Marc-Antoine Charpentier:
Three Sacred Stories
French-Hungarian co-production

Opening night:
December 6th 2005, Palace of Versailles

Opening night in Hungary:
March 20th and 21st 2006, Budapest, Thália Theater

Death of Saul and Jonathan H403
Dialogue of Angels and Shepherds H420
The Massacre of the Innocents H411

With:
Les Pages et les Chantres – Choir and Children’s choir of the Versailles Center for Baroque Music
Savaria Baroque Orchestra (Artistic Director: Pál Németh)

Soloists:
Cyril Auvity, contratenor
Jean-Francois Novelli, baritone
Marc Labonnette, bass-baritone

Choreographer: Françoise Deniau (Paris Opera)
Light designer: Daniel Brochier

Conductor: Olivier Schneebeli
Director: Róbert Alföldi

Chateau de Versailles retained its magnificence and exclusive dominance over the art of Baroque centuries long. The Palace organizes an annual festival inviting the most extraordinary performers of Baroque music; nevertheless, this was the first occasion that the Palace stages an opera in co-production with an international partner.

It was the honor of Hungary and Hungarian artists to stage and perform the Baroque composer, Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s (1643-1704) Three Sacred Stories (Trois histoires sacrées) together with French artists, in the original performing venue of the Sun King, in the Palace of Versailles.

The production, which took place in December 2005, was preceded by two years of research both in Versailles and in Budapest. The piece, which has recently been discovered and reconstructed by the world famous and unique Baroque Music Center (a center for research, education and production) operating in the Versailles Palace, is conducted by the research center’s musical director, Olivier Schneebeli. The performers include the soloists and the choir, trained at the Versailles Baroque Music Center, as well as the Hungarian orchestra selected by the center. The artistic collaboration lasted nearly a year and a half and resulted in the first performance of Three Sacred Stories in the 21st century.

To rise to this unique occasion, Palace of Versailles appointed a young Hungarian director, who has already established the vitality of his art through his dynamic, essentially contemporary world view and whose performances have always addressed the audience of our days. This is director Róbert Alföldi, who collaborated with the French conductor and choreographer a year long.

Three Hungarian solo dancers also had the opportunity to participate in this grandiose production and experience the ‘Citadel of the Baroque,’ the Versailles Palace.

About the pieces:

The first story, Mors Saulis et Jonathae (The Death of Saul and Jonathan) is to be considered as the short version of Charpentier’s tragedy David et Jonathas (1688). It is similar to a short story adapted from a novel of the same content. The oratorio’s formal perfection, musical beauty and pathos compete with that of the tragedy’s.
Dialogus inter angelus et pastores (Dialogue of Angels and Shepherds) follows as a transition and a disruption at the same time. It is one of the several Christmas pastorals, which the Jesuits’ composer, Charpentier, wrote both in Latin and French. Warmth and happiness radiates from this light piece.
As a logical sequence of the pastorals, as well as a return to the tone of “fear and devoutness,” the trilogy ends with Caedes sanctorum Innocentium (The Massacre of the Innocents). This is one of the composer’s most influential clerical pieces with doubled tragic choir, in which the mothers’ cries echo the wild strains of Herod and his henchmen…

Photos: Eszter Gordon