About the work
Tragédie en musique in five acts by Jean-Baptiste Lully after a libretto by Philippe Quinault, first performed on 3 February 1680 before the court of Louis XIV at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The work marked the resumption of Lully and Quinault's collaboration after it had been interrupted by the scandal surrounding Isis in 1677, and is based on the myth of Ceres and her daughter Proserpine from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Plot
Pluto, god of the underworld, abducts Proserpine, daughter of the earth goddess Ceres, intending to marry her. Ceres searches the world for her daughter in despair, letting the earth wither in her grief. Only the gods' intervention ends her anguish, while Proserpine comes to accept her fate in the underworld.
Cultural significance
Proserpine is considered musically progressive: with the duet for the basses Pluto and Ascalaphe, Lully created the first duet for two bass voices in French opera history, and musicologist Jérôme de La Gorce sees its more tightly integrated orchestral writing as pointing the way for the further development of the tragédie en musique.