Rameau Les Boréades

It's possible to recreate everything about an eighteenth century opera except the audience,’ says director Robert Carsen in a documentary included with this DVD. ‘My work is for modern audiences.’ And how…In this brilliant production, Carsen goes to the heart of the drama…Michael Levine's stylised, bold designs allow the story to unfold with gripping clarity and, remarkably, some of the spectacular set-pieces (especially the storm in Act III) work even better on DVD than in the theatre itself. Barbara Bonney is vocally and dramatically stunning as Alphise…Conductor William Christie responds to Rameau's varied and colourful score with élan, and Édouard Lock's choreography – a version of classical ballet deconstructed and then pumped with amphetamines – is breathtaking.

Rameau’s career was nearing its end when the rehearsals of his last composition, Les Boréades, began at the Académie Royale de Musique, in spring 1764. The death of the composer in September interrupted the production of his lyric tragedy, which was only saw the light of day two centuries later! This magnificent opera is certainly the most accomplished of Rameau’s works, composed as he was aged eighty and in full possession of his creative means: the composition for orchestra and choir is highly virtuoso, the melodic invention exceptional, the drama powerful: a true musical testament.

John Eliot Gardiner has proved himself a doughty champion of the later French Baroque, cultivating credible performing methods and unearthing undeservedly neglected repertoire. … "Les Boreades" recorded in 1982. Viewed by many as one of the greatest of Rameau's operas, the score is both dramatically effective and a riot of orchestral colour. Gardiner conducts with a real feeling for the way in which instrumental timbre underpins the drama, while in a strong cast Philip Langridge is both stylish and superbly theatrical as Abaris.

Dardanus (1739) was Rameau's third excursion into tragedie-lyrique and Les boreades (1764), his last. Both works contain rich seams of inventive and colourful orchestral movements from which Frans Bruggen has created orchestral suites. In the case of Dardanus the quantity of dances and other miscellaneous instrumental pieces is unusually substantial, since for a revival of the opera in 1744 Rameau had been obliged to compose much new music.