It’s an ingenious idea: Create an evening-length ballet about the progenitor of ballet, Louis XIV, and his most frequent collaborator, composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. And there was a certain magic to ...

Jean-Baptiste Lully was the toast of the town in France during the Baroque era. The French King loved Lully, and today's Beautiful Music is a live performance of an excerpt from the composer's comédie ...

Throw enough money at opera and this is an art form that can respond with a lavishness no other can match. Louis XIV was certainly not short of cash and the emergence of a national French opera during ...

"Consider your luck as great as your talent," is how Louis XIV admonishes Giovanni Baptista Lulli, the Italian dancer-musician and wayward Superintendent of the King's Music. The relationship between ...

The fatal attraction between a sorceress and a Christian Crusader in Lully's opera Armide is the very definition of angst. For a work written in 1686, Armide was also way ahead of its time since it ...

As part of Radio 3's Baroque Spring season, Lucie Skeaping introduces the first of two Early Music Shows this weekend dedicated to French Baroque music. Today, Lucie explores the relationship between ...

Performances of the upcoming Paris Opera Ballet visit have been cut back, and ”Raymonda” will not be included in the engagement as originally announced. Shipment difficulties connected with the ...

Donald Macleod explores the life and work of Jean-Baptiste Lully. All this week, Macleod looks at the life and work of this ambitious and ruthless - but remarkable - man who came from the backstreets ...