Tragédie lyrique in a prologue and five acts
Music by Jean-Baptiste Lully
Libretto by Philippe Quinault
Concert performance in French with German surtitles

Les Talens Lyriques
Chœur de chambre de Namur
Conductor: Christophe Rousset

Christophe Rousset and his ensemble Les Talens Lyriques bring a 17th-century "climate opera" to the MusikTheater an der Wien: Proserpine tells how Pluto, god of the underworld, abducted and married her, the daughter of the fertility goddess Ceres, plunging the world into eternal winter as a result. Only once Jupiter intervenes is Proserpine ready to spend one half of the year with her husband and the other half on the earth so that spring can return. Jean-Baptiste Lully’s tragédie en musique, written in 1680, has as its central theme battles between gods that have global consequences. Proserpine marks the start of a new phase in the career of the creator of French Baroque opera in which arias with expressive melodies and ensembles are more prominent than in his earlier works. Christophe Rousset, a close collaborator with the MusikTheater an der Wien for many years, now brings this rarely performed opera to Vienna for the first time.