Maia Guest, as Madame,
Duchesse d'Orléans

Maia Guest, trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, appeared in the BBC television movie “Over Here” and in the West End premier of the theatrical adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel “Giovanni’s Room”. In the United States, Maia has worked with a variety of regional theatres and companies including the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Company, Capital Repertory Theatre, The Franklin Stage Company, New York Theatre Workshop’s JAW West Festival, the New York Fringe Festival and the Actors Shakespeare Company. In New York City, Maia was a founding member of the sketch comedy group, Mr Jumpy Pants, which created over forty short films as well as performing regularly at HERE performance space and the West beth Theatre.

Currently living in Los Angeles, Maia can most recently be heard voicing a wide range of your favorite pop culture and lopitical figures in VH1’s insanely comedic animated series, “Illustrated”.

Portrayed by actress Maia Guest, Madame will come to life in costume and some staging.  Readings from her letters will be interspersed with music that she may have heard in court played on instruments of the period. 

John Abberger, oboe
Allison Edberg, violin
Thomas Gerber, harpsichord
Barbara Kallaur, flute
Elizabeth Macdonald, viola da gamba

Les Nations Sonades; et Suites de            François Couperin
Simphonies en Trio                                         (1668-1733)

Le Rossignol en Amour                                François Couperin

Le Tableau de l’Operation                            Marin Marias
de la Taille                                                         (1656-1728)

Sonata in D Minor from Sonates     Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet
pour le violon, 1707                                  de La Guerre (1665-1729)

Prelude
Presto
Presto
Adagio/Presto/Adagio
Air
Presto

Le Duc d’Orléans                             Jacque Hotteterre “Le Romain”
                                                                            (1674-1763)

program subject to change

Program Notes

Liselotte von der Pfalz, Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d’Orléans, born May 27, 1652 was a prodigious correspondent .  Over the course of the 70 years of her life, writing to family members became her “principal occupation”.  “Not a day passes  that I do not write at least four letters, and on Sundays I often write twelve.”, she reported in 1707.  And we are lucky to have some of these reflections on life in the court of Louis XIV.  Elisabeth Charlotte, or simply Madame as she was called at court, was an intelligent, outspoken woman with a keen sense of historical perspective who said, “I believe that the histories which will be written about this court after we are gone will be better and more entertaining than any novel, and I am afraid that those who come after us will not be able to believe them and will think that they are just fairytales.”