Among the more than ten thousand colonisers led by the dream of the riches of the New World who set out for Guyana in the second half of the 18th century, there were numerous musicians. Among them were harpists, harpsichordists, guitarists, violinists, trumpeters, French horn players, flutists and percussionists from France, Belgium, Austria and Germany. The considerable interest that the trip abroad aroused among artists certainly pleased Jean-Baptiste Thibault de Chanvalon – the administrator of this French colony and a great music lover.

According to de Chanvalon’s plans, Kourou, which served as a colonial capital, had to have a place to practice the arts. A theatre was founded there, an organ was built in the city cathedral and new bells were imported. For the purposes of Catholic worship, liturgical books were also brought from Europe. The dynamic development of the settlement was interrupted after only a year. An epidemic broke out, one of the most tragic in history. It killed nine thousand migrants, another two thousand fled, and some of them found refuge in the nearby Îles du Salut archipelago. This terrifying story, which French historiography remembers as affaire Kourou, has an equally terrible epilogue. One of the Îles du Salut – the tiny Île du Diable – housed a French penal colony for a hundred years, until the 1950s. The prison was famous for its strict regime. It was here that Alfred Dreyfus, wrongly accused of treason, was sentenced to life in prison. The writer Henri Charrière, who published the famous book Papillon in 1969, had also been imprisoned there.

Under the direction of Pedro Memelsdorff, a long-time member of Hesperion XXI, the soloists and musicians of Arlequin Philosophe will recall all the tragic stories of Kourou, creating a broad soundscape. The highlight will be music from the 1973 film adaptation of Charrière’s novel starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. There will be military marches, songs by black inhabitants of Suriname, neighbouring Guyana, and a special setting of the mass written for enslaved people working in French colonies. In the second part of the concert, we will move to the colonial governor’s estate and listen to a reconstruction of a home concert. Works by composers who lived in Guyana – Philippe Hinner and de Tremais (given names unknown), a student of Giuseppe Tartini. Finally, the mournful works of François-Gossec and André Grétry will commemorate the doomed fate of thousands chasing a dream of a better life.