An interview with Hervé Niquet

Why do you think this version of Armide was never performed? Louis-joseph Francoeur wrote the Prologue, the first, second, third and fourth acts, and they began to rehearse. But there were many problems, so they cancelled the show and it was never staged. The likely reason was that the fifth act was not finished; we just have the texts, the music of the singers and a bass line.

Was it a challenging project? It’s always a challenge to stage a piece that has never been done, but especially when it is not finished. The strength was that everybody knew Lully’s original Armide and the Gluck. I would actually say this is not a revival; I think of it as a third Armide. Francoeur respected the French style completely, he just did it in the fashion of the day. The budget for the harpsichordist at the Académie Royale de Musique disappeared in 1776 and it was therefore not possible for him to call back a harpsichordist to play, so all the recitativo is written for orchestra. It’s completely new, really.

You have assembled a phenomenal cast for this…

I didn’t do the casting alone; it was a discussion between me, the artistic director of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles and the director of the Théâtre des Champs-elysées. It’s not Baroque music, it’s really the beginning of French Romantic song. So we had to find singers who could sing this French piece from the end of the 18th century with a 19th-century voice. It was difficult to cast, but when we decided on Véronique Gens, Reinoud van Mechelen and

Tassis Christoyannis we knew they were exactly right.