Les Boréades

I admit I am more of a traditionalist myself when it comes to opera, but as long as it looks good and isn't done in bad taste I do not mind modern dress. And this production of Les Boreades is living proof that modern dress can work. Visually, it looks beautiful, especially with what is done with the seasons from the summer carpet of flowers to the rain-soaked spring. The staging works very well, intelligently done by Robert Carsen, who has been responsible for some questionable touches but overall an interesting opera stage director. The best bits were with Cupid and with Apollo floating down from the rafters. Musically it is also fantastic with orchestral playing full of energy pathos and William Christie's conducting buoyant. The singing is really wonderful, with Barbara Bonney vocally and dramatically sparkling and Paul Agnew's tenor voice is appealing and agile and dramatically he is suitably apprehensive. Nicolas Rivenq has some intonation problems in the high register of his basso range, but is a commanding figure on stage and sings sonorously on the whole. Anna Maria Panzarella sings beguilingly also. There is one point of controversy though, the choreography. Initially I did find it rather bizarre, but once I got used to it I found it creative. All in all, very well sung, well recorded and has much to admire in general. 9/10 Bethany Cox

This film was shown by Artsworld in its Birth of Opera series. It's easy to think of Rameau's operas as early examples of the genre but Les Boréades was written in 1763, more than 100 years after Montiverdi's masterpieces. It comes after all of Handel's operas and only predates Mozart's works by a few years. Perhaps it is better to think of Rameau's operas as belonging to an evolutionary dead-end. They consist of long, flowing vocal lines that are very recitative-like. Instead of arias there are usually dance numbers. It is tempting to think that if they had lifts in the 18th century, Rameau's music would have been played in them. If they had phones in the 18th century, Rameau's music would have been played while you were on hold.

The libretto is about the weather. Alphise is Princess of a warm summery country but tradition demands she marry one of the Boréades, descendants of the north wind. We get lots of contrasts between scantily-clad people frolicking in the sun and people in overcoats holding umbrellas. Barbara Bonney plays Alphise in what is, for her, an unusually mannered performance. The tenor, Paul Agnew plays her lover Abaris and is more successful at turning Rameau's vocal lines into interesting music.

The disaster of this production is the use of the modern dance group La La La Human Steps for most of the dance numbers. Their twitchy choreography was a real turn-off. They looked like demented grasshoppers in Marks and Spencer's underwear.