La Chapelle Royale de Louis XV

When Louis XV's power was consolidated by his return to Versailles in 1722, the Regent Philippe d'Orléans decided to renovate the music of the Chapelle Royale, which had been in the hands of De Lalande for decades. The appointment in January 1723 of a new team considered both tradition and modernity: De Lalande (sixty-five years old) kept the responsibility for one quarter of the year, remaining the prestigious link with the splendours of Louis XIV’s century. André Campra (sixty-two), who oversaw music at Notre-Dame de Paris before a glorious career in opera, returned to sacred music for another quarter at the Chapelle Royale. Nicolas Bernier (fifty-seven years old), a protégé of the Regent, who enjoyed great success in the French cantata style and hosted the brilliant Nuits de Sceaux, while directing sacred music at the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, was also granted a quarter at the Chapelle Royale, and specifically the education of the Pages. Finally, Charles-Hubert Gervais (fifty-one years old), an opera composer very close to the Regent, whose Music Superintendent he had been since 1700, and whom he had accompanied in the composition of his two operas, completed this new Chapelle Royale, for which he composed some forty Grands Motets. This concert highlights the four sub-master composers of the Chapelle Royale brought together by Emmanuelle Haïm, at the head of the academic forces of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, for a programme to the glory of the young King Louis XV, ending with Lalande’s mythical Te Deum created for Louis XIV four decades earlier: modernity and tradition!

PROGRAMME

Charles-Hubert Gervais (1671-1744)
Exaudiat te Dominus

Nicolas Bernier (1664-1734)
Miserere

Pièces d’orgue

Entracte

André Campra (1660-1744)
In convertendo (version 1726)

Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657-1726)
Te Deum

A Opéra Royal / Château de Versailles, Centre de musique baroque de Versailles coproduction