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- Title
Mad fools and the Praise of Folly: matassins and the ballets of Lully, Destouches and Campra (1660-1718).
- Authors
Kenley, McDowell E.
- Abstract
Mad fools and buffoons called matassins performed comic dances in pantomime and were sometimes portrayed in French ballet. There is confusion concerning their identity and the choreography they performed, in particular whether they were humorous figures or warlike sword dancers. The entertainers known as matassins may have come to France in association with the commedia dell'arte, and the first printed music bearing the title 'matassin' appeared in France (Guillaume Morlaye, 1552). Matassins appear along with commedia dell'arte characters or in commedia-derived scenes in ballets. Among these are ballet intermèdes composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully for performance between the acts of the first Paris performance of Francesco Cavalli's opera Xerxes (1660), intermèdes tightly integrated with the action in Molière and Lully's comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac (1669), and Lully's tragédie- and comédie-ballet Psyché (1670). They also performed in André Campra's ballet pastiche Les fragments de Monsieur de Lully (1702), as well as Campra's opéra-ballet Les Âges (1718), and André Cardinal Destouches and Houdar de la Motte's comédieballet Le Carnaval et la Folie (1703), which were both based directly or indirectly on Desiderius Erasmus's Praise of Folly.
- Subjects
FRANCE; DANCE; BALLET; FRENCH drama (Comedy); ERASMUS, Desiderius, d. 1536; PRAISE of Folly, The (Book : Erasmus); DRAMA criticism
- Publication
Early Music, 2017, Vol 45, Issue 3, p445
- ISSN
0306-1078
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/em/cax063