2023-12-08 13:51:49
You have to imagine the scene. In October 1754 in Fontainebleau, in front of Louis XV and his court, the composer Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville created Daphnis and Alcimadur, a new “Languedoc pastoral”. If the love between a shepherdess in love with nature – and freedom – and a chilled shepherd hardly seems unprecedented in this 18th century, the work is nevertheless unique in its kind. Its libretto is in fact written not in French but in Occitan, this language of the southwest of the kingdom…
Mondonville, a virtuoso violinist who shines at the Parisian spiritual concert as well as at the Royal Chapel of Versailles, thus honors his provincial origins before the king. For the occasion, this native of Narbonne (in 1711) surrounded himself with the three best opera singers of his time, real stars, who, moreover, share his Occitan roots! Here is the Béarnais trained in Toulouse Pierre Jélyotte, the Bordelaise Marie Fel and the Gascon La Tour. As for the prologue introducing the pastoral itself, it highlights an important southern figure, the legendary poet Clémence Isaure, founder in 1323 of the Floral games Toulouse intended to reward the best troubadours.
Success, French version and “selected pieces”
“The success of Daphnis and Alcimadur at Fontainebleau was such that the pastoral benefited from Parisian revivals the following year», indicates conductor Jean-Marc Andrieu who, at the head of his ensemble Les Passions, delivers a recording full of charm, momentum and drive (1). A version in French in 1768 then the execution of “ selected pieces » during concerts ensured its longevity, before, like so many baroque scores, a veil of oblivion covered it. “ The freshness of the music, the remarkable writing of the choirs, the mixture of comic and tender registers, as well as the eminent role of the violins, are all reasons to listen to this Daphnis,” pleads Jean-Marc Andrieu.
A stage version?
The conductor evokes with regret a stage project seriously considered at the Capitole in Toulouse, led by the choreographer Andy de Groat, unfortunately now deceased, and the director Bob Wilson, “but which unfortunately did not come to fruition…” The delicate colors of the pastoral would indeed easily find their visual correspondences, just as the lilting accents of Occitan – for which the singers were scrupulously “coached” – remind opera lovers of the melodious delights of the Italian language.
To date, we know of no other opera in a regional language created following that of Mondonville (2): a rarity which adds to the purely aesthetic pleasure of the rediscovery.
(1) Box of 2 CDs from Ligia.
(2) It was not until 1971 that the composer Jacques Charpentier proposed Beatrice de Planissolas on a libretto in Occitan by René Nelli.
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