The celebrated Ballet Royal de la Nuit, danced by His Majesty Louis XIV at the age of fifteen, was performed early in 1653 on seven evenings in the Salle du Petit-Bourbon at the Louvre Palace. It enjoyed general success: the aristocracy, present in large numbers, the ambassadors of Europe, but also the bourgeois of the city of Paris acclaimed this lavish spectacle whose enchantments made a lasting impression.
To make a lasting impression: that was precisely the grand project of Mazarin, who had just returned to power after the disturbances of the Fronde rebellion. Commissioned by the cardinal in person, this ballet project had been conceived at the highest levels of state as a promotional tool for royal power: the intention was to impose respect on the high-ranking personages of the kingdom, to impress the Parisians who were present, and to disseminate this message elsewhere in the world through the intermediary of the foreign representations. If today’s historians are in agreement that the Ballet Royal de la Nuit was one of the key spectacles of Louis XIV’s reign, it is because it was influential in numerous respects: political, institutional, aesthetic and musical.
For the first time in the history of the genre, the libretto is unified and skilfully laid out in four veilles (the watches of the night) and a concluding grand ballet; all the levels of interpretation and all the arts move towards a single goal: the rising of the Sun.
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