Le mélange du sacré et du profane dans les livrets de tragédies lyriques du librettiste Nicolas-François Guillard (1752-1814)

• Authors: Cécile Champonnois

Title variants

EN

Religious and Secular Topics in Nicolas François Guillard’s Librettos: the Cases of Proserpine (1803) and La Mort d’Adam (1809)

• Languages of publication: FR

Abstracts

EN

Nicolas François Guillard (1752-1814) was one of the best librettists of the Tournant des Lumières. The libretto of Proserpine by Quinault, set to music by Lully at the end of the seventeenth century, was adapted by Guillard and once again set to music by Giovanni Paisiello in 1803. Six years later, in 1809, La Mort d’Adam, adapt-ed by Guillard from Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’ Der Tod Adams (1757), was set to music by Jean-François Lesueur. These rewritings, with religious or sacred topics staged for a secular theatre by Guillard, are very different from the original works and tend to be family dramas: he then transforms them into secular works with secular content. Human sacrifices are present in these works but seem to feature here for family reasons and not only for religious purposes. Divinities are presented by the librettist as human beings, whose family roles are predominant. The sacred and the profane are mixed in these two librettos, changed into hybrid works. Guillard seems to use the same model to adapt historical, mythological or religious works, which means that the role and the impor-tance of the religious in the works staged at the Académie Impériale de Musique in the period of the Tournant des Lumières has to be examined.

Keywords

FR

Nicolas François Guillard; opera; family dramas; secular content; religious or sacred topics; hybrid works

EN

Nicolas François Guillard; opera; family dramas; secular content; religious or sacred topics; hybrid works

• Publisher: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II. Wydawnictwo Werset
• Journal: Quêtes littéraires
• Year: 2013
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 48-57

Dates

published

2013-12-30

Contributors

author

Cécile Champonnois

Identifiers

DOI

10.31743/ql.4604