THE WORK
Ercole Amante was
commissioned by Cardinal Mazarin from the Abbot Butti and the Venetian
composer Francesco Cavalli for the wedding in 1662 of the young French
sovereign Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse, Infanta of Spain. This union of
the Sun King and the heiress to the Spanish throne was intended to seal
a definitive peace between France and Spain.
The marriage was thus an apotheosis, and the opera commissioned by
Mazarin, prefiguring and imagining this apotheosis, was meant to be a
crowning glory. It recalls the special connection between the kingdoms
of France and God. It praises Christ the King, the sovereign saviour,
who, through this particular alliance with Spain, frees His people from
the chains of war and disorder. To perfect this work of dream and
prefiguration, Mazarin not only turned to Italian opera, a genre then
little-known in France, but also called upon the French tradition of
courtly ballet, commissioning from Lully numbers to be inserted in the
sung drama. A complete spectacle. Ballet and lyric tragedy, Lully and
Cavalli. An apotheosis ...
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