Richard Cœur de Lion by Grétry, ven. 11 oct. 2019, Du (2019/2019), Dirigé par Marshall Pynkoski, Chef d'orchestre Hervé Niquet, Opéra Royal, Versailles, France

An imprisoned King, his knights who want to free him and sing their loyalty to him, a famous air "Ô Richard Ô mon Roi" sung in the Royal Opera by the Gardes du Corps of Louis XVI during their banquet on October 1, 1789, for salute Marie-Antoinette and the King, unleashing vengeance and bringing the crowd to Versailles, which forces the royal family to leave the castle on October 6, never to return... It's the end of Versailles and its Royal Opera . To celebrate its two hundred and fifty years, here is the return to the stage of the famous Richard Cœur de Lion (1784) by Grétry, the best-known 18th century French comic opera in Europe for a century... disappeared from the sets for decades ! Hervé Niquet and Marshall Pynkoski are working on this doubly historic task. This "anniversary" project voluntarily places the action under the reign of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, with whom the era easily identified the heroes of Grétry's opera: he was also a regular at the Opera Royal since the performance of Cephalus and Procris in 1773. The sets reproduce the style of the painted canvases and frames typical of the construction of the Royal Opera, the costumes are those of pre-revolutionary France (and no longer of the Middle Ages evoked in the creation), the staging giving to hear the rich text of Sedaine quickly become famous. If Grétry was Marie-Antoinette's most appreciated composer, his "Richard" is both the culmination of a career, the announcement of an artistic style that romanticism will seize, but also the powerful historical mark of a dying era. Here is the opportunity to bring opera back into the great history of Versailles and France. And here is also the first complete production of the Royal Opera of Versailles since 1789!