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Armide manuscript, undated
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Background
Armide, which premiered at the Paris Opéra February 15, 1686, was the last tragédie lyrique on which Jean-Baptiste Lully collaborated with his favorite librettist, Philippe Quinault. Quinault retired from the stage after Armide, and Lully died a year later on March 22, 1687. From its first performance, Armide was considered their masterpiece.
Armide is unusual among Lully and Quinault's tragédies lyriques in that it concentrates on the psychological development of a single character; the reflective style of this late work may be regarded as an early presentiment of trends toward individualism in art. Lully's patron, Louis XIV, selected the story of Armide in May of 1685 from among several offered by Quinault. Armide is adapted from a section of Gerusalemme liberata, a popular epic poem by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso which uses the story of the capture of Jerusalem by Christians during the First Crusade (1096-99) as the basis for a rhapsodic tale of heroism, villainy, war, star-crossed lovers, sorcery, warrior maidens, and victory in battle. The section on which Armide is based tells the story of Armide, a sorceress who falls in love with the Crusader Renaud, her sworn enemy. According to Lully's contemporary, Le Cerf de la Viéville, Armide was known as a " ladies' opera," probably because of its emphasis on Armide's internal conflict.
Besides Lully, well-known composers who have written operas about the love of Armide for Renaud include Antonio Salieri (Armida, Vienna, 1771), Christoph Willibald Gluck, (Armide, Paris, 1777), Joseph Haydn (Armida, Esterháza, 1784); Gioachino Rossini (Armida, Naples, 1817), and Antonín Dvorák (Armida, Prague, 1904). Gluck used substantial portions of the same Quinault libretto. In all, there are almost 100 operas and ballets based on the same story.
Plot
The Prologue, set in "a palace," is a dialogue between the goddesses Wisdom and Glory. They praise the Hero whom they both love (a reference to Louis XIV, Lully's patron), and summarize the experience of Renaud, who in the end chooses Glory and Wisdom over his love for Armide.
The first act begins in a great square "ornamented by an Arch of Triumph" in the city of Damascus. Phénice and Sidonie praise Armide's triumphs over the Crusaders whom she has taken captive. The sorceress, however, is aware only that she has been unable to prevail over Renaud. She expresses her anger and frustration in a majestic air, "Je ne triomphe pas du plus vaillant de tous" ("I have not conquered the most valiant of all"). Armide's uncle, the sorceror Idraot, urges his niece to choose a husband, but she will consider only someone who can conquer Renaud--if anyone can. Arontes, who has been left guarding Armide's prisoners, staggers in dripping blood and drops dead after announcing that Renaud has rescued them.
Renaud is discovered in the second act in a "pleasant countryside" with Artemidore, one of the knights whom he has rescued. After assuring Artemidore that his heart is safe from Armide's spells, Renaud sends him away. Idraot and Armide conjure up demons to put Renaud to sleep. The hero admires his surroundings and prepares himself for sleep in his well-known air de sommeil ("sleep aria"), "Plus j'observe ces lieux" ("The more I observe this place"). The demons, in the shape of nymphs and shepherds, weave their spells over Renaud in a ballet sequence. Armide enters, intending to kill Renaud as he sleeps. She is overcome by love for him instead, and decides to spirit him away and bind him to her through sorcery. Her recitative monologue, "Enfin, il est en ma puissance" ("At last, he is in my power"), is considered among the greatest of Lully's dramatic recitatives.
Act three takes place in a desert, where Armide is struggling with the perils of success. Her spells have brought Renaud entirely into her power. Nevertheless, she is troubled because while she is deeply in love with the hero, he is bound to her only by her spells. In her monologue air "Venez, venez, Haine implacable" ("Come, come, implacable Hate"), Armide invokes the spirit of Hate to rescue her from her love for Renaud. Hate and her followers perform a powerful invocation in which they break Cupid's arrows and gloat over their impending victory over Love. In the end, Armide cannot give up Renaud and sends Hate away. Hate curses Armide, condemning her to the punishment of undying love.
The fourth act brings several of Renaud's companions to the desert of Act three in search of their leader, where they are bewildered and led astray by monsters and traps laid by Armide.
Armide's enchanted palace provides the setting for Act five, which begins with the only love scene between Armide and Renaud. Armide leaves the Pleasures and a troop of Fortunate Lovers to amuse Renaud in an extended divertissement while she retires to the Underworld to consider her situation. In her absence, the Danish knights from Act four discover Renaud, thereby breaking her spell. Armide returns in time to confront Renaud as he leaves her, imploring him to take her with him as a captive if he will not remain as her lover. He hesitates, but Duty and the call of Glory overcome his feelings for her; he leaves with his companions. Armide, left alone, laments his loss and her inescapable love in her celebrated final monologue, "Le perfide Renaud me fuit" ("The perfidious Renaud flees from me"). The demons destroy her enchanted palace, and Armide exits in a flying chariot.
