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 ...

Katie Derham explores on dance at the court of Versailles, including the music of Louis XIV and the French Baroque, as well as the origins of classical ballet. Show more Katie Derham explores dance at ...

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 ...

Opera and ballet have long shared an intimate artistic relationship, with opera significantly influencing the evolution of ...