King Louis XV held an open house at his Versailles estate in 1770 to showcase his new theatre. The theatre was built to stage Jean-Baptiste Lully's opera "Persée", marking the marriage of the king's grandson to Marie-Antoinette. Nearly 1,000 guests attended the inaugural performance in the oval-shaped theatre with excellent acoustics. In 2004, Opera Atelier remounted their production of "Persée" in the original Versailles setting, transporting the audience back to the theatre's opening night under Louis XV. The magical performance in the historic setting highlighted how beautiful Baroque opera remains today.

1. On May 16, 1770, King Louis XV held an open house
at his 2,000-acre estate inVersailles.To illuminate his new home
theatre and remind visitors that France was still the artistic
and political centre of the world, he ordered his staff to light
3,000 candles.
France’s financial ups and downs, the latter caused mainly
by costly wars, had precluded construction of a permanent
theatre in the palace for almost 100 years. After enduring
portable outdoor theatre sets rain or shine, Louis was pleased
that the Opéra Royal was finally built and ready to stage its
first performance. He was also proud that the new theatre
would accommodate almost 1,000 guests, invited to the
festivities marking the marriage of his grandson to Marie-
Antoinette. While singers waited in the wings to test the
acoustics and dancers the stage, the European nobility took
their seats for a performance of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Persée.
The guests of Louis XV must have been suitably impressed
by the neoclassical-style theatre,decorated with Greek columns,
wooden walls painted to look like marble and side-wall mir-
rors that reflected the ceiling frescoes and made the candlelit
room seem endless.The oval theatre—innovative at a time when
France’s other theatres were all rectangular—had acoustics that are
still considered among the best in Europe and loved by musicians.
History records that the king’s pubescent daughter-in-law
was not terribly impressed by Lully’s tragédie lyrique, a genre of
French opera in five acts introduced by the composer and based
on classical mythology.However,a contemporaneous review in
the Mercure de France, regarded as the most important pre-revo-
lutionary literary journal, noted:“That which is truly beautiful
never ages.”Indeed,audiences are still enjoying Persée,and Mar-
shall Pynkoski,co-Artistic Director of Opera Atelier,calls it the
“best in Baroque French musical theatre.”Last May 24,I was able
to judge the work for myself—as well as OA’s performance of
its 2000 Toronto production remounted in the opera’s original
Versailles setting.
Ushered up three flights of stone steps to the royal balcony,
my guest and I are shown a door leading to a small box, or loge,
with gilt filigreed shutters that face the stage and—we can well
imagine—might have been closed for royal trysts.We follow
the usher’s flashlight to our upholstered armchairs, which, on
opening night almost 250 years ago, would have seated close
friends of the royals, right next door to the newlyweds’ box.
Comfortably seated at the acoustical and visual focal point of
the oval hall,we can see and hear Persée as the king and his royal
entourage would have that night in 1770.On this occasion,how-
ever,the performers include not only French artists,but also the
Canadian dancers and musicians of OA andTafelmusik Baroque
Orchestra and Chamber Choir.
When the curtain rises,a lushly painted scene depicts a royal
arch, beyond which a distant temple appears.Although the set
Letter from Versailles
Frann Harris savours the atmosphere as Toronto’s Opera
Atelier remounts the opera that opened a king’s theatre
The company in
Opera Atelier’s
2004 revival of
Persée in Toronto
PHOTO:BRUCEZINGER
14 OPERA CANADA

2. looks three dimensional, inviting
the audience to enter the story
while convincing us the temple
is further away than the arch,they
are on the same plane.The deceit
is deft trompe l’oeil,created by OA’s
resident designer, Gerard Gauci.
The mythological story is just
as dramatic as the set,being a love
triangle that includes: the snake-
headed Medusa; the hero Perseus,
who beheads Medusa and saves
Andromeda from another mon-
ster;and—finally—the triumph of
good over evil and the marriage of
the two lovers.
To be honest, I usually find the improbable stories of Greek
gods and goddesses a bit tiresome. But in this performance, the
luscious voices of sopranos Peggy Kriha Dye and Carla Huhtanen
tell my ears that these two operatic deities, among others, have a
grand message to convey.Some of the performers have more than
one message to convey because they play several parts, including
Lawrence Wiliford, Aaron Ferguson, Curtis Sullivan, Meghan
Lindsay and Stephen Hegedus.The cast,as I read in the program,
is international, including Canadians,Americans and Europeans.
BaritoneVasil Garvanliev is a prime example—born in Macedonia,
educated inToronto and a busy performer in numerous cities.
My eyes are riveted to the cast’s colorful costumes,while my
sense of humour is tweaked by the snaky wig worn by Medusa,
sung here by bass-baritone Olivier Laquerre. And I pay close
attention to the subtle Baroque-era hand movements of the dan-
cers and the precise timing of their steps,so as not to miss a beat.
Before the show, OA choreographer (and co-Artistic Dir-
ector) Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg told me she strives for
authenticity by looking at period illustrations and reading
Baroque choreographic notation as the “vocabulary” for re-
creating the delicate moves of her dancers. It’s easy to see the
dancers, even when they’re at the back of the stage, because it
is raked upwards away from the audience.However,this angling
does little to help me fully appreciate their fancy footwork,
sometimes obscured by the long white tutus.
It is, on the other hand, impossible not to see the deus
ex machina, lowered twice from the ceiling during the per-
formance—first bearing Perseus (tenor Chris Enns) and then
Andromeda (soprano Mireille Asselin).Only after the perform-
ance do I learn that the working of this marvelous machine is
explained during guided tours of the opera house.
Tafelmusik is 30-strong for Persée because multiples of some
instruments have been added for colour and volume. Under
the experienced baton of David Fallis, Lully’s prototype com-
position moves me and I readily understand why he is called
the father of French opera.
During intermission, I meet one of the players, Canadian
cellist Kerri McGonigle, who characterizes her experience of
playing in that orchestra pit and
being part of the performance as
“a magical experience that I will
cherish.” Magical is how it feels
to me, too.
After the performance, Pynk-
oski agrees that the Opéra Royal de
Versailles still wields a magic wand:
“The singers love the acoustics…
The theatre makes the performers
want to live up to it.”
When the lights come up, we
learn that the couple sitting near
our box is also Canadian and that,as
fans and donors, they’ve seen OA’s
Persée no fewer than nine times.Al
Forest says these performances have allowed him to be “in the
moment” and to feel “gut-wrenching joy…the ultimate cath-
artic experience.”
Almost 250 years after Persée inaugurated Louis’Opéra Royal,
the hearty applause and five curtain calls for OA are a testament
to that 1770 review in Mercure de France:“That which is truly
beautiful never ages.” As we leave the theatre, my companion
and I talk about the debt of gratitude we owe OA and Tafel-
musik for preserving the beauty of Lully’s pre-revolutionary
opera while breathing new life into it and proving that its beauty
is timeless indeed.
Abacus
Auditorium of the Opéra Royal during the marriage of the Dauphin
and Marie-Antoinette in 1770 in a contemporary engraving by
Jean-Michel Moreau
FALL 2014 15