Bibliography
Title from title page: ARMIDE / TRAGEDIE / MISE / EN MUSIQUE
Genre: tragédie lyrique (Tragédie en musique)
Siglum from Lully thematic catalog: LWV 71
Composer: Jean-Baptiste Lully, 1632-1687
Librettist: Philippe Quinault, 1635-1688
Libretto based on: Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata
Setting: Damascus, during the First Crusade
Premiere: Paris, Palais-Royal, 15 February 1686
First published: Paris: Christophe Ballard, 1686
Volume in the UNT Lully Collection: Undated manuscript
For further reading on Armide, see:
Berger, Christine. "Armide zwischen Resignation und Rache: Quinault und Lully zwischen Abscheid und Ambition." Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 55 (1998): 110-31.
Buschmeier, Gabriele. “Glucks Armide-Monolog, Lully und die ‘Philosophes’.”
In Festschrift Klaus Hortschansky zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Axel Beer and Laurenz Lütteken, 167-180. Tutzing, Germany: Schneider, 1995.
Clerc, Pierre-Alain. "De Racine Lully, de Lully Racine: Chanter comme on parle." Analyse musicale 42 (2002): 47-59.
Dill, Charles. "Rameau Reading Lully: Meaning and System in Rameau's Recitative Tradition." Cambridge Opera Journal 6 (1994): 1-17.
Grosperrin, Jean-Philippe. "La glorieuse, la songeuse et les magiciens: Seduction de l'illusion dans la tragédie lyrique (1675-1710)." Litteratures Classiques 44 (2002):115-139.
Latham, Edward D. "Physical Motifs and Concentric Amplification in Godard/Lully's Armide." Indiana Theory Review 19 (1998): 55-88.
Mayrhofer, Marina. "Il meccanismo del merveilleux nella drammaturgia di Armide di Quinault-Lully." Studi musicali 25 (1996): 53-65.
Porot, Bertrand. "Les enjeux de la celebration royale dans Armide de Lully et Quinault (1686)." Analyse Musicale 50 (2004): 16-27.
Reckow, Fritz. "'Cacher l'Art par l'Art meme': Lullys Armide-Monolog und die Kunst des Vergebens." In Analysen: Beitrage zu einer Problemgeschichte des Komponierens. Festschrift fur Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht zum 65. Geburtstag. Edited by Werner Breig, Reinhold Brinkmann, and Elmar Budde. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1984. 128-57. Supplement to Archiv fur Musikwissenschaft 23.
Rosow, Lois. "Armide." In Grove Music Online. Edited by Laura Macy. Accessed 28 April 2005 <http://www.grovemusic.com>
________. "The Articulation of Lully's Dramatic Dialogue." In Lully Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 72-99.
________. "French Baroque Recitative as an Expression of Tragic Declamation." Early Music 11 (1983): 468-79.
________. "How Eighteenth-century Parisians Heard Lully's Operas: The Case of Armide's Fourth Act." In Jean-Baptiste Lully and the Music of the French Baroque: Essays in Honor of James R. Anthony. Edited by John Hajdu Heyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 213-237.
________. Lully's Armide at the Paris Opera: A Performance History, 1686-1766. Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1981.
________. "The Principal Sources for Lully's Armide." In Quellenstudien zu Jean-Baptiste Lully / L'œuvre de Dully: Études des sources. Hommage à Lionel Sawkins. Hildesheim: Olms, 1999. 248-63.
Schmidt, Dörte. Armide hinter den Spiegeln: Lully, Gluck und die Mglichkeiten der dramatischen Parodie. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997.
Schneider, Herbert. "Gluck and Lully." In Lully Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 243-71.
Schwartz, Judith L. "The Passacaille in Lully's Armide: Phrase Structure in the Choreography and the Music." Early Music 26 (1998): 300-20.
Stefanovic, Ana. "Deconstruction of the Aesthetics of the Marvelous in French Baroque Opera." New Sound: International Magazine for Music 13 (1999): 50-61.
Thomas, Downing A. "Opera, Dispossession, and the Sublime: The Case of Armide." Theatre Journal 49 (1997): 168-88.
See the Lully bibliography for suggested reading.
Physicals
Armide, the seventh Lully opera published by Ballard, appeared in print the same year as the opera's premiere on February 15, 1686, and the year before Lully's death in March of 1687. Second editions were published by the Ballard firm in 1713 and 1718. A rival second edition, published in 1710 by the engraver H. de Baussen, was among several that caused a lawsuit that reinforced Ballard's control over French music printing in general and Lully's works in particular.
The binding is leather, and the endpapers are colorful marble.
Imprint: [16--?]
Description: 1 score (xlvii, 180 p.) ; 38 x 24 ¾ cm.
Note Caption title.
Libretto by Quinault.
Ms. copy, "notated in ink on 12-stave paper, and signed Conteuille (presumably the copyist) at the foot of the first and last leaves of music"--dealer's description, J & J Lubrano, Music Antiquarians