Le Devin du Village

The musical genius that set Paris aflame – Pergolesi and the Neapolitan Comic Opera. The Pergolesi Spontini Festival’s 4th Edition program is based on the Querelle des Bouffons (“The Clowns” Quarrel”) that setC18th Century Paris aflame and was strictly connected to LaServa Padrona’s representation. In an absurd dispute between French Tragedy and Neapolitan Comic Opera, encyclopaedists branded the first as conventional and affectedand praised the second as an authentic representation of real feelings and dramatic situations.After his death, Pergolesi, was considered by Rousseau as the genial author of a new form of musical theatre which became the connection between Naples and Paris – the two capital cities ofEuropean music at the time. Music is the common thread in the two cities. Composers and virtuosos from both courts included Scarlatti and Marais, Couperin and Leo, Rameau and Durante and alsofeatured popular music and songs. Next to Pergolesi’s masterpieces – Il Flaminio, his last comic opera and La Serva Padrona that triumphed in Paris in 1752 and to Rousseau’s, Le Devin du Village – which was inspired by the Neapolitan model, contemporary music appears to be tied to those distant times.