Oddlet: Jean-Baptiste Lully · 1 min read
Oct 31, 2026
Both Feet
Jean-Baptiste Lully invented French opera and conducted by pounding a heavy staff on the floor, until, mid-Te Deum for Louis XIV's recovered anal fistula, he drove the staff into his own foot.
Jean-Baptiste Lully invented French opera. He composed the tragédies en musique that packed Paris for a decade, drilled the king's orchestra into ensemble discipline, and gave the world the French overture. He was, in effect, the first modern conductor.
His method was to beat time by pounding a long, heavy staff on the floor.
He conducted this way for years, thumping the boards of the Académie until his musicians locked into rhythm. On 8 January 1687, in the church of the Feuillants, he was conducting his own Te Deum for the recovery of Louis XIV. It is worth pausing on what the king had recovered from: an operation on his anal fistula, celebrated across France as a miracle. Lully hammered the beat. Somewhere in the piece, still marking time, he drove the staff into his own foot.
The doctors came and said the toe would have to come off. Lully refused. When they returned for the leg, he refused again. A one-legged man cannot dance.
He watched the gangrene climb for ten weeks.
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- Wikipedia — Jean-Baptiste Lully — Comprehensive biography covering birth, early service under Mlle de Montpensier, court appointments (1653, 1661), 1662 marriage to Madeleine Lambert, opera privilege of 1672, list of tragédies en musique, the 1685 Brunet scandal, and details of the 8 January 1687 conducting accident and subsequent death.
- Château de Versailles — Lully — Official Versailles profile covering discovery by Duc de Guise, 1661 appointment as Master of the King's Music, 1653 Ballet royal de la Nuit with Louis XIV, Molière collaboration 1664-1671, principal operas (Alceste, Armide, Atys) and the 22 March 1687 death from an infected foot wound sustained while conducting.
- Classic FM — How Lully died of gangrene — Popular-press account of the Te Deum performance for Louis XIV's recovery, Lully striking his own foot with the conducting staff, refusing amputation because he still wanted to dance, and dying of gangrene.
- New World Encyclopedia — Jean Baptiste Lully — Encyclopedic overview naming him 'the first important modern conductor,' documenting 1661 naturalization, 1662 marriage to Madeleine Lambert and their children, the acquisition of Perrin's opera privilege, the 1685 flaunted relationship with the page Brunet, and the 8 January 1687 conducting-staff injury.
- Wisconsin Public Radio — Lully's Last Maneuver
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