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Cambridge University Press, Part of Cambridge Studies in Opera, 2016. ISBN 9781316481080. 502 p.

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Since its inception, French opera has embraced dance, yet all too often operatic dancing is treated as mere decoration. Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera exposes the multiple and meaningful roles that dance has played, starting from Jean-Baptiste Lully’s first opera in 1672. It counters prevailing notions in operatic historiography that dance was parenthetical and presents compelling evidence that the divertissement – present in every act of every opera – is essential to understanding the work. The book considers the operas of Lully – his lighter works as well as his tragedies – and the 46-year period between the death of Lully and the arrival of Rameau, when influences from the commedia dell’arte and other theatres began to inflect French operatic practices. It explores the intersections of musical, textual, choreographic and staging practices at a complex institution – the Académie Royale de Musique – which upheld as a fundamental aesthetic principle the integration of dance into opera.

Rebecca Harris-Warrick is Professor of Music at Cornell University, New York. She has published widely on French Baroque music and dance, with excursions into nineteenth-century opera, and has prepared critical editions of ballets by Lully and of Donizetti's opera, La Favorite. Much of her scholarly work has been informed by her interests in performance; she has studied early dance and performed as a Baroque flutist. She serves on the editorial boards for the Les Œuvres complètes de Jean-Baptiste Lully and the Journal of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/dance-and-drama-in-french-baroque-opera/D6382E18BC74B3DF47F0081846A16D44

Source: Dramatica

La danse française entre Renaissance et baroque.

Le manuscrit Instruction pour dancer (vers 1610)

Actes de la journée d’études du 15 décembre 2012, CESR Tours

Textes réunis par Hubert Hazebroucq et Jean-Noël Laurenti

Scène européenne, coll. "Regards croisés sur la Scène européenne", janvier 2017

Adresse: http://umr6576.cesr.univ-tours.fr/publications/instruction/

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Dans la seconde moitié du XXe siècle s’est développé un travail de reconstruction, à partir des traités et corpus conservés, d’une part des danses de la Renaissance, d’autre part de ce qu’on a appelé la "danse baroque", fixée à la fin du XVIIe siècle par la notation Feuillet. Mais comment est-on passé de l’une à l’autre ? Pour le comprendre, le manuscrit de Darmstadt, récemment découvert, Instruction pour danser (ca. 1610), constitue un précieux jalon, d’autant plus qu’il s’articule avec le recueil Terpsichore de Michael Praetorius (1612).

Ce recueil d’études a pour but de présenter les recherches en cours concernant l’exécution des danses qu’il décrit, en commençant par le replacer dans son contexte politique, culturel et musical et dans la perspective d’évolutions en amont et en aval.

Responsable de la publication : Benoist Pierre

Responsable scientifique : Juan Carlos Garrot Zambrana

Source: H-France

London, Paul Holberton Publishing, 2016. ISBN: 9781911300052. 288 p. 40£.

The first monograph to examine the wide artistic production of Louis XIV’s most prolific and powerful artist, Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), illustrating not only his paintings but the magnificence of the interiors and decorative works of art produced according to his designs. Revealing Le Brun’s extraordinary versatility and exploring his work at the Academy, the Gobelins and Savonnerie manufactories, and the royal building sites of the Louvre and Versailles,  it is also the first book to explore in depth his artistic relationship to the Sun King. 

In his joint capacities of Premier peintre du roi, director of the Gobelins manufactory and rector of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, Le Brun exercised a previously unprecedented influence on the production of the visual arts – so much so that some scholars have repeatedly described him as ‘dictator’ of the arts in France. The Sovereign Artist explores how Le Brun operated in his diverse fields of activities, linking and juxtaposing his portraiture, history painting and pictorial theory with his designs for architecture, tapestries, carpets and furniture. It argues that Le Brun sought to create a repeatable and easily recognizable visual language associated with Louis XIV, in order to translate the king’s political claims for absolute power into a visual form. How he did this is discussed through a series of individual case studies ranging from Le Brun’s lost equestrian portrait of Louis XIV, and his involvement in the Querelle du coloris at the Académie, to his scheme for 93 Savonnerie carpets for the Grande Galerie at the Louvre, his Histoire du roy tapestry series, his decoration of the now destroyed Escalier des Ambassadeurs at Versailles. 

One key theme is the relation between the unity of the visual arts, to which Le Brun aspired, and the strong hierarchical distinctions he made between the liberal arts and the mechanical crafts: while his lectures at the Académie advocated a visual and conceptual unity in painting and architecture, they were also a means by which he attempted to secure the newly gained status of painting as a liberal art, and therefore to distinguish it from the mechanical crafts which he oversaw the production of at the Gobelins manufactories. His artistic and architectural aspirations were comparable to those of his Roman contemporary Gianlorenzo Bernini, summoned to Paris in 1665 to design the Louvre’s East façade and to create a portrait bust of Louis XIV. Bernini’s failure to convince the king and Colbert of his architectural scheme offered new opportunities for Le Brun and his French contemporaries to prove themselves capable of solving the architectural problems of the Louvre and to transform it into a palace appropriate “to the grandeur and the magnificence of the prince who [was] to inhabit it” (Jean-Baptiste Colbert to Nicolas Poussin in 1664). The comparison between Le Brun and Bernini, made in the book, not only illustrates how France sought artistic supremacy over Italy during the second half of the 17th century, but further helps to demonstrate how Le Brun himself wanted to be perceived: beyond acting as a translator of the king’s artistic ambition, the artist appears to have sought his own sovereign authority over the visual arts.

Wolf Burchard is an art and architectural historian. He is the National Trust’s Furniture Research Curator and was formerly Curatorial Assistant at the Royal Collection Trust.

http://www.paul-holberton.net/the-sovereign-artist-charles-le-brun-and-the-image-of-louis-xiv,product,view,315,,,.html

Source: Bulletin de la Société d'étude du XVIIe siècle

Paris, PUF, 2016.  ISBN: 978-2-13-074950-9. 370 p. 29 €.

Seyssel, Champ Vallon, 2017. ISBN 979-10-267-0496-6. 440 p. 28 €.

Ce livre remet en question deux visions des guerres de l’époque moderne, celle de conflits ultra violents qui caractériseraient le temps des guerres de religion, du XVIe siècle à  la première moitié du XVIIe siècle d’une part, et celle d’une guerre réglée et limitée en voie d’humanisation sous le règne de Louis XIV d’autre part. L’hypothétique amélioration du sort des vaincus à partir des guerres de Louis XIV tient une grande place dans cette perception erronée de guerres réglées et limitées  sous l’ancien régime, perçues comme « guerres en dentelles », représentations qui ouvrent la voie à toutes sortes de fantasmes sur la « guerre totale » qu’inventerait la Révolution française.  Il s’agit ici de déconstruire ces images, en montrant  que la culture de la reddition honorable est largement diffusée au XVIe siècle et que les infractions à cet horizon d’attente restent très nombreuses pendant le règne de Louis XIV.

Ainsi on s’intéresse d’abord aux rites de reddition, honorables ou humiliants pour les vaincus, avant de rationaliser cette culture de la reddition honorable, en la replaçant dans la perspective d’une guerre pensée comme économie des moyens à une époque où la notion d’intérêt émerge sous la plume des théoriciens de la raison d’Etat. Seule une conjonction d’intérêts, ceux des vaincus et des vainqueurs, permet le développement de la reddition honorable.

Sommaire: http://www.champ-vallon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Sommaire_Rendre_les_armes.pdf

Commandes: http://www.champ-vallon.com/paul-vo-ha-rendre-les-armes/