Case Western Reserve University
The
Radical Rococo: Watteau, the Satiric Musical Stage, and the Burial of Louis
XIV
Antoine Watteau
(1684-1721) worked briefly as a set painter at the Paris Opera House around
1702-1703, and a number of his most well known paintings can be explained via a
series of pieces performed in the musical theater of that time. These works
encode a critique of the increasingly unpopular rule of the aging Louis XIV,
while offering utopian visions of a new France. Drawing on the opera, ballet,
and commedia dell'arte, the presentation will examine the imagery of The
French Comedians, The Italian Comedians, Mezzetin, Pierrot, and other
works as they respond to and participate in a theatrical game of masks
involving satire, parody, and allusion.
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