Drag, decadence and drama as Versailles orchestra brings 17th-century scandal ‘Affair of the Poisons' to New York debut

Malay Mail

24-07-2025

NEW YORK, July 24 — Acrobatics, fortune tellers, opulent gowns and palace intrigue: the New York debut of the Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra was a performance befitting the era it recalls.
Monday's immersive show Versailles in Printemps: The Affair of the Poisons centred on France's 17th-century period of excess and seediness that its creator, Andrew Ousley, told AFP has parallels to the present day.
At the evening staged in Manhattan's new Printemps luxury emporium, guests and performers alike donned velvet waistcoats, silky corsets, feathered headdresses and powdered makeup.
Artists perform as guests attend a show called 'Versailles in Printemps: The Affair of the Poisons.' at the Printemps store in Lower Manhattan, New York City on July 21, 2025. At the evening staged in Manhattan's new Printemps luxury emporium, which opened in March on Wall Street, guests and performers alike donned velvet waistcoats, silky corsets, feathered headdresses and powdery makeup. — AFP pic
Core to the performance's tale was the discovery of arsenic, Ousley said — the first 'untraceable, untastable poison.'
'Everybody was just poisoning everybody.'
And at the web's centre? A midwife and fortune teller named La Voisin, he said, a 'shadowy-like person who basically would peddle poison, peddle solutions, peddle snake oil.'
'She was the nexus,' Ousley continued, in a scheme that 'extended up to Louis XIV, his favourite mistresses' — inner circles rife with backstabbing and murder plots.
The poisoning scandal resulted in a tribunal that resulted in dozens of death sentences — until the king called it off when it 'got a little too close to home,' Ousley said with a smile.
'To me, it speaks to the present moment — that this rot can fester underneath luxury and wealth when it's divorced from empathy, from humanity.'
Along with a programme of classical music, the performance included elaborately costumed dancers, including one who tip-toed atop a line of wine bottles in sparkling platform heels.
The drag opera artist Creatine Price was the celebrant of the evening's so-called 'Black Mass,' and told AFP that the night was 'a beautiful way to sort of incorporate the ridiculousness, the campness, the farce of Versailles with a modern edge.'
Drag is 'resistance,' she said, adding that her act is 'the essence of speaking truth to power, because it really flies in the face of everything in the opera that is standard, whether it's about gender or voice type.'
Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra during a show called 'Versailles in Printemps: The Affair of the Poisons.' at the Printemps store in Lower Manhattan, New York City July 21, 2025. — AFP pic
Period instruments
The Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra formed in 2019, and its first stateside tour is underway: the series of shows kicked off at Festival Napa Valley in California before heading to New York.
On Wednesday, it will play another, more traditional show at L'Alliance New York, a French cultural centre in Manhattan.
The orchestra aims to champion repertoire primarily from the 17th and 18th centuries, and plays on period instruments.
'Playing a historical instrument really gives me a feeling of being in contact with the era in which the music was composed,' said Alexandre Fauroux, who plays the natural horn, a predecessor to the French horn distinguished by its lack of valves.
Ousley runs the organisation Death of Classical, an arts non-profit that puts on classical shows in unexpected places, including the catacombs of Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery and crypts in Manhattan.
Madame Athenais de Montespan played by Erin Dillon performs during a show called 'Versailles in Printemps: The Affair of the Poisons.' at the Printemps store in Lower Manhattan, New York City on July 21, 2025. The immersive show 'The Affair of the Poisons' centred on France's 17th-century period of excess and seediness that its creator, Andrew Ousley, told AFP has parallels to the present day. — AFP pic
Monday's spectacle included over-the-top performance, but Ousley emphasised that the evening was ultimately a celebration of classical artists.
'These are players who play with such energy, to me it's more like a rock band than an orchestra,' he said.
And the mission of putting on such shows is about something bigger, Ousley said: 'How do you fight against the darkness that seems to be winning in the world?'
'When you can sit and feel, with a group of strangers, something that you know you feel together — that's why I work, because of that shared connection, experience and transcendence.' — AFP