The Royal Opera of Versailles, a blue and gold candy box built for the wedding of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, may well be adorned with Cupid, it also hides furies.
They almost stifled the music during the terrible year 2020-2021.
What pythia would have prophesied it?
On paper, the Royal Opera was celebrating its 250th anniversary, the brochure announced a season with drums and trumpets, to the extent of the event.
The Covid curse has struck.
Closed doors in the theater and, above all, tragically empty boxes.
The Opera shows were financed thanks to the Fountains Waterfall. These having remained dormant, in pain of confined spectators and tourists assigned to residence far away. Was silence going to become master of the house?
It would have been a drama!
Since the restoration in 2009 of this jewel decorated by Pajou, it had taken thirteen years of programming masterfully led by Laurent Brunner to establish Versailles as one of the capitals of baroque music.
William Christie, John Eliot Gardiner, Leonardo Gracia Alarcon, Cecilia Bartoli, Raphaël Pichon… These great names who serve the repertoire from Salzburg to London had found meaning in putting Versailles on their journey: it is one of the most beautiful cradles of this music -the.
Even today, Laurent Brunner has managed to hatch a new generation there.
Thus Valentin Tournet or Gaétan Jarry.
Sumptuous programming
Alerted by the disaster, the gods of Olympus rushed to help.
The state provided special assistance and the Friends of the Royal Opera created a foundation to strengthen their support.
The blue and gold candy box reopens this year with a sumptuous program,
Atys
by Lully,
Le Palais des sortilèges
by Rossi,
Alcina
by Handel,
Platée
de Rameau… in new productions, a hundred concerts and a consequent homage to Molière, born in 1622, who accompanied with Lully and Charpentier.
The music will also resume its quarters in the Royal Chapel, restored from the frame to the frames and gilding, after three and a half years of work.
The most beautiful?
The light flooding in through the "white mirrors" or stained glass windows.
“During the second confinement, the music continued,”
recalls Catherine Pégard, president of the Palace of Versailles.
“We suggested that the artists record the scheduled shows here. This allowed us to keep track of these concerts through our record label Château de Versailles Spectacles. While the castle was completely closed, these recordings brought a tension which is essential to us. Pass the chapel and hear a repeat broke the silence in which we lived day by jou
r
. There was still music in Versailles. How to imagine that it stops there? "
