L'Amour médecin

Love as a doctor, Original title: L' Amour médecin, is a comedy in three acts by the French poet Molière. The premiere took place on September 14, 1665 before King Louis XIV at Versailles castle, the first public performance on 22 September of the same year at the Palais Royal in Paris. In this ballet comedy, there was a fully-fledged cooperation between Molière and the composer Jean -Baptiste Lully for the first time.

The piece includes a traditional love affair, but is mainly a satire on the medical profession. Molière's comedy served as the basis for the original opera, L' amore medico by Ermanno Wolf- Ferrari.

Action

Act 1

Lucinda suffers from an inexplicable depression. To cheer her up, her father Sganarelle promises the fulfillment of all their desires. However, when she tried to explain him to want to marry her lover, the father beats from this desire and storms angrily from the stage. In a soliloquy he admits that he can not bear to lose his daughter to another man who would inherit all his possessions. Lucinda and her maid Lisette decide to cut Sganarelle over the ear, whereupon Lucinda is sick and her father is forced to call for doctors.

Act 2

Four doctors have gathered to talk about their daily errands and praise the quality of their mounts. When Sganarelle inquired after the health of his daughter, to show disagreement about diagnosis and treatment: Dr. Tomes recommends a bloodletting, while Des Fonandrès an emetic preferred. After the two left the stage in anger, let the two remaining colleagues Bahys and Macroton the father of the patient about other treatment options. His daughter will probably die anyway, but he could console themselves that the rules of conventional medicine had been observed previously in any case. In his desperation, Sganarelle applies a quack on the road and buys him the panacea Orvietan.

Act 3

A fifth doctor, Dr. Filerin throws, before his colleagues to ruin by their thoughtless disagreement put forward the reputation of the medical profession. Clitandre, the lover Lucindes, now appears as a doctor dressed and heals Lucinda immediately of their suffering. He explains Sganarelle that it was a case of mental illness, combined with a reprehensible Marriage. In order to accommodate this weakness and cheer up the patient, he had told her he was ready to marry her. Sganarelle agrees and signs a contract before the notary, in which he appeals to the pair of 20,000 thalers. Lisette surprised him with the news that the marriage was not a sham game, but now have actually taken place. Because of his anger the bride's father is retained by the dancers and musicians who play for the wedding.

Satire of the medical profession

With previously unprecedented sharpness Molière criticized in this piece the medical profession. It represents the five physicians is occurring as greedy shopkeepers who literally go in the exercise of their profession over corpses and the observance of formalities to be more important than saving the life of all patients. Here are portraits of actually existing contemporaries whose names were hellenized at the request of Molière by Nicolas Boileau. In Fonandrès for example is a caricature of Élie Bédé of Fougerais (1599-1667), the personal physician of Liselotte von der Pfalz, the sister of the " Sun King ".