Opera song that cost Antoinette her life, will play after 230 years

The song, “Oh Richard! Oh, my king” was last sung 230 years ago at the Opera Royal at Versailles for Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, the last queen of France who was later dragged off to Paris for their doom by the revolting subjects during the French Revolution. This week, the piece from 'Richard the Lionheart' by Andre Gretry will finally return to the opera, which is commissioned by Sun King Louis XIV. The chocolate-box, lavishly decorated theatre has not been used more than 20 times. Marie-Antoinette was reportedly just a 14-year-old when she and her husband lost their heads on October 1, 1789, after appearing at a banquet at the opera. 

Scandal in Paris

The display of royalist sentiment just three months after the fall of Bastille fueled the hungry people in Paris. A few days later, women marched to take the royals back to the capital. Laurent Brunner, the director of Versailles' theatre and events told an international agency that it caused a scandal in revolutionary Paris. The fake news of the revolutionary tricolor rosette has been trampled underfoot, was combined with the revolutionary tracts portraying as an orgy. By the time women of Paris marched on Versailles, the three-minute song about Richard the Lionheart had become a royalist anthem. 

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Own theatre in Trianon

Marie-Antoinette, the opera-loving teenager later opened her own little theatre called the Trianon. It was in the ground of the palace where she put out amateur dramatics along with her friends. Concerts by her favourite composers like Gretry and Gluck were also acted in the little place which reportedly was revolutionary during her time. However, now it takes brains to operate as the six-level stage required Carlos Casado to haul the backdrops up and down by hand. Reportedly only the last machinists in France used to do so. Brunner also said that it is tough physically to operate a theatre like it's very beginnings because the movements required should be swift according to the music. 

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(With agency inputs)