Theatre Under Louis XIV
Theatre Under Louis XIV

Author: J. Prest

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2006-09-04

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0230600921

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This book explores the fascinating phenomenon of cross-casting and related gender issues in different theatrical genres and different performance contexts during the heyday of French theatre. Although professional acting troupes under Louis XIV were mixed, cross-casting remained an important feature of French court ballet (in which the King himself performed a number of women's roles) and an occasional feature of spoken comedy and tragic opera. Cross-casting also persisted out of necessity in the school drama of the period. This book fills an important gap in the history of French theatre and provides new insight into wider theoretical questions of gender and theatricality. The inclusion of chapters on ballet and opera (as well as spoken drama) opens up the richness of French theatre under Louis XIV in a way that has not been achieved before.

Molière, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical Afterlife
Molière, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical Afterlife

Author: Mechele Leon

Publisher: University of Iowa Press

Published: 2009-10

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1587298910

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From 1680 until the French Revolution, when legislation abolished restrictions on theatrical enterprise, a single theatre held sole proprietorship of Molière’s works. After 1791, his plays were performed in new theatres all over Paris by new actors, before audiences new to his works. Both his plays and his image took on new dimensions. In Molière, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical Afterlife, Mechele Leon convincingly demonstrates how revolutionaries challenged the ties that bound this preeminent seventeenth-century comic playwright to the Old Regime and provided him with a place of honor in the nation’s new cultural memory. Leon begins by analyzing the performance of Molière’s plays during the Revolution, showing how his privileged position as royal servant was disrupted by the practical conditions of the revolutionary theatre. Next she explores Molière’s relationship to Louis XIV, Tartuffe, and the social function of his comedy, using Rousseau’s famous critique of Molière as well as appropriations of George Dandin in revolutionary iconography to discuss how Moliérean laughter was retooled to serve republican interests. After examining the profusion of plays dealing with his life in the latter years of the Revolution, she looks at the exhumation of his remains and their reentombment as the tangible manifestation of his passage from Ancien Régime favorite to new national icon. The great Molière is appreciated by theatre artists and audiences worldwide, but for the French people it is no exaggeration to say that the Father of French Comedy is part of their national soul. By showing how he was represented, reborn, and reburied in the new France—how the revolutionaries asserted his relevance for their tumultuous time in ways that were audacious, irreverent, imaginative, and extreme—Leon clarifies the important role of theatrical figures in preserving and portraying a nation’s history.

Musical Theatre at the Court of Louis XIV
Musical Theatre at the Court of Louis XIV

Author: Rebecca Harris-Warrick

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-09-29

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780521020220

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Le Mariage de la Grosse Cathos, a short ballet performed at the court of Louis XIV, is of major importance to the study of French Baroque dance. This facsimile reproduction of the entire manuscript is accompanied by a comprehensive study of the work itself and the context in which it was created and performed. Dated 1688, it provides a wealth of new and detailed information on numerous aspects of theatrical dance. It differs from the known choreographic sources in many respects, the two most important being the completeness of all its components--choreography, music, and text--and the use of a previously unknown dance notation system.

Controversy in French Drama
Controversy in French Drama

Author: J. Prest

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-01-01

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1137344008

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In 1664, Molière's Tartuffe was banned from public performance. This book provides a detailed, in-depth account of five-year struggle (1664-69) to have the ban lifted and, so doing, sheds important new light on 1660s France and the ancien régime more broadly.

A Theater of Diplomacy
A Theater of Diplomacy

Author: Ellen R. Welch

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2017-04-03

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0812249003

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The seventeenth-century French diplomat François de Callières once wrote that "an ambassador resembles in some way an actor exposed on the stage to the eyes of the public in order to play great roles." The comparison of the diplomat to an actor became commonplace as the practice of diplomacy took hold in early modern Europe. More than an abstract metaphor, it reflected the rich culture of spectacular entertainment that was a backdrop to emissaries' day-to-day lives. Royal courts routinely honored visiting diplomats or celebrated treaty negotiations by staging grandiose performances incorporating dance, music, theater, poetry, and pageantry. These entertainments—allegorical ballets, masquerade balls, chivalric tournaments, operas, and comedies—often addressed pertinent themes such as war, peace, and international unity in their subject matter. In both practice and content, the extravagant exhibitions were fully intertwined with the culture of diplomacy. But exactly what kind of diplomatic work did these spectacles perform? Ellen R. Welch contends that the theatrical and performing arts had a profound influence on the development of modern diplomatic practices in early modern Europe. Using France as a case study, Welch explores the interconnected histories of international relations and the theatrical and performing arts. Her book argues that theater served not merely as a decorative accompaniment to negotiations, but rather underpinned the practices of embodied representation, performance, and spectatorship that constituted the culture of diplomacy in this period. Through its examination of the early modern precursors to today's cultural diplomacy initiatives, her book investigates the various ways in which performance structures international politics still.