a few stayed in Canada.

As I was searching Bourbeau entries, I saw a picture of the Bourbeau farm and realized that it was located in the area of Quebec where my grandmother had grown up.  This picture, an oil painting, is the work of Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté (1869-1937), now famous.  I knew that my grandmother had been an artist’s assistant, so I was able to determine for certain, first, that the artist was Suzor-Côté and, second, that in all likelihood she met her husband, a Bourbeau, because the Bourbeaus were close friends of Suzor-Coté.  There are several Bourbeau paintings by Suzor-Côté.

Research is an extremely interesting endeavour because of surprises and coincidences. I will now attempt to incorporate a least one of Suzor-Coté’s paintings in this blog.

A river near the Bourbeau farm
Suzor-Coté
 
 
© Micheline Bourbeau-Walker
25 September 2011
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