Comedic satire Le Carnaval Mascarade is reborn after 300 years, Oct. 3-4

Singer Paul Shipper, left, as "Mufti" and Cornell theater student Andrew Rubin '05, as one of Mufti's "Turkish" followers, rehearse a scene from Jean-Baptiste Lully's Le Carnaval Mascarade, a collaboration between Cornell and the Eastman School of Music, playing in Barnes Hall Saturday, Oct. 4, at 8 p.m. Robert Barker/University Photography

An evening of music, dance and satire, à la the court of Louis XIV, is in store for the Cornell and Ithaca communities when Cornell, in collaboration with the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, presents Jean-Baptiste Lully's Le Carnaval Mascarade, Saturday, Oct. 4, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall Auditorium, on campus.

Saturday's show is the second of two weekend performances, the first taking place Friday, Oct. 3, at 7 p.m. at the Eastman School's Kilbourn Hall, 26 Gibbs St., in Rochester.

Cornell tickets are $10 general admission and $5 for students, and they can be purchased at the ticket center at the Clinton House in downtown Ithaca (273-4497 or 800-284-8422) or at outlets in Willard Straight Hall at Cornell, the Dillingham Center at Ithaca College or on the Web at http://www.ithacaevents.com.

The Saturday performance at Cornell is preceded by a presentation by Steven Kaplan, the Goldwin Smith Professor of European History at Cornell, at 7 p.m. in Barnes Hall. Kaplan's talk is open to all ticket holders.

The fully costumed presentation of Le Carnaval Mascarade, based largely on the satirical works of French dramatist Molière, is a co-production of the Eastman School of Music and Cornell's Departments of Music and of Theatre, Film and Dance, with participation by the Genesee Early Music Society.

Rebecca Harris-Warrick, professor of music at Cornell and a specialist in Baroque music and dance, has said the collaborative effort is the first complete production of the work since its last revival in 1700.

"Le Carnaval Mascarade careens wildly between genres," said Harris-Warrick, who both conceived of and produced the performance. "Sung in four languages, it looks like a ballet and it sounds like an opera; you laugh, in turn, at the satire of Molière and then at the antics of commedia dell'arte characters. It is bound to provide quite an engaging spectacle for a modern audience."

Although Lully is well known as the creator of French opera -- especially of the noble tragédie en musique -- what is often overlooked, said Harris-Warrick, is Lully's comic works, originally performed at the Paris Opera. Le Carnaval Mascarade premiered at the Paris Opera in 1675. In it, Lully pulled together favorite scenes from his pre-operatic Molière collaborations, including the famous "Turkish initiation scene" from the Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Lully was Italian by birth, and his familiarity with the commedia dell'arte plays out in several scenes reused in Le Carnaval Mascarade, sung in Italian or a mixture of Italian and French.

In this opera-ballet, as in all of Lully's stage works, dance plays a crucial role, and this production will allow audiences to see a range of styles, from the elegant to the burlesque. Choreographer Ken Pierce, director of the early dance program at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass., joins three professional dancers from his own Boston-based dance company. Pierce has reconstructed several choreographies that survive from the 1700 revival in Feuillet notation (a dance notation developed at the end of the 17th century, which tracks the dance steps according to the musical melody atop the page), in addition to new "historically informed" choreography.

The show highlights four professional Baroque lead singers hailing from Paris, New York and California, including: renowned bass Paul Shipper; haute-contre (high tenor) and Eastman alumnus Marc Molomot; soprano and Cornell doctoral candidate Rebecca Plack; and falsettist Caleb Burhans, an Eastman alumnus. The remaining soloists and chorus are drawn from Eastman's Baroque ensemble, Collegium Musicum, and from the voice program at Cornell; the orchestra is a combined effort of the Eastman ensemble and Les Petits Violons de Cornell, featuring Wiebke Thormählen, Cornell's early-music concertmaster.

The performances are being led by music director Paul O'Dette, associate professor and director of early music at the Eastman School of Music, and stage director Beth Milles, Cornell assistant professor of theatre, film and dance. O'Dette also is an internationally known lutenist and is co-artistic director of the Boston Early Music Festival. He will conduct these performances from the lute with a small Baroque orchestra. In staging the production, Milles has drawn on her experience in directing works by Molière and expertise in improvisation in the manner of the commedia dell'arte, in addition to her Broadway and Los Angeles directorial experience.

For more information, as well as biographical information on the performers, visit http://www.arts.cornell.edu/lully. Tickets for the Rochester production are $15, $10 and $5, with reserved seating. Contact Ticketmaster at (585) 232-1900 or http://www.ticketmaster.com. Tickets also are available at the Eastman School; call the concert office at (585) 274-1110 for information.