No one understood the ennui of lockdown better than Louis XIV and his courtiers

A few years ago I interviewed an eminent baroque conductor. Prickly and professorial, tired after a day of rehearsals, he batted question after question away until we landed on the subject of French baroque opera. No longer disinterested, now he was furious. He’d recently had a conversation with a major UK opera house, who had decided never again to stage anything by Lully, Rameau or Charpentier. Why? ‘It doesn’t sell.’ Since then we’ve had precisely one professional production of this repertoire in this country.

It’s not the first time that English audiences have been suspicious of foreign imports. Back in the 18th century, when the cultural invasion came from Italy, feelings on this subject ran high. ‘[The Italians] are Idolators of Musick,’ wrote one anonymous pamphleteer, ‘an effeminate Nation, not relishing the more masculine Pleasures. Their Drama is little better than a continue’d Song… But in England, where our Passions are more manly, I see no more reason for following ’em in this custom than in their Dress, or romantick way of Intriguing.’

Masculinity, it seems, was everything. Could you even call yourself a man if you took your pleasure from effete, sugary Italian opera rather than the meat-and-two-veg heroic couplets of Dryden or Pope?

No one understood the ennui of lockdown better than Louis XIV and his courtiers

Three hundred years later this question may not be voiced out loud, but it’s still there just beneath the surface. What sets Handel’s operas — never more popular or more frequently staged in the UK — apart from those of his neglected French contemporaries? Firstly it’s dance. We’ve learnt to endure, even enjoy, the ‘continued song’ of Italian opera without too much discomfort, but French opéra-ballets, where storytelling comes with pointed toes and arched wrists, are another matter.