Achille et Polyxène(1687): the Trojan war and a plea for peace at the Académie royale de musique

Abstract

Jean-Baptiste Lully and (following Lully’s death) his disciple Pascal Collasse set to music a libretto by Jean Galbert de Campistron that deals with the reappropriation of an episode from the Trojan cycle, a heroic historical subject not previously treated on the stages of the Académie royale de musique or Italian opera houses; the result was Achille et Polyxène, a tragédie en musique in a prologue and five acts, premiered on 23 November 1687 (without the king in attendance). This all-encompassing spectacle marked a decisive moment in the history of the genre, at the very least as a bold synthesis of contemporary poetical and operatic practices. The theme of the opera is love thwarted by hatred between two nations, the love between Achilles, the Greek hero and king, and the Trojan princess Polyxena. The work drew from literary sources not previously used at the Académie royale: Homer’s Iliad (Books 9, 15–19, 22, 24), the Ephemeris belli Troiani (Journal of the Trojan War) attributed to Dictys Cretensis (Books 3 and 4), and Virgil’s Aeneid (Book 4); these works, which intend to interpret the question of the tragedy of mankind’s destiny, prompted the authors of the opera to emphasize the natural propensity of human beings towards wars that lead to their destruction. Thus, this tragédie en musique (not revived since 1712), is more than a large-scale entertainment for the court of the city; in the manner of ancient Greeks and Grand Siècle tragic playwrights, it is based on the power of Myth, with the understanding that the secular myth of Troy was considered as an equivalent of the myth of the Fall. This article puts together the absolutist, war-mongering strategies of Louis XIV and the strategies of an opera conceived within the circle of the Vendômes, an intellectual, artistic, free-thinking community enjoying the Grand Dauphin’s protection. The opera is thus a harmonious combination, not just of theatre, music and dance, but also homo- and hetero-eroticism, the heroic morality of the ideal prince, and the praise of peace between peoples. In this sense, Achille et Polyxène can be considered an exemplar of the ideological and creative freedom which a librettist and two composers could enjoy during the Ancien Régime, censorship notwithstanding, even while they were supposed above all to glorify the conquests and power of an absolute monarch. The method followed is transdisciplinary and aims especially at highlighting, behind and beyond the rhetoric of praise, the extremely dense network of intertextual, musical, choreographic and theatrical allusions which this opera comprises and which, taken as a whole, make it possible to characterize the styles of Campistron and Collasse.