Saint-George Horse and Fencing Show in Versailles
August 2004: (50.000 tickets SOLD OUT in advance sales). FETES DE NUIT DE VERSAILLES (See Print Review Below) The fountains of Versailles come alive in music and fireworks, in an all-new show featuring the equestrian ballet of Bartabas in Le Chevalier de Saint-George, un africain à la cour. Bartabas, whose equestrian academy is located in the chateau’s royal stables, is a master showman. In an evening worthy of the Sun King, 40 horses and their riders will take to a floating stage surrounding the magnificent Neptune fountain to honor the Chevalier Saint-George, the son of a slave and a celebrated musician. August 28 and 29, September 2, 4, 9, and 11. Press release
Article for Le Figaro (August 26, 2004), by Armelle Héliot.
The Spectacle of Versailles
This year, the nighttime entertainment on the grounds of the château is an equestrian and pyrotechnical symphony dedicated to a surprising figure that we have been learning about for some years, Joseph de Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George, a refined swashbuckler and man of the Enlightenment, son of a slave-girl named Nanon and an aristocrat, born in 1745 in Guadeloupe and died in Paris in 1799. A mulatto raised like a prince, intelligent and daring, cavalier of the King’s Guard, seducer, secret agent, colonel of a regiment of Africans and Antillese in Revolutionary Year II. He is a cross between Laclos and the Chevalier d’Eon, General Dumas and Philippe Egalité, Mirabeau and Haydn, since Saint-George was indeed a musician according to his biographer, Claude Ribbe, who also wrote the entertainment’s script.
The choreographed horses in the show are the work of Bartabas, founder of the equestrian theatrical group Zingaro and director of the Grande Ecurie at Versailles.
In the court and garden, two horseways lead to a platform, a large surface installed over the Basin of Neptune. […] On the steps—8,000 spectators, with some on the edge of grass, in the cool air!—they will applaud these colorful scenes (costumes by Marie-Laurence Schakmundès), in a fluid sequence where sounds (the careful and passionate André Serré), voices, music, and not a few horses, Lusitanians, Criollos, Argentines, in the field, in the park, horses from Zingaro and from the Académie, plus those pulling carriages, will call to each other in the night. And the moon will be full, and you will dream of sweetness and wonder.
I’ve added the links in the quoted sections. I love the fact that this sort of spectacle is being produced again at Versailles, which was created as the grandest possible stage for the day-to-day staged drama that was the life of Louis XIV. It reminds me, but is only a modern shadow, of some of the incredible entertainments hosted by the Roi-Soleil, like Les Plaisirs de l’Isle enchantée, staged from May 7 to 14, 1664. It was the first grand celebration given by the King at his new home, in honor of his mistress Mlle de La Vallière.