Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne. Phèdre

CD-Book. Bru Zane Label. French Opera Collection n. 24.

Plumb in the middle of Louis XVI’s reign, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne composed an opera based on Racine’s Phèdre (1677), as if to pay tribute to the Grand Siècle of Louis XIV. But if the model is classical, the music reflects all the modernities of an era that already foreshadowed Romanticism and its grand passions. Lemoyne’s style gradually grows vehement, excitable and menacing. The progression of the plot wrenches the audience away from the amiable choruses and dances of the first scenes and drags it into a gripping drama in which the protagonists tear each other apart until death ensues. The better to focus on the character of the incestuous queen, Lemoyne and his librettist Hoffman (later to write Médée for Cherubini in 1797) removed the figure of Aricie. In so doing, they gave Mme Saint-Huberty, the creator of this modern Phaedra, unprecedented dramatic scope. Only Gluck had previously focused so much attention on a heroine, in Alceste and his two Iphigénie operas. (Lemoyne had dedicated his Électre to Gluck, who refused the tribute, seeing him as a dangerous rival.) Phèdre continued to be performed at the Opéra for almost twenty years.

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