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Issé (1724) - André Cardinal Destouches
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Background
Destouches’s Issé premiered in 1697, just nine years after the death of Jean-Baptiste Lully. The tradition of featuring new operas at the court prior to a public premiere—common during Lully’s later years—was reinstated with this work. However, the Fountainebleau production was a concert performance, rather than a staged rendition of the opera. The opera was then staged at the Paris Opéra on 30 December 1697.
When Destouches revived the opera in 1708, he enlarged the original three-act work to five acts. This allowed for expanded divertissements, choruses, and more elaborate arias, which appealed to contemporary public preferences. The volume in the Virtual Rare Book Room is the five-act version.
Destouches was one of the most successful opera composers in the years following Lully’s death, and Issé remained popular throughout the first half of the eighteenth century. However, as the tragedie en musique was losing favor with the public, Destouches turned to other genres, such as the opéra-ballet.
Plot
Issé, a nymph, has fallen for a simple shepherd named Philemon, but she is unaware that her beloved is actually a disguised Apollo. Although she learns through an oracle that Apollo would like to claim her for himself, Issé insists upon remaining true to Philemon. Apollo then discloses that he is in fact the shepherd, and the story concludes happily. Another pair of lovers, Doris and Pan, enhance the main story.
Bibliography
Title from title page: ISSÉ, / PASTORALE HEROÏQUEGenre: Pastorale héroïque
Composer: André Cardinal Destouches, 1672-1749
Librettist: Antoine Houdar de Lamotte, 1672-1731
Libretto based on: Greek mythological story
Concert premiere: Fontainebleau, 7 October 1697
Stage premiere: Paris, Opéra, 30 December 1697
First published: Paris: Christophe Ballard, 1697
Volume in the UNT Collection: Paris: J. B. C. Ballard, 1724
For further reading on Issé, see:
Anthony, James R. French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau. New York: Norton, 1978.
Fajon, Robert. Introduction to A. C. Destouches: Issé, French Opera in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Volume 14. New York: Pendragon Press, 1984.
Isherwood, Robert M. Music in the Service of the King: France in the Seventeenth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973.
Le Cerf de la Viéville. Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la musique françoise. Brussels, 1704–6.
Rosow, Lois. “From Destouches to Berton: Editorial Responsibility at the Paris Opéra.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 40 (1987): 285–309.
________. Review of André Cardinal Destouches: Issé: pastorale héroïque. Journal of the American Musicological Society 40 (1987): 548–57.
Weber, William. “La musique ancienne in the Waning of the Ancien Régime.” Journal of Modern History 56 (1984): 58–88.
Wood, Caroline. “Issé.” Grove Music Online, ed. Laura Macy. [Accessed 17 December 2003]. <http://www.grovemusic.com>
________. “Orchestra and Spectacle in the tragédie en musique, 1673–1715: oracle, sommeil and tempête.” Proceedings of the Royal Music Association 118 (1981–2): 25–46.
Physical
Dimensions: 35 x 23 cm.
Collation: [20: ¶3 A-4F2]; 153 leaves, pp. [2] 5-8, 1-300 [misprinting 87 as 78].
Conservation: Very light foxing; stained pages; rough, uneven edges; adhesive tape at top edge of some pages; torn head cap; cracking hinge.
Binding: Three-fourths binding with paper-covered board and burnt orange buckram gold-stamped spine that reads “DESTOUCHES / ISSE” between the first and second cords and “1697” below the sixth cord; rebound in modern library style.
Comments: From the Lloyd Hibberd Collection; bottom corner of pages 205-206 and 207-208 missing; top edge of pages 295-296 missing.