Les fêtes de Polymnie is an opéra-ballet

Opéra-ballet

Opéra-ballet was a popular genre of French Baroque opera, "that grew out of the ballets à entrées of the early seventeeth century". It differed from the more elevated tragédie en musique as practised by Jean-Baptiste Lully in several ways...

in three entrées and a prologue by Jean-Philippe Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...

. The work was first performed on 12 October 1745 at the Opéra, Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, and is set to a libretto by Louis de Cahusac

Louis de Cahusac

Louis de Cahusac was a French playwright and librettist, most famous for his work with the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau...

. The piece was written to celebrate the French victory at the Battle of Fontenoy

Battle of Fontenoy

The Battle of Fontenoy, 11 May 1745, was a major engagement of the War of the Austrian Succession, fought between the forces of the Pragmatic Allies – comprising mainly Dutch, British, and Hanoverian troops under the nominal command of the Duke of Cumberland – and a French army under Maurice de...

 in the War of the Austrian Succession

War of the Austrian Succession

The War of the Austrian Succession  – including King George's War in North America, the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear, and two of the three Silesian wars – involved most of the powers of Europe over the question of Maria Theresa's succession to the realms of the House of Habsburg.The...

.It was revived at the same venue on 21 August 1753.

Neither Cuthbert Girdlestone

Cuthbert Girdlestone

Cuthbert Morton Girdlestone was a British musicologist and literary scholar. He was educated at Cambridge and the Sorbonne, and thereafter took up the chair in French in Armstrong College, later to be King's College in Newcastle in 1926, a position he held until 1960...

 nor Graham Sadler (in the New Penguin Guide) consider this among Rameau's finest works, though both remark on the originality of its overture

Overture

Overture in music is the term originally applied to the instrumental introduction to an opera...

, which breaks the traditional Lullian

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...

 mould common to French overtures up until that time.

Roles and role creators

• Mnémosine (prologue) soprano
  Soprano
  A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
  
   Bourbonnais
• Victoire (prologue) soprano
• Polymnie (prologue) soprano
• Hébé/Argélie soprano Marie Fel
• Stratonice soprano Marie-Jeanne Fesch
• Oriade soprano
• Alcine soprano
• Alcide/Anthiocus tenor
  Tenor
  The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
  
   Pierre Jélyotte
• Zimès tenor
• Séleucus bass Claude-Louis-Dominique Chassé de Chinais
• Destin bass Lefèbvre
• Jupiter bass François Le Page

Synopsis

The prologue, Le temple de Mémoire ("The Temple of Memory"), describes the victory of Fontenoy in allegorical

Allegory

Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...

 fashion. The first entrée is entitled La fable (Legend) and depicts the marriage of Hercules

Hercules

Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...

 and Hebe

Hebe (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Hēbē is the goddess of youth . She is the daughter of Zeus and Hera. Hebe was the cupbearer for the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus, serving their nectar and ambrosia, until she was married to Heracles ; her successor was the young Trojan prince Ganymede...

, the goddess of youth. The second entrée, L'histoire ("History"), tells the story of the Hellenistic king of Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

 Seleucus I Nicator

Seleucus I Nicator

Seleucus I was a Macedonian officer of Alexander the Great and one of the Diadochi. In the Wars of the Diadochi that took place after Alexander's death, Seleucus established the Seleucid dynasty and the Seleucid Empire...

, who gives up his fiancée Stratonice

Stratonice

Stratonice is a name that may refer to:* Stratonice , name of four Greek mythological women- Women of Ancient Macedonia :* Stratonice , the wife of Antigonus Monophthalmus...

 when he learns his son Antiochus I Soter

Antiochus I Soter

Antiochus I Soter , was a king of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire. He reigned from 281 BC - 261 BC....

 is passionately in love with her (this tale was also the subject of a later 18th century French opera, Étienne Méhul

Étienne Méhul

Etienne Nicolas Méhul was a French composer, "the most important opera composer in France during the Revolution." He was also the first composer to be called a "Romantic".-Life:...

's Stratonice

Stratonice (opera)

Stratonice is a one-act opéra comique by Étienne Méhul to a libretto by François-Benoît Hoffman, first performed at the Théâtre Favart, Paris, on 3 May 1792...

). The third and final entrée is called La féerie ("Fairy tale") and is set in the Middle East. Through her love for him, Argélie redeems Zimès from the power of the evil fairy Alcine.