Philippe Quinault French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 dramatist and librettist, was born in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

.

Biography

Quinault was educated by the liberality of François Tristan l'Hermite

François Tristan l'Hermite

François l'Hermite was a French dramatist who wrote under the name Tristan l'Hermite. He was born at the Château de Soliers in the Haute Marche....

, the author of Marianne. Quinault's first play was produced at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1653, when he was only eighteen. The piece succeeded, and Quinault followed it up, but he also read for the bar; and in 1660, when he married a widow with money, he bought himself a place in the Cour des Comptes. Then he tried tragedies (Agrippa, etc.) with more success.

He received one of the literary pensions then recently established, and was elected to the Académie française

Académie française

L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

 in 1670. Up to this time he had written some sixteen or seventeen comedies, tragedies, and tragi-comedies, of which the tragedies were mostly of very small value and the tragi-comedies of little more. But his comedies--especially his first piece Les Rivales (1653), L'Amant indiscret (1654), which has some likeness to Molière

Molière

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...

's Étourdi, Le Fantôme amoureux (1659), and La Mère coquette (1665), perhaps the best--are much better. But in 1671 he contributed to the singular miscellany of Psyché, in which Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...

 and Molière also had a hand, and which was set to the music of Jean-Baptiste Lully

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...

.

Here he showed a remarkable faculty for lyrical drama, and from this time till just before his death he confined himself to composing libretti for Lully's work. This was not only very profitable (for he is said to have received four thousand livres for each, which was much more than was usually paid even for tragedy), but it established Quinault's reputation as the master of a new style--so that even Boileau

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux was a French poet and critic.-Biography:Boileau was born in the rue de Jérusalem, in Paris, France. He was brought up to the law, but devoted to letters, associating himself with La Fontaine, Racine, and Molière...

, who had previously satirized his dramatic work, was converted, less to the opera, which he did not like, than to Quinault's remarkably ingenious and artist-like work in it.

His libretti are among the very few which are readable without the music, and which are yet carefully adapted to it. They certainly do not contain very exalted poetry or very perfect drama. But they are quite free from the ludicrous doggerel which has made the name libretto a byword, and they have quite enough dramatic merit to carry the reader, much more the spectator, along with them. It is not an exaggeration to say that Quinault, coming at the exact time when opera became fashionable out of Italy, had very much to do with establishing it as a permanent European genre. His first piece after Psyché

Psyché

Psyché is an opera in a prologue and five acts composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully to a libretto by Thomas Corneille adapted from Molière's original play for which Lully had composed the intermèdes...

(1671) was a kind of classical masque, Les Fêtes de l'Amour et de Bacchus (1672). Then came Cadmus et Hermione

Cadmus et Hermione

Cadmus et Hermione is a tragédie en musique in a prologue and five acts by Jean-Baptiste Lully. The French-language libretto is by Philippe Quinault, after Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It was first performed on April 27, 1673, by the Paris Opera at the Jeu de Béquet.The prologue, in praise of King Louis...

(1674), Alceste

Alceste (Lully)

Alceste, ou Le triomphe d’Alcide is a tragédie en musique in a prologue and five acts by Jean-Baptiste Lully. The French-language libretto is by Philippe Quinault, after Euripides’ Alcestis...

(1674), Thesée

Thésée

Thésée is an opera with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully and a libretto by Philippe Quinault based on Ovid's Metamorphoses first performed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 11 January 1675.-Roles:-Synopsis:...

(1675), Atys

Atys (Lully)

Atys is a tragédie en musique in a prelude and five acts by Jean-Baptiste Lully to a French-language libretto by Philippe Quinault based on Ovid's Fasti. It was premiered at the royal court in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, January 10, 1676...

(1676), one of his best pieces, and Isis

Isis (Lully)

Isis is an opera by Jean-Baptiste Lully. The librettist is Lully's frequent collaborator, Philippe Quinault, and like most of Lully's operas, it is a tragédie lyrique. It premièred January 5, 1677 at the court of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and was first published in 1719.The story of the opera centers...

(1677).

All these were classical in subject, and so was Proserpine

Proserpine (Lully)

Proserpine is an opera with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully and a libretto by Philippe Quinault first performed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 3 February 1680.-Roles:-Synopsis:...

(1680), which was superior to any of them. The Triumph of Love (1681) is a mere ballet, but in Persée

Persée

Persée is a tragédie lyrique with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully and a libretto by Philippe Quinault, first performed in 1682 at the Paris Opéra.-Roles:-Synopsis:...

(1682) and Phaëton

Phaëton (Lully)

Phaëton is a tragédie en musique in a prologue and five acts by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Philippe Quinault wrote the French libretto after a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It was premiered at Versailles on January 6, 1683, and can be read as an allegorical depiction of the punishment awaiting those...

(1683) Quinault returned to the classical opera. Then he finally deserted it for romantic subjects, in which he was even more successful. Amadis de Gaule (1684), Roland

Roland (Lully)

Roland is an opera with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully and a libretto by Philippe Quinault first performed at Versailles on January 8, 1685. The story is derived from Ariosto's epic poem Orlando Furioso...

(1685), and Armide

Armide (Lully)

Armide is an opera by Jean-Baptiste Lully. The libretto was written by Philippe Quinault, based on Torquato Tasso's La Gerusalemme liberata .Critics in the 18th century regarded Armide as Lully's masterpiece...

(1686) are his masterpieces, the last being the most famous and the best of all. The very artificiality of the French lyric of the later 17th century, and its resemblance to alexandrine

Alexandrine

An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods. Drama in English often used alexandrines before Marlowe and Shakespeare, by whom it was supplanted...

s cut into lengths, were aids to Quinault in arranging lyrical dialogue. Lully

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...

died in 1687, and Quinault, his occupation gone, became devout, and began a poem called the "Destruction of Heresy." He died on the 26th of November 1688.