''Pyrrhus'' is an opera by the French composer

Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer (12 May 1703 – 11 January 1755) was a French composer, harpsichordist, organist, and administrator.Lionel Sawkins and David Fuller"Royer, Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace" Grove Music Online. Biography Born in Turin, Roy ...

, first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique (the

Paris Opera 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 ...

) on 26 October 1730. It takes the form of a ''

tragédie en musique Tragédie en musique (, ''musical tragedy''), also known as tragédie lyrique (, ''lyric tragedy''), is a genre of French opera introduced by Jean-Baptiste Lully and used by his followers until the second half of the eighteenth century. Operas in t ...

'' in a prologue and five acts. The libretto, by Fermelhuis, is based on the Greek myth of Pyrrhus, son of

Achilles In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ) or Achilleus ( grc-gre, Ἀχιλλεύς) was a hero of the Trojan War, the greatest of all the Greek warriors, and the central character of Homer's ''Iliad''. He was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, k ...

. The opera was revived at

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

on 16 September 2012. The performance was recorded and subsequently released in 2014.

Recording

*''Pyrrhus'', Alain Buet (Pyrrhus), Guillemette Laurens (Eriphile), Emmanuelle de Negri (Polixène), Jeffrey Thompson (Acamas), Orchestra and chorus of Les Enfants d'Apollon, conducted by Michael Greenberg (Alpha, 2014)

Sources

Libretto at "Livres baroques"

Félix Clément and Pierre Larousse ''Dictionnaire des Opéras'', Paris, 1881
page 559. French-language operas Tragédies en musique Operas by Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer Operas 1730 operas {{french-opera-stub