Beaujoyeux and his "Ballet Comique de la Royne"—Production of Cambert's "Pomone" and founding of the Grand Opera—Advent of Lulli—His acquisition of the opera patent—Character and influence of his operas—Rameau and his improvements on Lulli's style.
THE history of French opera begins with the performance of a curious little pastoral in which the germs of some parts of the lyric drama may be found. The age of the work leads French writers to claim precedence over Italy in the invention of opera, but such claims are easily overthrown by the accumulation of evidence that the advent of Peri's "Daphne" was the result of a systematic series of experiments looking toward the revival of the Greek drama. In 1577 an Italian violinist named Baltazarini was imported from Piedmont into France by Marshal de Brissac. Catherine de Médicis made him her intendant of music and valet de chambre to the king. He changed his name to Balthasar de Beaujoyeux, and is so known in musical history, which, however, is generally silent about him. He introduced the Italian ballet to Paris, and also produced the first pastoral opera there. This pastoral is entitled "Circe," but is better known as the "Ballet Comique de la Royne." It was produced as the festival play for the marriage of the Duke de Joyeuse and Mlle. de Vaudemont. It is purely pastoral in character and has little or nothing of the true dramatic character of opera, though it has some of the operatic forms. There are choruses in four parts, dances, and accompanied solos. The last are written in a slow and melodious form of recitative, which is pleasing, but not especially expressive. Doubtless Beaujoyeux, who left Italy about the time when the experiments in monodic writing were beginning, must have known something of the nature of the movement. This he communicated to Beaulieu and Salmon, who wrote most, if not all, of the music of the ballet which he arranged.
These French ballets, of which "Circe" was apparently the first performed at court, owe probably quite as much of their origin to the old pastoral plays of the country as they do to the Italian monody. As far back as the thirteenth century the troubadours had constructed little pastorals, with solo vocal music, and at least one of these, Adam de la Halle's "Gieus de Robin et de Marion," contained well-formed songs. These little works, performed in Picardy and Provence, declined with the troubadours, but some record of them may have helped the court composers of the latter end of the 16th century in the formation of their recitative. The French ballet differed from the earliest Italian opera in that most of its music was designed as an accompaniment to action, largely pantomimic and wholly terpsichorean in its nature. The solo parts were short and built on lines wholly dissociated from those of the Florentine recitative.
FROM THE "BALLET COMIQUE DE LA ROYNE,"
BY BEAUJOYEUX.
