Opera at Chiswick House: Antonia – Behind the Myth of Marie Antoinette

Poster – Antonia: Behind the Myth of Marie Antoinette

As Chiswick House prepares for its first public opera performed inside the house, we talk to the show’s creator Olivia Doutney

Chiswick House is to be the setting of a new opera about Marie Antoinette – an Operatic portrait in ‘Baroque Gesture’.

The French queen who was famously beheaded in the French Revolution was notoriously extravagant – so much so that she became known as ‘Madame Déficit’ because the country’s financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending but, Creative Director of Liberata Collective Olivia Doutney told The Chiswick Calendar, she was much more than just a spoilt fashionista.

“People think of her as a fashion-obsessed over-spender and we’ve forgotten about her deeper, more intellectual side”.

Marie Antoinette as a key agent in a revolution in French opera which introduced a focus on melody and story-telling

She was fundamentally involved in a revolution in French opera which took place in the 1770s and ’80s, said Olivia when I talked to her about the production and why they had chosen Marie Antoinette as a subject.

“When she arrived at Versailles opera was all about very long shows full of declamatory arias – florid music with a lot of fussy ornamentation that would go on for some time about the gods of antiquity and mythological figures. Composers like Rameau and Lully. Lully’s work was performed at her wedding and she didn’t enjoy it.

“She was able to give other composers an opportunity to make operas which had drama at the centre – a new style with more simplicity and truth in the music; melody as opposed to extensive ornamentation where you can’t quite pick out a tune. The new tradition promoted melody and story”.

Chiswick House – the perfect setting designed as a party venue

Set in the home of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and friend of Marie Antoinette

The show Olivia has created which will receive its premiere at Chiswick House on Saturday 18 April aims to demonstrate that revolution. She is both the writer and performer in the one-woman show, and she will be accompanied by Petra Hajduchova on the harpsichord.

Olivia will be in full Marie Antoinette regalia – eighteenth century style panniers and all, and the show which lasts an hour and a half, begins with a walk through the rooms of the house.

Chiswick House is the perfect setting she says, as it was designed as a party venue, but also Marie Antoinette and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire were friends. Georgiana popped over to Versailles to visit her. Both were trend setters and very involved in politics.

Resented for introducing foreign influences

Politics was Marie Antoinette’s undoing, as the country turned against the royal family and against her personally. Even in the sphere of music, she was resented for bringing in foreign influences.

She was fifteenth child and youngest daughter of Maria Theresa and Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, and therefore an Austrian archduchess before she married Louis-Auguste, Dauphin of France, at the age of 14. One of the foreign composers she favoured, to the irritation of the French courtiers, was the Austrian composer Gluck, who had been her singing and harp teacher when she was growing up in Vienna.

Portrait of Queen Marie Antoinette of France 1775

She also promoted Italian composers Piccinni and Sacchini, “who have faded into obscurity”, Olivia told me, “because their heyday was just before the French Revolution, but their music was really good”.

Marie Antoinette had one of Sacchini’s works scheduled to be performed but had to cancel it because of the political pressure on her.

“He was so devastated he went home and wouldn’t eat for a few days and then he died”.

It was only a few years after that event that the royal family were removed from Versailles and imprisoned.

“Another composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de St Georges, was born in Guadeloupe, the son of a French father and a woman of Guadeloupe.

“His father brought him to France, and he had a privileged upbringing. He was very talented and became known as ‘the Black Mozart’, though by rights Mozart should have been known as ‘the White Bologne’. He and Marie Antoinette played chamber music together”.

The Liberata Collective

Olivia set up the Liberata Collective with her friend and fellow musician Susanna MacRae five years ago as a Covid lockdown project. Before the pandemic she had performed key operatic roles on stage in big productions such as Turandot, so setting up their own company and putting on their own shows was a turning point in Olivia’s operatic career.

“It has been a whirlwind since then”.

Olivia in La Clemenza di Tito

Not only because of the shows they have put on at music festivals around the country:

“This will be the first show we’ve done where neither one of us has been pregnant. We started the Liberata Collective with no children and now between us we have three.

This is Olivia’s first one woman show. She will be performing Antonia: Behind the Myth of Marie Antoinette in the saloon of Chiswick House – “the acoustics are amazing”.

I had one final question – why ‘Antonia’?

“That was Marie Antoinette’s second name. She was Maria Theresaa’s fifteenth child, and all the daughters were called Marie something or other, so we decided it was more fitting to call her Antonia”.

Book tickets – Antonia: Behind the Myth of Marie Antoinette

Olivia in Orlando

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