Marc-Antoine Charpentier is the feature composer this week and his take on the Medea myth with the help of the libretto by Thomas Corneille in “Medee” on the Sunday Opera (2/25 3:00 p.m.).
The opera begins with a prologue that doesn’t have anything to do with Medea, and it just seems to be Charpentier buttering up King Louis XIV with a short segment extoling his wonderful virtues. After that, the opera gets down to the well-known story of Jason and Medea, however, this time it begins just as she’s realizing that Jason is not going to marry her and is actually courting King Creon’s daughter Creuse.
Madea’s revenge still includes her gift of a mantle for Creuse that bursts into flames and kills her and the murder of Medea’s two children she had with Jason, but in this version, her wrath includes her destroying the Palace of Corinth as she is flown through the sky in her fiery chariot drawn by dragons.
Of course, we’ll have a little difficulty “showing” you this on radio, so you’ll just have to use your imagination.
This cast in this recording from 1994 & 1995 includes Lorraine Hunt as Medea, Mark Padmore as Jason, Monique Zanetti as Creuse, Bernard Deletre as King Creon, and Jean-Mark Salzman as Oronte. The mast of all things Baroque, William Christie, conducts Les Arts Florissants.
We’ll have just enough time after the opera to include another short work about “The Pleasures of Versailles” {“Les plaisirs de Versailles”) featuring Sophie Daneman, Katalin Karolyi, Steve Dugardin, and Francois Gardeil with William Christie once again leading Les Arts Florissants.
This week’s Sunday Opera is French Baroque at it’s best, so we hope you’ll tune in.
