Étienne-Joseph Floquet

Étienne-Joseph Floquet (23 November 1748 – 10 May 1785) was a French composer, mainly of operas. He was born in Aix-en-Provence and began his career by writing church music, before moving to Paris in 1767. There, Floquet made a name for himself with the requiem he wrote for the funeral of the composer Jean-Joseph de Mondonville in 1772. Floquet's first work for the Paris Opéra, the ballet héroïque L'union de l'amour et les arts, was a triumph, enjoying 60 performances between its premiere in September 1773 and January 1774. The audience at the premiere was so enthusiastic that the performance had to be stopped several times because of the applause and, at the final curtain, Floquet was presented on stage, the first composer in the history of the Paris Opéra to enjoy such an honour. However, the arrival of the German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck in Paris later that year changed French musical taste and Floquet's style became unfashionable. After the failure of his next opera, Azolan, Floquet decided to travel to Italy to perfect his musical education. There he studied composition under Nicola Sala in Naples and counterpoint under Padre Martini in Bologna, where he turned momentarily back to church music composing a Te deum.

Floquet returned to France in 1777 to find the Parisian public was now split between the supporters of Gluck and the partisans of the Italian Niccolò Piccinni. There was little demand for operas by native French composers and Floquet struggled to have his tragédie lyrique Hellé staged. When it eventually appeared in 1779, it was booed, despite Floquet's attempt to imitate the style of Piccinni, and ran for only three performances. Floquet had more success with the lighter Le seigneur bienfaisant and La nouvelle Omphale. He turned to a tragic subject once more when he produced a new musical score for Philippe Quinault's libretto Alceste, originally set by Jean-Baptiste Lully in 1674. Floquet's version was rehearsed but then rejected by the Paris Opéra. The composer was in poor health and the disappointment at his failure to have Alceste staged was said to have contributed to his early death soon afterwards. He left two unfinished operas, one of which, the "fairyland opera" (opéra féerie) Alcindor, was completed by Nicolas Dezède and given its unsuccessful première on 17 April 1787.

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