''Hellé'' (''Helle'') is an opera by the French composer Étienne-Joseph Floquet, first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique (the

Paris Opéra The Paris Opera (, ) is the primary opera and ballet company of France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the , and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and officially renamed the , but continued to be k ...

) on 5 January 1779. It takes the form of a

tragédie lyrique This is a glossary list of opera genres, giving alternative names. "Opera" is an Italian word (short for "opera in musica"); it was not at first ''commonly'' used in Italy (or in other countries) to refer to the genre of particular works. Most c ...

in three acts. The libretto, by Pierre Lemonnier, is based on the Greek myth of Helle. At this time, there was little demand for operas by native French composers (Parisian audiences preferred works by the German

Christoph Willibald Gluck Christoph Willibald (Ritter von) Gluck (; 2 July 1714 – 15 November 1787) was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period. Born in the Upper Palatinate and raised in Bohemia, both part of the Holy Roman Empire, he g ...

or the Italian

Niccolò Piccinni Niccolò Piccinni (; 16 January 1728 – 7 May 1800) was an Italian composer of symphonies, sacred music, chamber music, and opera. Although he is somewhat obscure today, Piccinni was one of the most popular composers of opera—particularly the ...

) and Floquet struggled to have ''Hellé'' staged.Rushton When it eventually appeared in 1779, it was booed, despite Floquet's attempt to imitate the style of Piccinni, and ran for only three performances.

Roles

Synopsis

Hellé is a princess of

Colchis In Greco-Roman geography, Colchis (; ) was an exonym for the Georgian polity of Egrisi ( ka, ეგრისი) located on the coast of the Black Sea, centered in present-day western Georgia (country), Georgia. Its population, the Colchians a ...

. Her father

Athamas In Greek mythology, Athamas (; grc, Ἀθάμας, Athámas) was a Boeotian king.Apollodorus1.9.1/ref> Family Athamas was formerly a Thessalian prince and the son of King Aeolus of Aeolia and Enarete, daughter of Deimachus. He was the brothe ...

has died and left her to the care of his sister Ino, Queen of Thebes. The god Neptune is in love with Hellé and has been wooing her disguised as a mortal called Arsame. However, Ino is also in love with Arsame and resorts to a magician, Elphingor, to stop the wedding of Hellé and Arsame. Elphingor conjures a vision which persuades Hellé that her beloved has been unfaithful to her and she flees from the court. Elphingor also helps Ino by producing a storm which wrecks the ship in which Hellé is travelling. Neptune is angry that a storm has been raised without his permission. He seeks the culprit, finds it is Ino and when he reveals his true identity to her, she kills herself in despair. Neptune brings Hellé to his underwater palace and makes her ruler of the sea in which her ship sank, giving it the region the name

Hellespont The Dardanelles (; tr, Çanakkale Boğazı, lit=Strait of Çanakkale, el, Δαρδανέλλια, translit=Dardanéllia), also known as the Strait of Gallipoli from the Gallipoli peninsula or from Classical Antiquity as the Hellespont (; ...

after her.Synopsis from Bachaumont, pp. 247ff.

References

Sources

Félix Clément and Pierre Larousse ''Dictionnaire des Opéras''
p. 339. * Louis Petit de Bachaumont
''Mémoires secrets pour servir à l'histoire de la république des lettres en France''
1780. *, "Foreigners at the Académie Royale de Musique" in Antonio Sacchini, ''Renaud'', Madrid, Ediciones Singulares, 2013 (book accompanying the complete recording conducted by

Christophe Rousset Christophe Rousset (; born 12 April 1961) is a French harpsichordist and conductor, who specializes in the performance of Baroque music on period instruments. He is also a musicologist, particularly of opera and European music of the 17th and 18 ...

). *Spire Pitou, ''The Paris Opéra. An Encyclopedia of Operas, Ballets, Composers, and Performers – Rococo and Romantic, 1715–1815'', Westport/London, Greenwood Press, 1985. *

Julian Rushton Julian Gordon Rushton (born 22 May 1941) is an English musicologist, born in Cambridge. He has contributed the entry on Mozart in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'' and several other articles in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ...

, article "Floquet, Étienne-Joseph" in ''

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...

'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Helle (opera) Operas French-language operas Tragédies en musique 1779 operas Operas based on classical mythology