Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

POPULAR SUCCESS FOR L’OLIMPIADE

https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/popular-success-for-lolimpiade-b72065f10a2a

JOSEF MYSLIVEČEK MAKES L’OLIMPIADE MELODRAMATIC

This topic, and its standard timeline and suspense architecture was used vastly on Italian opera stages in the 18^th century. Josef Mysliveček is one composer, the latest then, who used the topic, subject, drama, and suspenseful crime story to entertain the vast opera audience in Italy at the time from Naples to Venice and many other cities. The story was used by Vivaldi (1734) and Pergolesi (1735) on a libretto by Pietro Metastasio (1733) before Mysliveček The first composer to deal with the libretto was Antonio Caldara in a production in Vienna, Austria in 1733.

The topic is inspired by ancient Greek stories and is in a way a romantic drama that ends well. It brings together a newborn supposedly exposed to the sea by order of his father, a king of course; a fraudulent public fight in which the official contender appoints a friend of his to fight in his place to make sure he will win the prize; the prize is the daughter of the king who had his son exposed to the sea, quite a gentleman that king, even in Ancient Greece. You can imagine the embroglio in the city when the rigged public fight was revealed, and then when the real identity of the main culprit was revealed by accident just minutes before he was executed for his fraud, standing there in a white robe on Jupiter’s altar, the executing tools already brandished by order of his own real but unknown father. And the gentleman of a king does not even seem polite enough to excuse himself, to say he was sorry for his totally inhumane decisions in his life. Luckily in all the cases I have been able to listen to, the music saves the story.

And imagine the main culprit, the “champion” who asks his friend to fight for him, is thus trying to conquer the daughter of the local king who is in love with his own friend and who is loved by this very friend. He is trying to steal the love of his friend, after having abandoned the woman he loved in his country, Crete, in order to come to Greece to be able to conquer this daughter of a barbaric father. A French Revolution is definitely needed in this opera topic. Luckily, Beaumarchais and Mozart were supposed to come soon and were already there when Mysliveček produced his version of the tale in 1778 since Beaumarchais produced his play “Le Mariage de Figaro” in Paris in 1778. Mozart composed his “Marriage of Figaro” in 1786 in Vienna, Austria, premiere performance on May 1^st, announcing, a century before the Chicago massacre, the famous Labor Day of May 1^st still celebrated today. Once a Freemason, always a Freemason.

Éditions La Dondaine, Medium.com, 2024

Baroque Music,  *  Fraud,  *  Newborn Infant,  * ópera,  *  Rigged

# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 3:30 AM