- Opéra (tragédie lyrique) in 4 acts
- Composer: François-Joseph Gossec
- Libretto: Philippe Quinault, revised by Étienne Morel de Chédeville
- First performed: Académie Royale de Musique, 1st March 1782
Characters
| THÉSÉE, unknown son of Égée | Haute-contre | Joseph Legros |
| ÉGLÉ, princess raised under the supervision of Égée, King of Athens | Soprano | Antoinette Saint-Huberty |
| MÉDÉE, a princess and enchantress | Soprano | Mlle Duplant (Françoise-Claude-Marie-Rosalie Campagne) |
| ÉGÉE, King of Athens | Basse-taille | Henri Larrivée |
| CLÉONE, confidante of Églé | Soprano | Gertrude Girardin |
| ARCAS, confidant of Égée | Basse-taille | Moreau |
| DORINE, confidante of Médée | Soprano | Suzanne Joinville |
| The High Priestess of Minerva | Soprano | Châteauvieux |
| Minerva | Soprano | Châteauvieux |
| Two old men | Tenor Basse-taille | Étienne Lainez Auguste-Athanase (Augustin) Chéron |
| An old woman | Soprano | Anne-Marie-Jeanne Gavaudan the elder |
| Priestesses of Minerva, followers of Égée, warriors, inhabitants of the Underworld, people of Athens, Furies | Chorus |
SETTING: Athens.
Gossec’s Thésée, a revision of a Lully tragédie lyrique written a century before, contains a really splendid ensemble – but nothing else in the opera really lives up to it. That bears out Clément’s1 observation:
“Gossec has carved out his place in almost every genre of music, but he excelled in the composition of choruses. He masterfully handled large ensembles. Perhaps too preoccupied with emphasis and majestic sound, he managed to create a noble and grandiose style, acquired at the expense of warmth and originality.”
Overall, Gossec (1734–1829) seems to have been industrious and dedicated: a musical bureaucrat, an innovator of form, and an educator. Born in Hainaut, Belgium, he came to Paris in 1751, and worked as the conductor for first the fermier general La Pouplinière, then for the Prince de Conti. He wrote France’s first orchestral symphonies in 1754, before Haydn wrote his earliest symphonies, and a once-famous Messe des morts (1760), which Philidor said he would give all his works to have written. (His Te Deum à grand orchestre, 1779, is rather splendid.) He founded the Concert des amateurs in 1770, conducted by the Chevalier de Saint-Georges (hero of the recent film), and improved orchestration in France: at a time when scores contained only two violin parts, viola, bass, two oboes, and two horns, Gossec wrote symphonies scored for two violin parts, viola, cello, double bass, two oboes, two clarinets, flute, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, and timpani. He headed the Concert spirituel from 1773 on. He founded l’École royal de chant, the predecessor of the Conservatoire de Musique, in 1784, and taught harmony and counterpoint there. He became the go-to composer of the Revolution: he conducted the band of the Garde Nationale, and wrote 50 hymns and patriotic songs, including L’Offrande à la Liberté. When the Conservatoire was founded in 1795, he one of its inspectors, and taught composition there until 1814. When Napoleon founded the Institut de France, he was appointed to its Beaux-Arts section, attending its meetings until 1825, when he was 91.
“Gossec is a remarkable example of what can be achieved through hard work and study,” wrote Fétis.2 “Son of a farmer, devoid of the advantages of fortune and the support of mentors, he educated himself and embarked on a pure and classical path, seemingly at odds with his surroundings. Placed in a school entrenched in the most harmful prejudices, he managed to avoid its pitfalls and laid the groundwork for his brilliance in the realm of French music. The study of classical models and an innate sense of the science underlying them propelled him ahead of his time, anticipating the period when this science would be organized and solidified in France. When circumstances aligned to support his aspirations and efforts, he fearlessly imparted his self-acquired knowledge to eager young minds, defying the limitations of age, thus becoming a beacon of instruction born solely from his own dedication and constant labour.”
