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Nicolas Dezede Florine Dezede N-J Mesreaux (?) Champein

Florine D

Florine Dezède (1765—1792) was a French composer, the daughter of the composer Nicolas Dezède. Virtually nothing is known about her life. She wrote one opera, Lucette et Lucas, premiered at the in 1782.

Sources

• Jacqueline Letzer and Robert Adelson, Women Writing Opera: Creativity and Controversy in the Age of the French Revolution, Columbia University Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0520226531

Nicolas D

Nicolas Dezède (born ?1740-45; died 1792) was a French composer, mainly of opéra comique.

Operas

Notes to self

Rameau roles tables:

• Les fêtes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour
• Les fêtes de Ramire

Background

=

looked back to the era of Louis XIV as a high point of French culture. At the Paris Opéra, this attempt to reconnect with the glories of the past took two main forms: writing works to libretti derived from the great plays of the era, e.g. Grétry's opera Andromaque, based on the famous tragedy by Racine; or revisiting the collaborations between the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, considered the founder of the French operatic tradition, and his librettist Philippe Quinault. The Lully-Quinault operas had continued to be performed throughout the early 18th century, although the scores were increasingly modified to suit changing musical tastes, e.g. extra instrumentation was added. However, by the 1770s, Lully's contribution began to disappear completely as a new fashion emerged for taking Quinault's libretti, altering them to varying degrees and handing them over to contemporary composers who would provide them with new music. Notable examples of this fashion were...A major reason for these resettings was an attempt to make sure that foreign composers (e.g. the German Gluck, the Italian Piccinni) who were frequently offered these commissions would conform, at least in part, to French tradition.

Devismes entrusted his brother Alphonse with the task of adapting the libretto Quinault had written for Lully's Amadis (1681). His changes were often sweeping: he cut the allegorical prologue and reduced the original five acts to three ....Alphonse Devismes cut many of the secondary characters, such as the lovers Florestan and .... His aim was to bring the libretto closer to the simplicity of plot which was a notable feature of the contemporary Italian opera seria of Metastasio.

Performance history

Amadis was a failure; it ran for only seven performances and was never revived at the Opéra. Coming soon after the adverse reception of Gluck's last opera for Paris, Echo et Narcisse, it led to the dismissal of Desvismes from his post as head of the Opéra. Contemporary reviews focussed on the incompetence of the adaptation of Quinault's libretto rather than Bach's music. A translation of Bach's opera Orione (1763) into French had already been made but plans to stage it in Paris were now abandoned.

Modern revivals

Amadis remained unperformed for the next two hundred years.