When it comes to gross flattery, nobody outdid the composers who served the court of the Sun King Louis XIV. And nobody outdid Jean-Baptiste Lully , the King’s favourite. "The whole universe praises ...

The Gravity of its day, Jean-Baptiste Lully's opera Phaeton pulled out the stops technologically to tell the story of a man's fall from space. Although it wasn't fully staged at its 1683 premiere, ...

Lully was certainly capable of that, as we know from Rousset’s performance and recording of an earlier experiment mixing highly-charged recitative, big choruses and dance, Bellérophon. Phaëton ...

French Baroque opera is at last making serious inroads into the UK’s musical landscape. While Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Medea is still playing to appreciative audiences at English National Opera, ...