Concert series ends with Scenes from Moliere
The 2010-11 Concert Series ends with a lively French flourish on Sunday 19 June at 3.00pm with "Scenes from Moliere", performed by the Leeds Baroque Choir & Orchestra.
Moliere's comedies have been central to the European theatrical tradition from the seventeenth century to the present, though they are rarely revived with their original music. In this specially researched programme Leeds Baroque explores the music written for Molière's plays by his great contemporaries Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
The programme includes Charpentier's prologue to Le Malade imaginaire (1673), effectively a miniature self-contained opera, and Lully's spectacular concluding ballet for George Dandin (1668). Also included are Molière's two famous satirical mock ceremonies, of Turks in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670), set by Lully, and of doctors in Le Malade imaginaire, set by Charpentier.
There will be a pre-concert talk by Richard Andrews: "Music into drama: Italy into France?" at 2.15pm, exploring the following issues:
Why did Molière insert music and dance into some of his spoken comedies? Were he and his composers just reacting to demands from Louis XIV? In the background, though, Jean-Baptiste Lully was plotting to monopolise music theatre and create an opera house in Paris. But opera was a form invented in, and identified with, Italy. What was going on here? How far was "classical" French theatre already a product of Italian models?.
The talk will be FREE to concert ticket holders.
Read more about the concert and book tickets
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