Limelight — May 2017

lives under the misapprehension that she’s

irresistible to men. Everyone has a laugh at

her expense, which is crueller than it seems

because the joke was really on poor-old

Maria Teresa who, it was said, was somewhat

lacking in the beauty department herself.

Dance was the life-blood of the French

court, and it permeated every sphere of

musical life. Like his contemporaries,

Rameau became expert at weaving ballet

movements into the dramatic fabric of

all his stage works – the dances inPlatée

are all essential to the drama. The original

choreography for Rameau’s ballets has

been lost, but the music itself is often vivid

enough to suggest its own dance steps.

The libretto ofPlatéetells us that during

the ‘Air for the Happy and Sad Lunatics’,

the happy characters were dressed as

babies and the sad ones clothed as Greek

philosophers. Rameau responded with

music full of such abrupt changes of mood

and scoring that it must have inspired

dancing bordering on the manic.

This was a far cry from the conservative

world of French courtly dance, though,

when he wanted to, Rameau could be as

elegant and charming as any well-behaved

court composer. In his 40-minuteActe

de Ballet,Pigmalion(1748) the sculptor

Pygmalion falls in love with the statue he’s

created, and Rameau writes a miniature

ballet suite covering all the basics of French

dance in one easy lesson – as demonstrated

when the statue herself comes to life.

Whether old school oravant-garde, Rameau

challenged his dancers with some of the

most daring and original ballet music of

the century, an achievement not lost on the

ballet-teacher Claude Gardel (d1774) who

claimed that“Rameau perceived what the

dancers themselves were unaware of; we

thus rightly regard him as our first master”.

It was a small step from the colourful

ballet movements of his stage works to the

dances and character pieces of his keyboard

music – indeed, Rameau transferred music

regularly between orchestra and keyboard

and back again. He was a mature composer

of 58 when he published his first and only

set of chamber music – thePièces de Clavecin

en Concerts(1741). These five suites for

harpsichord, violin and viola da gamba rank

as one of Rameau’s finest achievements,

worthy to sit alongside Bach’s six sonatas

for obbligato harpsichord and violin

(BWV1014-19), though they are still not as

well-known today as they deserve.

In the five ‘concerts’ which make up

hisPièces de Clavecin en Concerts, Rameau

experimented with a new form of chamber

music whose chief novelty was a fully

• and it traverses an extraordinary range
  of emotional states for a Baroque opera.
  There are two equally weighted lead roles


• Alphise and Abaris, lovers who spend the
  whole opera trying to get together. A striking
  sub-text running throughout the work is
  the value of liberty and personal freedom:
  a dangerous notion in late 18th-century
  France, which may partly explain whyLes
  Boréadeswas mysteriously abandoned during
  mid-rehearsal in 1764. For over 200 years
  it lay unloved and unsung until John Eliot
  Gardiner conducted a concert performance
  in London in 1975 and mounted the first
  fully-staged performance and recording at
  the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 1982. It was
  taken up again at the Salzburg Festival in
  1999 under the baton of Simon Rattle, but
  it wasn’t until 2003 thatLes Boréadesfinally
  made it back to the Paris Opéra – in the
  capable hands of William Christie.

The most appealing and original of
Rameau’s stage works is his opera-ballet
Platée, first performed at the palace of
Versailles in 1745 to celebrate the marriage
of the Dauphin and the Spanish Infanta
Maria Teresa. Unusually for Rameau it was a
comedy, and its plot revolves around the god
Jupiter’s feigned love for Platée – an ugly,
swamp-dwelling, frog-legged nymph who

RECOMMENDED DISCS...

ARameauinvention–harpsichord

pieces with rich string accompaniments.

Pièces de Clavecin en

Concerts

Trevor Pinnock, Rachel

Podger, Jonathan Manson

CHANNEL CLASSICS

CCS19098

LovesongsfromRameau’soperas

ravishingly sung by Carolyn Sampson.

Règne Amour

Carolyn Sampsons,

Ex Cathedra/Jeffrey

Skidmore

HYPERION CDA67447

Nine operas and music from other stage

works led by conductors who played a

leadingroleinthe20th-centuryrevival

of interest in Rameau’s music.

The Opera Collection

Various artists

ERATO 2564636487 (27CD)

Pièces de Clavecin

Mahan Esfahanihpscd

HYPERION CDA680712 (2CD)

Esfahani’s complete Rameau justly won

awards left, right and centre.

62 LIMELIGHT MAY 2017 http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au

OCOMPOSER OF THE MONTH

Platée,New York, 2014

IT WASN’T UNTIL 2003

THAT LES BORÉADES

FINALLY MADE IT BACK

TO THE PARIS OPÉRA