La Chapelle royale durante la Restaurazione (1814–1830)

The great manifestations linked to the monarchical ritual constitute a typology of expression of political power where the forms of representation of the state include gestures and behaviours in which music is an integral part of the ceremonial. This political significance given to music as a means of externalizing the image and strength of power, assumed greater relevance in France during the period of the “Restoration” where the Bourbons tried in every way to “forget” the Revolution and the years of Napoleonic empire. Reinstated by Louis XVIII in 1814, the Chapelle Royale located at the Tuileries, thanks to the two surintendants Jean-François Lesueur and Luigi Cherubini, played a very important role in this sense. Its political and artistic role emerged through the many public events where it could fully represent the new image of royalty and its exercise of power: the state ceremonial (coronations and royal funerals), the ceremonial of the court (births, weddings, and public celebrations) and its daily ritualization (masses and large religious holidays). These rites and ceremonies found in music the fundamental expression of the apparatus as well as of the multiplicity of forms of representation of power offered by the ceremonial.