Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

 

EMPATHETICALLY PATHETIC VIVALDI

https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/empathetically-pathetic-vivaldi-b49e4b5469fd

 

L’Olimpiade is an opera on a libretto that was extremely popular in the 18th century in Italy and Europe. The plot is in many ways repulsive: cheating in the Olympic Games. Stealing the woman your friend loves and who loves your friend. Getting rid of the first lover you had for a woman you desire but who will never love you since she loves your friend. She knows you are a cheater, a monster in many ways.

But her father, the king of Sicione is even worse. He had had in the past his son exposed to the sea, in other words, thrown into the sea when a newborn for him to drown. Then he turned his daughter into the prize of a sports event, a fight of some type between several champions: the winner can marry the daughter. Obnoxious.

And he discovers the cheater he has just condemned to be sacrificed on the main altar of the city is his son. He does not even beg for pity and forgiveness. He just accepts the situation and decides – like the king he pretends to be – the son will marry the woman he abandoned in Crete and his friend will marry his daughter, I mean the king’s daughter of course.

How can you save such a pathetic plot? In the 18th century, it was already difficult. Think of The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart or Le Marriage de Figaro by Beaumarchais. The main nobleman, a count if I remember well these useless but meaningful details, sees his authority, his privileges rejected and contained by his wife and the servants of the house, Figaro of course first of all. How can we today find it funny to celebrate a cheater, a liar, a vindicative violent person, and it all has to, ought to, and must be excused because of his drastic fate dictated by his own father and a disobedient servant who is the only humane and modern character: A servant does not have to obey an order if it goes against his own ethics.

Éditions La Dondaine, Medium.com, 2024

Cheating and Plagiarism,  *  Baroque Music,  *  Olympic Games,  *  Obnoxious,  *  ópera