Thésée is the second of Gossec’s two tragédies-lyriques; the first, Sabinus (1774), was overshadowed by Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide and Orphée et Eurydice, and judged long and boring. (Even reducing five acts to four could not save it.) Thésée, like other works of the time, such as Gluck’s Armide or Piccinni’s Roland, uses a libretto Quinault wrote for Lully (1675), adapted for the 1770s – part of the Opéra manager Devismes’s project to show how music had progressed in the last century.3
The plot (you might remember) is this: Égée (Ægeus), king of Athens, has promised to marry Médée (Medea), who has fled Corinth after murdering her children by Jason. The king, however, has fallen in love with his ward, the princess Églé; and Médée is besotted with the warrior Thésée, who has not revealed that he is the king’s son. Églé and Thésée, for their part, love each other. Médée’s jealous attempts to wreak revenge are thwarted, and Thésée, having disclosed his identity, is crowned king.
Thésée entered rehearsals in 1778, but its performance was held off until 1782 – according to Gossec, because Gluck did not want competition. The opera was only performed 15 times, and its reception was cool. The music critic Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm, thought the work was mediocre: “There is nothing there to provoke either murmurs or enthusiasm”4; and felt Gossec’s instrumentation was too heavy5. La Harpe6 noted that it was an imitation of Gluck: “Little singing, but orchestral and harmonic effects, and a lot of that kind of recitative, akin to the taste of the French who appreciate the declamation marked in dialogue and a grandeur in choirs: all of this was successful. Anything that merely aspires to imitate Gluck, rather than to compete against him, is sure of great favour among us.” La Mercure de France judged it the work of an excellent composer and a man of good taste. More recently, Benoît Dratwicki considers it one of the most original and successful works between Gluck’s Aulide and Spontini’s Vestale, while David Le Marrec (Carnets sur Sol) deems it “the musical masterpiece of reformed tragédie”.
Nevertheless, Thésée seems to me a conventional and rather chilly work, lacking the genius of Gluck, the drama of Lemoyne, or the melody of Sacchini. It betrays the lack of warmth and originality Clément noted; too much of it is recitative, and the arias are short and unmemorable.
The rôle of Thésée was sung by the tenor Joseph Legros, who created, among other parts, Gluck’s Orphée and Admète in Alceste (Paris versions), Renaud in Armide (and its sequel by Sacchini), Achille, and Pylade, as well as Pirrhus in Grétry’s Andromaque. He has some suitably heroic music (e.g., “La gloire m’enflamma dès que je vis le jour”). Act II ends with Médée’s rage aria, “Dépit mortel, transport jaloux”. Occasionally Gossec’s treatment of a scene (such as the three aged Athenians) seems an inadequate substitute for Lully’s more distinctive one.
Overall, the choruses are most successful. Act I is easily the best part; set in a temple besieged by enemy warriors, it features the most choral spectacle, notably the magnificent “O Minerve! Arrêtez la cruelle furie!” – my chief reason for listening to the opera – matched by the celebrations at the end of the act. Later acts feature choruses of demons (“On nous tormente” in III, as they torment the hapless Églé, and “Embrasons, brûlons tout!” in IV) and a joyful finale (“Vivons contents dans ces aimables lieux!”). One cannot fault, however, the vigorous orchestration.
Recordings
Listen to: Frédéric Antoun (Thésée), Virginie Pochon (Églé), Jennifer Borghi (Médée), and Tassis Christoyannis (le Roi Égée), with Les Agréments and the Chœur de Chambre de Namur, conducted by Guy Van Waas, Liège, 2012; Ricercar, 2013.
- Félix Clément, Les musiciens célèbres depuis le 16ème siècle jusqu’à nos jours, Paris : Librairie Hachette & Cie, 1878, p. 137. ↩︎
- F.-J. Fétis, Biographie universelle des musiciens (2ème édition), Paris : Librairie de Firmin Didot Frères, Fils et Cie., 1869, vol. 4, p. 62. ↩︎
- Benoît Dratwicki, “Thésée en son temps”, Ricercar, 2013, p. 11. ↩︎
- Dratwicki, p. 17. ↩︎
- Dratwicki, p. 12. ↩︎
- Dratwicki, p. 12. ↩︎
The Opera Scribe 