Les Arts Florissants bring opéra-ballet back to life
New York Times: Georgia J. Cowart, professor of music, discussed André Campra’s 1710 opéra-ballet Les Fêtes Vénitiennes. “The opéra-ballet was created when Louis XIV was old, ailing, withdrawn from public life, and had lost interest in music and spectacle,” she said. “There was a lot of dancing and spectacle, and there was a sense of kind of being liberated from the heaviness of traditional opera.”
