Gluck Alceste Stage set by Jean Démosthène Dugourc

Jean Démosthène Dugourc (1749-1825)

Set for the 3rd act (scene V) of Alceste (Gluck) for the Royal Swedish Opera, 1783

Ink on paper, with an upper addition.

Inscribed: Décoration sur un Palais de Pluton.

40 x 48.5 cm

Provenance:

Vente Dugourc, 18 May 1988.

This is the set project by the renowned set designer Jean Demosthene Dugourc for the fifth scene in the third act of Christoph Willibald Glück's opera Alceste (a label on the margin of the drawing mistakenly identifies the scene as belonging to Act II). The opera, based on a tragedy by Euripides, tells the myth of princess Alceste, which begun when the god Apollo, exiled after killing the cyclops, was sheltered by the mortal Admetus, husband of Alceste. Admetus was destined to have a short life, but Apollo granted him, in gratitude for his welcome, the chance to save himself, provided he found someone willing to die in his place. Finally, it was his own wife who, without Admetus's knowledge, put herself in the hands of the Furies, who would lead her to the underworld. Alceste wanted not only to save Admetus, her great love, but also not to leave their children without a father. However, she was rescued at the last moment.

In a first version of the opera, premiered in Vienna in 1767 in Italian, and therefore known as the "Italian version", Apollo himself snatched Alceste from the hands of the furies. However, Gluck presented a new version for the opera's Paris premiere in 1776, known as the "French version", with several changes, making it longer and richer in ballet numbers. One of the fundamental changes was the introduction of a new saviour for Alceste: Hercules, who thus made an unexpected entrance in one of the last scenes of the last act.

This is the scene depicted in our work. We find ourselves inside the palace of Pluto, king of the underworld, whom we see on the far left sitting on his throne. At his feet, the Furies are already surrounding Alcestes, ready to take her for good. But, at the far right of the scene, we also see Hercules who, covered with his lion's skin and armed with his club, advances decisively towards the other end, ready to save the princess, as he will finally do.

Dugourc designed for this dramatic scene a majestic hall of Pluto's palace. Despite its heavy decoration of Baroque inspiration, the enormous room has already a neoclassical structure, clear and spacious enough so that the songs and dances of the opera could be heard and seen clearly. The set was part of the production of Alceste presented at the new Royal Theatre in Stockholm in 1783. Glück's opera had already arrived in the Swedish capital a couple of years earlier, on the initiative of King Gustav III, a great lover and promoter of the German composer's renovating style. We guess that the inauguration in 1782 of the new Theatre, a magnificent building at the center of the city, prompted a new production of the opera, for which Dugourc, one of the best set designers of the time, was hired.