Alcide – The triumph of Hercules

For its tenth anniversary, ensemble a nocte temporis dives into the repertoire in which it excels and blows the dust off the rarely heard opera Alcide by Marin Marais and Louis Lully. For the young Marin Marais, whom we mainly know as a gamba virtuoso and composer of sublime chamber music, it was his opera debut. He worked together with Louis Lully, the eldest son of Jean-Baptiste Lully, the Italian who, as court composer to Louis XIV, had invented the genre of tragédie lyrique and brought it to great heights. The catchy libretto tells the story of the unrequited, extramarital love of Alcide (Hercules) for Iole, who in turn is in love with Alcide’s friend Philoctète. Enough reason to deploy all the assets of French baroque opera: from vocal drama, to brilliantly orchestrated orchestral passages and elegant dances. With a nocte temporis, the Chœur de Chambre de Namur, and a selection of beautiful soloists, it promises to be a very colorful, French baroque evening.