Bell Ringer – 11/1 m.socrative.com – Room OR Bell Ringer Card QUESTIONS:  1. “Speak singing” is called _________________.  2. Who is the father of opera? THE INTERNET IS DOWN AT THE MOMENT – everyone needs to do it on a Bell Ringer card and put it in the box

Louis XIV We talked about him BRIEFLY yesterday with the development of the opera – he’s an important guy!

Louis XIV   “Louis the Great” & “The Sun King”  Ruled as King of France from 1643 until his death  Reigned for 72 years and 110 days – the longest of a monarch of a major country in European History  Died of gangrene 4 days before his 77 th birthday  Succeeded by this 5-year-old great grandson XV

Louis XIV  Dancer  Performed 80 roles in 40 major ballets  Professional ballet dancer  Often portrayed roles that were royal or godlike  Combined business with art in a mutually beneficial way

Dance

 By the late 16 th century, baroque art was consolidated in the court of Louis XIV  He was a great patron of painting, sculpture, theater, and architecture and brought ballet into full participation  Louis the XIV was an avid dancer himself – he studied for 20 years with the dancing master Pierre Beauchamps

Dance – Pierre Beauchamps  Pierre Beauchamps invented the 5 basic ballet positions First Second Third FourthFifth

Dance  Louis XIV is nicknamed “The Sun King”  At the age of 14 th, he danced as Apollo the Sun-God in Le Ballet de la Nuit  Louis XIV employed a team of professional artists to produce ballet and opera at court – Moliere (playwright) was a part of these collaborative efforts

Dance  The plots for French ballet came from classical mythology  The style of dancing was fairly simple and controlled  Gestures were symmetrical  Costumes included elaborate wigs  Any movement that threatened to knock one’s wig off would have been impractical and awkward.

Dance  Ballet became formally institutionalized when LouisXIV founded the Academie Royale de Danse in 1661  Royal Academy of Dance  He hired 13 dancing masters to teach there  10 years later, the Royal Academy of Dance merged with the Royal Academy of Music (newly established)  Both schools used Louis XIV’s personal theater – a “picture frame stage”  Choreography was designed for an audience on one side

Dance  The establishment of the Royal Academy of Dance led to prescribed rules for positions and movement  Women took the stage as professional ballerinas for the first time  As the baroque era came to a close in the early 1700s, the foundations of ballet were in place

Louis XIV as The Sun King 

Drama

 Between 1550 and 1720, France developed a theatrical tradition called “French neoclassicism”  In 1548, the Protestants and Catholics outlawed religious drama  Secular drama became popular

Drama – French Neoclassicism  Plays had to conform to 2 specific rules  The action of the play had to occur in a single location  No change in setting  The action could not encompass more than 24 hours  The play must take place over the course of one day (the play itself is probably only 1- 2 hours long.)

Drama – French Neoclassicism  Pierre Corneille ( ) created French masterpieces by breaking the rules  In 1635, he wrote the masterpiece Le Cid  Tragic comedy about love and war  France condemned the play though – other countries loved it!

Drama – French Neoclassicism  Moliere ( ) wrote French comedies  Performed in “tennis-court theaters”  Size and shape of indoor tennis courts made them perfect for theater  A performance in front of Louis XIV launched his career as a playwright  Wrote Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, and the Bourgeois Gentleman (ber-sh-wa)  Fast paced action, crisp language, and gentle but effective mockery of humans  Challenged background designers

Drama – Moliere  The Bourgeois Gentleman  5 Act Comedy Ballet  Includes dialogue, music and dance, but no singing  Choreography done by Pierre Beauchamp  Pokes fun at the pretentious middle-class and the vain aristocracy  A middle class man wants to climb the ladder and become an aristocrat – takes up fencing, dancing, music, and philosophy 