1686. Quinault and Lully once again unite their geniuses to entertain her Majesty: the story of the fatal loves of Armide the magician and the crusader Renaud. A beautiful plot for a sumptuous show with the fascinating Stéphanie d'Oustrac.


Armide is first of all a variant of the legend of Penthesilea and Achilles that Le Tasse integrates into his Jerusalem Delivered. An impossible love story: the meeting, then the separation between two beings who would be worthy of each other if they did not belong to two opposing camps. Basically, the outcome of this fight is decided in advance, from the prologue where Wisdom and Glory agree to sing together the praises of the Monarch. And this is what intrigued Dominique Pitoiset, when he came to tackle, after Così fan tutte, this new part of his exploration of the “war of the sexes”. Because this prologue underlines that this Armide is not only a present made to the king, but also a message that he addresses.

So why did Louis XIV choose to have precisely this plot told before his Court – that of a seductress whose all-powerful staging overcomes everyone, with one exception? What did he think of showing in this way, when he decided to abstain from appearing at the performances? After this ultimate masterpiece, Quinault and Lully will no longer work together. The librettist will think only of the salvation of his soul. And the composer will die a few months later, carried away by gangrene without the enigma having been clarified.