Jean-Baptiste Lully was a towering figure in French music history-he was court composer to King Louis XIV, and (apparently) spent much of his career at Versailles, composing for the “Sun King”.
Recently, I obtained some of his music, and it is quite good! I would rate him as fully the equal of Bach-however, his music is rarely performed today.
Anyway, given the changes made to orchestral instruments since Lully’s time-does anybody know if recordings of Lully are actually made with the early instruments? How different would the sounds be from a modern orchestra?
Anybody ever heard Lully live in concert? 
My favorite thing about Lully is the story of how he died. In those days the conductor’s baton consisted of a long staff used for beating time on the floor. Lully once performed this function so enthusiastically that he stabbed himself in the foot and died of the resulting infection.