On great festivals concerts of sacred music were The theatre was opened for operatic performance three times a week throughout the year. After this the work became the property of the Académie. The composer of a new opera received for each of the first ten representations 100 livres (about £4 sterling), and for each of the following twenty representations, 50 livres. Lully's scale of payment to authors, having regard to the value of money in his time, was liberal. What it was somewhat later may be gathered from the fact that, not to mention innumerable less distinguished instances, Christian burial was refused (1673) to Moliere and (1730) to Adrienne Le Couvreur. The status of the theatrical performer at this epoch would seem to have been higher than it has ever been since seeing that, by a special court order, even nobles were allowed, without prejudice to their rank, to appear as singers and dancers before audiences who paid for admission to their performances. Probably he got prohibition which had ceased to be operative exchanged for avowed sanction. He is said to have first obtained permission, though in spite of great opposition, for the appearance of women on the stage but as the troupe of his predecessor Cambert included four, his claim to their first introduction there needs qualification. In the course of his autocracy, Lully developed considerably musical form in its application to dramatic effect, and added considerably to the resources of the orchestra though, in comparison with those of more recent times, he left them still very meagre. The number, success, and, more than all, the merit, of these entitle Lully to be regarded as the founder of the school of which Meyerbeer may claim to have proved the most distinguished alumnus though, as we have seen, its foundation had been facilitated for him by the labours of others. In the course of these fourteen years he produced, in concert with the poet Quinault, no fewer than twenty grand operas, besides other works. By this disreputable proceeding Lully made himself master of the situation, remaining to the time of his death, in 1687, the autocrat of the French lyric drama. The latter, the master-spirit of the enterprise thus wrecked, notwithstanding his hospitable reception by our Charles II, died in London shortly afterwards, at the age of forty-nine, of disappointment and home-sickness. de Montespan, succeeded in obtaining for himself the privileges which had been accorded to Perrin and Cambert. Baptiste Lully, who, through his influence with Mme. The troupe consisted of five male and four female principal performers, fifteen chorus-singers, and an orchestra numbering thirteen! The career of the Académie under these its first entrepreneurs was brought to an end by the jealousy of an Italian musician then rising in court favour, J. The 'strength' of the company engaged in its performance presents an interesting contrast with that of the existing grand opera, and even of similar establishments of far less pretension. Two years after, Cambert followed this opera by 'Ariane,' and in the following year by 'Adonis.' The Académie was opened in 1671 with an opera by the same master, 'Pomone,' which attained an enormous success having been repeated, apparently to the exclusion of every other work, for eight months successively. This has frequently been spoken of as the earliest veritable French opera but that title is more justly due to the 'Pastorale en musique' of Cambert-the subject of which was given to the Abbé Perrin by the Cardinal Legate of Innocent X-first performed at Issy in 1659. The establishment of the existing institution was however also preceded, and therefore facilitated, by a series of performances in Italian by Italian artists, beginning in 1584 and continued with little interruption till 1652, and by rarer though not less important ones by French artists, beginning from 1625, when 'Akébar, roi du Mogol,' was produced in the palace of the bishop of Carpentras. de Baif, in respect to an academy 'do poesie et de musique,' but its scheme does not appear to have included dramatic representation. Nearly a century prior to this, in 1570, similar privileges had been accorded by Charles IX to a Venetian, C. In 1669 royal letters patent were granted by Louis XIV to the Abbé Perrin, Robert Cambert, and the Marquis de Sourdéac, for the establishment of an Académie wherein to present in public 'operas and dramas with music, and in French verse,' after the manner of those of Italy, for the space of twelve years. This institution, which, following the frequently changed political conditions of France since 1791, has been called in turn Royale, Nationale, and Impériale, has already entered its third century.
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