Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Rameau: Dardanus

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) is the greatest composer of the French baroque. He should rank with those two other gods of the baroque period, Bach and Handel. Rameau established his reputation as a musical theorist early on. Only later in life did he turn to writing opera. He was much more musically progressive than Bach or Handel. His operas aroused controversy; not all of them were successful, nor did they always win praise in the critical press.

One of his finest works for the lyric stage, Dardanus, first produced in 1739, got bad press from the partisan conservative critics, the supporters of the old style of Lully's operas. They pointed out the absurdities of the staging and the poor quality of the libretto. Rameau remained unsatisfied with the initial reception of Dardanus. He prevailed upon his librettist, LaBruere, to radically rewrite the wordbook, while he completely reworked the score of this his fifth opera, especially changing its last three acts. Only thereafter in its final form for revival in 1744 did Dardanus become a big success.

The 1744 Dardanus has been recorded for the French Alpha Classics label. The site of the recording, made in 2012, was the opera theater at Versailles palace. Raphael Pichon conducted the vocal soloists, chorus and period instrumentalists of the Ensemble Pichon. Alpha released it in 2015 on two compact discs.