Quinault, Philippe (EN)

Quinault, Philippe, baptized 5 June 1635 Paris, †26 November 1688 Paris, French poet. He was the son of a baker who entrusted the education of his 8-year-old son to the poet Tristan l’Hermite; it was thanks to him that Quinault discovered his literary vocation, was introduced to the artistic community, and met the Duke of Guise, his future patron. In the early 1650s, Quinault studied law and practiced as a lawyer, while also beginning to write plays (Les Rivales 1653, L’Amant indiscret 1654, La Comédie sans Comédie 1655, and others) and soon became a well-known poet. His marriage in 1660 to a wealthy young widow enabled him to give up his legal profession and facilitated his entry into the circle of King Louis XIV’s court, where J.-B. Lully was consolidating his artistic position. In 1668, the short eclogue La grotte de Versailles was staged at Versailles, and in 1671, the ballet-tragedy Psyché was performed – the first evidence of Quinault’s collaboration with Lully, which developed between 1673 and 1686. The recognition of his poetic art was evidenced by his membership in the Académie Française (1670) and the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1674). Suffering from tuberculosis, he died in the prime of his creative powers.

Quinault left behind a rich poetic legacy, including numerous poems in addition to his dramatic works. He went down in the history of French literature as an outstanding creator of poetry set to music, and in the history of music, Quinault and Lully are recognized as the creators of tragédie en musique – a new dramatic genre that influenced the development of French opera. After the founding of the Académie Royale de Musique in 1672, Lully abandoned the creation of ballet comedies written mainly to texts by Molière and began to compose operas (known as tragédie lyrique) almost exclusively to librettos by Quinault. These are five-act works based on themes drawn from mythology or chivalric legends, preceded by a prologue glorifying the king or alluding to current political events. The librettos are based on romantic intrigue (a pair of lovers, rivals, supernatural interventions), the action is interrupted by spectacular group scenes (fights, mourning ceremonies, invocatory prayers), and romantic feelings are expressed with tender, smoothly flowing words (often with repetitions) in free verse (rather than the Alexandrine verse prevalent in French poetry). This corresponded to the tastes of aristocratic listeners and bourgeois audiences, as almost all operas were staged in the royal palace and in the Opera hall. The main characters exude elegance and refinement, far removed from the heroism, tragedy, and passion that characterize the heroes of Corneille and Racine’s dramas. The plot emphasizes magic and the extraordinary (the underworld, gods and goddesses, magicians, sorceresses, fantastic monsters), and especially frequent changes of location (meadows in Greece – frosty Scythia in Isis, a dangerous desert – an enchanted island in Thésée), and the extensive use of theatrical machinery contributed to the spectacular nature of the performances. This spectacularity, the multitude of characters, and the secondary love stories disrupted the unity of the action, which Quinault may have sought to achieve, but the final form of the libretto was the result of a long process described by Le Cerf de La Viéville (see R. Rolland) and cooperation with the despotic Lully, who, disregarding the opinion of the Académie Française, made cuts and demanded changes to the poetic text, so the submissive and gentle Quinault repeatedly reworked the scenes, adapting the verse to the music. The emergence of opera – a dramatic work fully developed musically (without spoken interludes) – and the success of this new genre provoked a lively reaction from literary critics, who, defending the priority of poetry over music, considered poetry to be a lasting, timeless value, and music as a decorative addition analogous to dance, stage design, and theatrical machinery. Quinault’s librettos, treated as dramatic works without regard to their connection to music, were sharply attacked by contemporary writers (N. Boileau was particularly vicious), but they have stood the test of time. In the second half of the 18th century, Quinault’s poetry inspired many opera composers (Gluck, Paisiello, Piccinni, and others), poets (especially J.-F. Marmontel) drew on his texts when writing new librettos, and characters from Quinault’s dramas reappeared on stage: Theseus, Perseus, Proserpina, and Armida.

Literature: J.L. Le Cerf de la Viéville Comparaisons de la musique italienne et de la musique française, 3 parts, Brussels 1705–06; R. Rolland Musiciens d’autrefois, Paris 1908, Polish ed. Z pierwszych wieków opery, Krakow 1971; X. de Courville Quinault, poète d’opéra, “La Revue Musicale” VI, 1925; E. Gros Philippe Quinault. Sa vie et son oeuvre, Paris 1926; J.B.A. Buijtendorp Philippe Quinault. Sa vie, ses tragédies et ses tragicomédies, Amsterdam 1928; L. Maurice-Amour Comment Lully et ses poètes humanisent dieux et héros, «Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des Etudes Françaises» XVII, 1965; C. Girdlestone La tragédie en musique (1673–1750) considérée comme genre littéraire, Geneva 1972; J.R. Anthony French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau, London 1973, 2nd ed. 1978, 2 corrected and expanded eds. 1978, repr. Wisconsin 2003; Y. Giraud Quinault et Lully ou Raccord de deux styles, “Marseille” no. 95, 1973; W. Brooks Bibliographie critique du théâtre de Quinault, Paris 1988 and Lully and Quinault at Court and on the Public Stage 1673–86, «Seventeenth-Century French Studies» no. 10, 1988 and no. 11, 1989; B. Norman Ancients and Moderns, Tragedy and Opera. The Quarrel over „Alceste”, in: French Musical Thought. 1600–1800, eds. G. Cowart, Ann Arbor 1989; P. Howard The Influence of the Précieuses on Content and Structure in Quinault’s and Lully’s Tragédies Lyriques, “Acta Musicologica” LXIII, 1991 and Quinault, Lully and the Précieuses. Images of Women in Seventeenth-Century France, in: Cecilia. Feminist Perspectives on Women and Music, eds. S. Cook and J. Tsou, Urbana (Illinois) 1993; D. Bernard, Ch. Barthelemy, E. Mulsane, Quinault, Voltaire: librettiste, Béziers, 1998; B. Norman Touched by the graces: the libretti of Philippe Quinault in the context of French classicism, Birmingham 2001; D.A. Thomas Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime 1647–1785, Cambridge 2002; D. Lachaux-Lefebvre Le discours dans le spectacle en musique de 1661 à 1686: des comédies de divertissements de Molière aux tragédies lyriques de Quinault, Tübingen 2002; Ph. Gervais Les tragédies en musique de Philippe Quinault: étude rhétorique, doctoral dissertation at the Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2003; M. Bajer Sur certains aspects de la crise des valeurs heroïques dans les tragédies en musique de Philippe Quinault, in: Materiały z Międzynarodowego Kongresu Lingwistycznego „El verbo y su entorno: gramática, léxico, texto”, Poznań 2004; H. Schneider Philippe Quinaults „Alceste ou Le triomphe d’Alcide” in drei deutschen Adaptationen: von Johann Wolfgang Franck (1680), von Johann Ulrich König (Braunschweig 1719 und Hamburg 1719) und in einer Übersetzung zur Musik Lullys (Hamburg 1696): eine librettistische Studie, in: Barock. Geschichte – Literatur – Kunst. Deutsch-polnische Kulturkontakte im 16.–18. Jahrhundert: Deutschsprachige Sondernummer der Zeitschrift „Barok. Historia – Literatura – Sztuka” 2006.