Organization

Singer

Tenor

Bernard Richter

Atys

Soprano

Emmanuelle de Negri

Sangaride

Conductor

William Christie

Stage director

Jean-Marie Villégier

Francisco Fernández-Rueda

Un Zéphir

Costume designer

Patrice Cauchetier

Lighting designer

Patrick Méeüs

Baritone

Bernard Deletré

Le Temps

Bass

le Fleuve Sangar

Nicolas Rivenq

Célénus

Sophie Daneman

Doris

Jaël Azzaretti

Melisse

Choreographer

Francine Lancelot

Béatrice Massin

Stéphanie d'Oustrac

Cybelle

Set designer

Carlo Tommasi

Others

Les Arts Florissants

Opéra Comique

Paris

France

Opéra-Comique

Salle Bizet

Atys (Attis) is a 1675 tragédie en musique — described in a 1708 revival as a tragédie mise en musique and today considered a tragédie lyrique, a French form of opera — in a prologue and five acts by Jean-Baptiste Lully to a libretto by Philippe Quinault after Ovid's Fasti.

Atys—King Louis XIV’s favorite of Lully’s tragédies en musique—gets the luxurious baroque treatment it deserves in this 2011 revival of William Christie and Les Arts Florissants’s celebrated 1987 production at Paris's Opéra-Comique.

Telemann once remarked that “I have known Germans, Englishmen, Russians, Poles […] who knew by heart entire passages from Lully’s [...] Atys” (letter to Carl Heinrich Graun). Widely beloved in its day, the opera in five acts (with an extended prologue) is one of the best of Lully and his librettist Quinault’s collaborative works. It also stands out in their œuvre because of its unusually dark plot and unhappy ending: the lovers Atys and Sangaride are plotted against by the jealous goddess Cybele (in love with Atys) and King Celenus of Phrygia (fiancé of Sangaride), ultimately leading to Atys accidentally stabbing Sangaride to death. Drawn from the fourth book of Ovid’s Fasti, the tragic tale is told through a series of touching airs, duets, and larger ensemble pieces.

Jean-Marie Villégier and William Christie's production is heavily inspired by historical accounts of the early stagings of the opera. From the sumptuous Baroque set and costumes to the use of period instruments and historical gestures and staging, this incarnation of Atys transports its public to the extravagant world of late 17th century Versailles, all the while telling a fantastical story about profoundly human desires and failings.

From its premiere, at the court of Louis XIV as was customary, Atys was nicknamed "the King's opera". We knew that the monarch, who had taken an active part in its preparation, willingly hummed the tunes. His triumph was all the more dazzling at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal where the public flocked to the Parisian premiere in April, then celebrated him with each performance while - popular consecration - the parodies multiplied.
Admirably structured, served by the most expressive music, with a constant choreographic variety and unprecedented dramatic intensity, Atys is also the first opera to center its plot on love and the first French tragedy to have its hero die in stage. Introducing the poetry of feeling into the theater of conventions, the sufferings of the nymph Sangaride and the shepherd Atys, delivered to the jealous goddess Cybele and the laws of her cult, touch us like the disarray of youth confronted with a world of intransigence. and sacrifice.

Atys Lully

Public

Approved

Tragédie en musique de Jean Baptiste Lully. Poème de Philippe Quinault. Créée le 10 janvier 1676Donné du 12 au 21 mai 2011 à l'Opéra ComiqueWilliam Christie,...

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