Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

Naxos Classical Spotlight explores the world of classical music. Along the way host Raymond Bisha shares the stories about the music, and the musicians who make it.  Raymond has been involved in classical music as a professional French Horn player, broadcaster, opera tour manager, concert organizer and since 2005 as a podcaster for Naxos.

  1. All Episodes
  2. Grétry’s L’épreuve villageoise: staged comedy, community setting, international reach.

Nov 4, 2016

First performed in 1784 in Paris, Grétry’s comic opera L’épreuve villageoise plays out merrily against the insouciant backcloth of a European society about to undergo an irreversible, violent upheaval, just five years later. Grétry was a master of the comic opera genre, and this particular stagework presents a lighthearted feast of flirting in a cosy village setting. The reach of the work, however, was far from parochial. It was among a dozen Grétry operas that received some 80 performances by two resident opera troupes in French-speaking New Orleans in North America between 1796 and 1811. Raymond Bisha gives context in his latest podcast.