LULLY, Jean Baptiste 1632-1687

Roland. Tragedie Mise en Musique par Monsieur de Lully, Escuyer, Conseiller Secretaire du Roy, Maison, Couronne de France & de ses Finances, & Sur-Intendant de la Musique de Sa Majesté. [LWV 65]. [Full score]

Paris: Christophe Ballard, seul Imprimeur du Roy pour la Musique, ruë Saint Jean de Beauvais, au Mont-Parnasse. Et Se Vend A la Porte de l'Academie Royale de Musique, ruë Saint Honoré. ... Avec Privilege de Sa Majesté, 1685.

Folio. Full contemporary dark brown calf with raised bands on spine in decorative compartment gilt, titling gilt. 1f. (recto title, verso blank), 1f. (dedication), 1f. (dedication in verse), lvi (Prologue), 344 pp. Music and text typeset throughout, music in diamond-head notation.

Elaborate woodcut device to title incorporating horticultural and architectural motifs with central image within oval border depicting allegorical personifications of Fortune and Virtue with "Virtuti Fortuna Cedit" (Fortune Yields to Virtue) at Virtue's head with cherubs playing lute and viol and Orpheus with lyre; a satyr playing a panpipe flanks the central image, with two additional cherubs displaying a short musical phrase above.

Provenance
Noted musicologist and collector Geneviève Thibault, Comtesse de Chambure (1902-1975), with her small engraved armorial bookplate incorporating a crown, a standing bear, a lion, and three crested birds to front pastedown.

Binding worn, rubbed, and bumped; endpapers slightly soiled, stained, and creased, with minor loss to lower outer blank corner of free endpaper. Some wear; occasional staining, browning, and foxing, heavier to some leaves; first leaf with tear repaired; additional small tears to many leaves at lower margin, some repaired, with no loss of music; occasional mispagination.

First Edition. Schneider p. 428. Sonneck Dramatic Music p. 100. Lesure p. 407. BUC p. 635. Hirsch II, 145. RISM L3027 and LL3027.

Roland, a tragédie en musique with a libretto by Quinault after Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, was first performed at Versailles on 8 January 1685.

"Lully and Quinault’s penultimate tragedy was performed weekly at Versailles (in the riding-school theatre, without machinery) for two months; the production then moved to the Paris Opéra on 8 or 9 March and continued until November. The principal singers were Le Rochois (Angélique), Dumesnil (Médor) and Beaumavielle (Roland). Paris Opéra revivals occurred regularly up to 1755. Between 1686 and 1750 there were productions in Brussels (several times), Marseilles, Lyons, Rouen, Metz, Lille, and Amsterdam.

Lully’s dedication of the printed score to Louis XIV indicates that the King chose the subject of the story. The libretto is curiously divided. Acts 1–3 concern Angélique’s internal conflict between love and ‘glory’ (more precisely, love and pride). Acts 4–5 concern Roland’s internal struggle with unrequited love; it is resolved by a dea ex machina who uses magic to make Roland understand that the struggle is a heroic conflict between love and duty." Lois Rosow in Grove Music Online

A lifetime first edition of Roland, for which Louis XIV, the Sun King, chose the subject himself.

Item #39601

Price: $5,000.00  other currencies