Acis et Galatée was Lully’s last completed opera. Like pretty much all of his work it displays in abundance the qualities that Voltaire claimed made Racine and Corneille superior to Shakespeare. How you feel about that will probably affect how you feel about Acis et Galatée, which is an elegant and classically correct retelling of Ovid’s tale of a nymph who loves a shepherd and the Cyclops who spoils the fun. It has an allegorical prologue too, which celebrates the glories of Louis XIV (natch). It also has lots of dance numbers.
operaramblings 