https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3011-8088
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Sandra Tuppen, ‘Triumph, victorious Love’: Le Triomphe de l’Amour (1681) and English dramatic opera, Early Music, Volume 51, Issue 2, May 2023, Pages 179–202, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caad010
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Extract
On 21 January 1681 a lavish French musical entertainment was premiered at Louis XIV’s court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The work, Le Triomphe de l’Amour (The Triumph of Love), was staged to celebrate the marriage of Louis XIV’s son—also Louis, called the Dauphin—to Maria Anna Victoria of Bavaria.1 The entertainment featured music by Jean-Baptiste Lully and words by Philippe Quinault and Isaac de Benserade, and was presented by a combination of professional performers and courtly amateurs. After several performances at court, Le Triomphe de l’Amour was transferred to the public stage at the Paris Opéra, in May 1681. It had a fully professional cast there, including—for the first time at that theatre—professional women dancers.2 Rebecca Harris-Warrick has written of it: ‘As a work in a class by itself, Le Triomphe de l’Amour does not fit comfortably into the usual narratives about French operatic history. But it has so much remarkable music and so much choreographic interest that it deserves more attention than it has received.’3
