Le Carnaval et la Folie
Collectif | André Cardinal Destouches
In André Cardinal Destouches' Le Carnaval et la Folie, Folly is not what she seems; Carnaval appears a bashful lover and Momus, the great critic of the Gods, pulls the strings to better entertain us.
"Nothing is so trivial as treating serious subjects in a trivial manner; and similarly, nothing is more entertaining that treating trivialities in such a way as to make it clear you are doing anything but trifle with them", wrote Erasmus in the preface to In Praise of Folly, dedicated to his friend and the author of Utopia, Thomas More. Under the pretext of comedy, Houdar de la Motte and Destouches liberate themselves from the Ancients to celebrate pleasure and a resolutely modern freedom.
Articles by Michael Nafi (philosopher), Marianne Masslin (philosopher), Hervé Niquet (conductor), Jacques Osinski (director), Marie-Geneviève Massé (choreographer), Christophe Ouvrard (set designer).
