Glossa GS 1509

Lully: Ballets & récits italiens – La Risonanza, Fabio Bonizzoni

Little introduction on record is needed for the dramatic output of Jean-Baptiste Lully: his style is quintessentially associated with French music of the seventeenth century. But during his early years in Paris, long before he became the all-conquering composer of tragédies en musique at the court of Louis XIV, the native Florentine Giovanni Battista Lulli, encouraged by Cardinal Mazarin, also born in Italy, helped to spread the music from his native country into the French court. The early compositions of Lully – forging his unmistakable style – focused on ballets de cour. For these his instrumental entrées were combined with vocal sections in Italian such as arias and early examples of his treatment of recitative. Not just transalpine composers were welcomed in Paris, but singers, too.

Fabio Bonizzoni and La Risonanza draw us into the Italianate world of Paris of the 1650s and 1660s before leaving us at the moment when Lully began his collaboration with Molière, in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, and made his entrance in the world of the tragédie en musique.