Psyché is an opera of 1678, adapted from Molière's original play. The music is by Jean-Baptiste Lully and the libretto is by Thomas Corneille.
According to the Mercure Galant, the opera Psyché was composed in three weeks; libretto, score and all. Although it is impossible to verify the truth of this statement, there is every reason to believe that Lully was in a hurry when writing this opera. In effect, the opera reuses the intermèdes from Molièr...
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Psyché is an opera of 1678, adapted from Molière's original play. The music is by Jean-Baptiste Lully and the libretto is by Thomas Corneille.
According to the Mercure Galant, the opera Psyché was composed in three weeks; libretto, score and all. Although it is impossible to verify the truth of this statement, there is every reason to believe that Lully was in a hurry when writing this opera. In effect, the opera reuses the intermèdes from Molière's play. Since these intermèdes had met with such spectacular success seven years earlier, Lully must have felt that given his lack of time, he could at the very least attract a crowd with the promise of reviving the plainte italienne and the final divertissement. All that was required was a synthesis of Molière's play that could coherently string together the already-existing intermèdes. Such a text would have to be one third the length of Molière's, that is to say 600 rather than 1800 lines long, and would have to be composed in varied...
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