RAMEAU : CASTOR ET POLLUX

RAMEAU'S CASTOR AND POLLUX

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 20th of July 2008 at 3 - 5.20 pm

BACKGROUND
FOREGROUND (with colour picture)
SYNOPSIS
LIBRETTO (French) (Do not use Firefox for this)

RAMEAU: Castor et Pollux, an opera five acts
Phoebe................................... Véronique Gens
Telaira.................................... Anna Maria Panzarella
Pollux..................................... Henk Neven
Athlete/Mercury/Spartan......... Anders J Dahlin
High Priest of Jupiter............... Thomas Oliemans
Follower of Hebe/
Blessed Spirit/Cléone.............. Judith van Wanroij
Castor.................................... Finnur Bjarnasson
Jupiter.................................... Nicolas Testé
Netherlands Opera Chorus, Les Talens Lyriques/
Christophe Rousset
(recorded in Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam by Radio Nederland)

If you want to live among the stars you must go down into the Inferno, Dante taught us. And here we have the story of how the Gemini twins made it into the Zodiac.

The version for this production was the 1754 revision of the 1737 original, with a new Act 1. The director was Pierre Audi.

This is reputedly the greatest opera of Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1784), but it has never presented itself to my attention before. I have Zoroastre (audio and video), and I have long been fascinated with Les Indes Galantes (audio, Malgloire and the orchestra of the King's chamber and stable or whatever, from the local library, now ruthlessly discarded by them; video, the American William [Appelez-moi Bill] Christie and The Flourishing Arts ensemble). Others to listen out for: Anacréon, Les Fêtes d'Hébé, Platée, Pygmalion (which I have on a black disc, directed by Gustav Leonhardt; Pygmalion the tenor falls in love with his statue), and Les Boréades (I have a video recording of this, Paris 2003, Christie; not performed in Rameau's time!).

Remember, Rameau was a contemporary of Bach and Haendel, and equal to them in the use of harmony, polyphony, rhythm, and melody. Rameau wrote an important treatise on harmony, making him the 'Newton' of music, before he became famous as a composer of operas, when he was fifty. Think what we would have lost if Rameau had died as young as Mozart, Schubert, or Bellini!