What lucky meeting in Florence brought to Paris the man who would be France's greatest composer?
And how did he move in three weeks from being associated with a political exile to being the King's favourite?
Jean-Baptiste Lully Photo: Nicolas Mignard, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
Jean Baptiste Lully certainly had an adventurous life.
He rose from obscurity in the alleys of Florence to become the most powerful musician in France, and the founder of a whole national style in music.
This didn’t happen entirely by accident, for Lully was certainly a man who recognized an opportunity for himself, and grabbed it with both hands.
Lully was employed by Anne-Marie Louise d’Orleans, the Grande Mademoiselle, whose involvement in the Fronde uprising in 1652 led to her being banished from the court of Louis XIV. Somehow the twenty year-old Lully survived and found employment with the king. What if he’d been less light-footed?
He was undoubtedly extremely ruthless as he fought his way to the position of leading composer at Louis XIV's court.
Lully's life had some important turning points along the way, interrupted cadences, moments at which things might well have gone very differently.
