[Alceste, ou Le triomphe d’Alcide (‘Alcestis, or The Triumph of Alcides’)]
Tragédie en musique in a prologue and five acts by Jean-Baptiste Lully (see Lully family (opera) §(1)) to a libretto by Quinault, Philippe after Euripides’ Alcestis; Paris, Opéra, 19 January 1674.
This was Lully’s second tragedy. The king and courtiers saw a rehearsal at Versailles in November 1673 and were enthusiastic. However, poets and musicians jealous of Lully’s growing power and of the success of Cadmus et Hermione organized a cabal to discredit Alceste after its première. Only Perrault defended the work at length, pointing out that everybody ‘knows by heart’ and sings everywhere the little songs that are said to be worthless, that the many scenes judged ‘useless’ by the critics (mainly scenes dominated by secondary characters) all have their dramatic purposes, and that the conventions of opera are different from those of spoken tragedy and comedy (Critique de l’opéra, 1674, attrib. Charles or Pierre Perrault)....