Rameau's last laugh
- Lyn Richards
- Apr 2
- 5 min read
The operas of the "greatest French composer of the century" were mainly about gods, with the exception of Platée, which is about earthlings as the playthings of the gods. Or a particular sort of earthling, a conceited and ugly marsh nymph, commonly played as a frog and sung by a male high tenor. It's a role for a tenor with a talent for the absurd -- below is Kanen Breen as Platee in the promo for Pinchgut Opera's 2021 production. For a quick glimpse of the action and the music, try the brief video intro here.
But Platée is an oddly tragic-comedy role, since the gods always win.
"Improbable as the plot line may seem, Platée is a masterpiece of unashamed, over-the-top entertainment, which didn’t take long to capture the hearts of the Parisian public of the day. All the early opera standards are there (rage arias, laments, thunderstorms, dance numbers), but what makes the opera special is Rameau’s dazzling music, full of colour, full of orchestral effects and still with a big heart, as eloquent in eliciting sympathy for the characters as it is sharp-edged when poking fun at them." Here's Bachtrack, in a review of the Garsington production last year (see below).
At the end of Baroque: Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683— 1764) arrived into the late Baroque period. It's a very different musical world. Can you pick two of his exact contemporaries? Well, in Germany, there's J.S. Bach (1685 – 1750). And in Britain, of course, Handel (who actually was German born and Italian trained) is also a contemporary (1685 – 1759). Baroque is ending in a huge flourish of glorious music. To come is the 'Classical' period - over in Vienna, Mozart isn't far in the future (1756-1791).
Meanwhile, Rameau is very much in France, a provincial organist and then harpsichordist, who wrote music for those and all other Baroque instruments of great and to the current audiences sometimes challenging complexity. He climbed through appointments to become, like Lully, the official musician of the Royal court. In 1745, he was appointed Composer of the King's Cabinet. Which King? Louis XV by then. But Lully, gone since 1687, was still a formidable presence. Britannica summarizes:
Those who had grown up with the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully were baffled by the complexity of Rameau’s orchestration, the intensity of his accompanied recitatives (speechlike sections), and the rich and often dissonant diversity of his harmonies. Rameau himself, however, professed his admiration for his predecessor in the preface to Les Indes galantes, in which he praised the “beautiful declamation and handsome turns of phrase in the recitative of the great Lully,” and stated that he had sought to imitate it, though not as a “servile copyist.” Indeed, almost everything in Rameau’s operas has, at least technically, a precedent in Lully. Yet the content of his works, the rich dramatic contrasts, the brilliant orchestral sections, and, above all, the permeating sensuous melancholy and languorous pastoral sighings, put him in a different world: in short, the Rococo world of Louis XV... Among those at the first performance of Hippolyte was the great Voltaire, who quipped that Rameau “is a man who has the misfortune to know more music than Lully.”
Rameau's works were a mixed output for a top Royal musician, dominated by tragedies, many items of opéra-ballet. More detail of course in Wiki here. But in 1745 he was commissioned for an opera to celebrate the marriage of the Dauphin to the reputedly very plain Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain. So he produced his most important comic opera, Platée.
What was Rameau thinking! Why use a libretto about a wedding of a highly immoral version of the top god Jupiter to an ugly but vain frog? But he somehow got away with it. "Voltaire reported Platée as ‘the most detestable show I have ever seen or heard.’ But he was the lone ranger in holding that view – shortly after Platée’s premiere, Rameau was appointed ‘Composer in the King’s Music Chamber.’ It seems others were impressed by Rameau’s unfailing musical inventiveness, his mastery of integration of ballet movements into the dramatic fabric of his opera, and his sheer talent for comic opera." More here from Genevieve Lang.
Trivia for the week - Rameau wrote Frère Jacques, (canon à 4). Here's a beautiful baroque version!
Platée: this "comic" opera
" Platée is in a specific dramatic style of its period, in which a flawed, arrogant character is treated with the cruelty their arrogance deserves. Rameau seems to subvert that cruelty by giving his heroine some very lovely music, which contributes to making the ending difficult for modern sensibilities. After all that cruel baiting, a humiliated and miserable Platée is left to return to her swamp." More here in the Bachtrack review of Garsington's production.
So don't expect romantic love and sweet arias, and the comic is laced with discomfort. The plot is simple, the story nasty and the portrayal of the immoral gods is sharply satirical. "A close relative to the familiar myth of Semele, Platée is a character whose self-deception and entrancement places her in the middle of a heartless plot, devised by the gods to cure Juno of her obsessive jealousy over Jupiter and his romantic attachments. Jupiter pretends to fall in love with Platée only to abandon her once Juno arrives, proving she has no reason to be jealous." That's the plot!
Our production
Paris has an ongoing production of the opera directed by Laurent Pelly, with Marc Minkowski conducting (and occasionally participating!) We're watching a 2022 version with American tenor Lawrence Brownlee in the title role.
The role was a triumph for Brownlee, "touchingly absurd as the ugly water nymph Platée. His sweetly grainy sounding tenor is a well known quantity in the operas of Bellini and Rossini. Taking on the challenge of a role made for the particular voice of the baroque high French tenor (the haute–contre) brought some risk for a non-French speaking singer who specializes in an entirely different repertoire. I am pleased to report that he succeeds magnificently... He completely immerses himself in the character of the ridiculous nymph." More in this review. And a detailed look at the production in this review.
Full opera online?
Garsington Opera's recent Platée (2024) is on YouTube. The golden gods arrive on projected video above a set constructed as a ghastly reality TV show, nicely portraying the cruel hoax and humiliation of the opera.
Guardian's review nails the relevance of the setting. "Turning this into a plan devised by a crew clad in athleisure-wear as the latest love-to-loathe-it reality TV gambit makes it much easier to swallow – for a while."
As this review comments, "Counterintuitively, director Louisa Muller has relocated her production of Platée into a twenty-first century reality television show: think Love Island rather than Mount Olympus. Remarkably, this works brilliantly; and uncomfortably, as it draws out startlingly similarities with the vindictive steaks that so disfigure modern life."
Baroque specialist Paul Agnew (a former Platée himself) conducts The English Concert. Listen to Agnew's brief account of the simple story here.
(PS: note the production we are watching is in the Palais Garnier, as featured on this year's website!)
Lyn. 2/4/25
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