Boy, where would we be without baroque opera, I ask you? I mean, considering where we are now,it chills the blood to imagine how much worse it could be.
This is definitely the most go-for-broke comic opera I've yet seen from Rameau. The idea is that Juno is jealous, as she no doubt should be, and causing storms. So the other gods hatch a plot to calm her down by making her think that Jupiter is planning on marrying someone else, and then when she realizes that his alleged bride-to-be is actually an ugly water nymph, ha ha, who'd marry her?, she'll chill out.
In addition to the other somewhat dubious aspects of this plan, the main thing is: it's really mean, which meanness reviews of this that I've seen either dismiss in a few words or ignore entirely. But it definitely impacted my enjoyment. It's actually sort of hard to parse, because it's not like these gods are notably sympathetic, with Jupiter himself in particular coming across as a huge douchebag. But perhaps that is merely my contemporary sensibilities. It's vexing.
And yet, not vexing enough to ruin the viewing experience. As is usually or always the case, this is not exactly tightly-plotted, and Platée herself is largely just sort of hovering around in the background for most of it while various singers and dancers do their thing. And this is all a lot of fun, and Rameau's music is phenomenal, seemingly effortless pivoting from comic to dramatic themes. Just accept that it is what it is and you're not watching it for the main plot, and it should be fine.
This production is weird but fun, as Rameau productions seem to often be. It has the conceit of a stage with theater seats, as seen in Agrippina,sort of, which is a little pointless but all right. But that doesn't matter; it's all very well done. The copious dance sequences are just great, to my mind more entertaining than any Rameau production I'd seen before. Also, dancing frogs. During the third-act overture, one of them enters the orchestra pit and starts fucking with the musicians. What more do you want? Performances are up to par; Paul Agnew is sympathetic in the title role. I think the fact that it's an en travesti role is supposed to make the audience feel better about being cruel to the character, which yuck, but Agnew--decked out in green froggish costume and make-up--makes the most of it. The show is handily stolen, however, by Mireille Delunsch as Folly in a dress made of sheet music. She gets some of the best singing in the show, I think, and she's very magnetic. I loved her. The only real complaint I have about the production is that given modern sensibilities--it's not just me, right?--I really think they could have done something to endow Platée with a little dignity in the end; to make the whole plot a bit more palatable.
Still, on balance another winner. Let me say just a brief word about the DVD release: so there are actually two different releases of this same production, the first by Kultur and the second by Arthaus. If you look at reviews of these discs, they tend to be somewhat monomaniacally focused on how the former has lousy sound and picture quality and the latter is way better. That's as may be, but I watched the Kultur disc, and I had no problems. Maybe it's just because I'm not an audiophile, but I could detect no problems with the music; I guess maybe the visuals are slightly dark, but if I hadn't known I was meant to be offended by this, it never would have occured to me to be upset. So take that for whatever it's worth.
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