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Much baroque opera was based on myth and fantasy. Although Rameau's Les Indes galantes (The Amorous Indes, 1735) was written to celebrate the glories of France as a colonial power, most of its depiction of other countries is entirely fanciful. We shall look at Clément Cogitore's recent production of the opera in Paris, in a multi-racial society where "colonial" is a toxic term, together with a more lighthearted one by Laura Scozzi in Bordeaux. Then, for a complete change of pace, we look at Dvorak's fairy-tale opera Rusalka (1901) in a striking production from Munich by Martin Kusej inspired by an horrific story that had hit the European headlines a few years previously.

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The shorter clips shown in class are all available on YouTube; see the links below. Neither of the full productions of Les Indes galantes that we saw (Bordeaux and Paris) is available complete, but almost all the excerpts are available separately, though without titles and in less good quality. By some miracle, Rusalka in the Martin Kusej production is also available complete, again without titles.

Given how the Kusej Rusalka ends, I also include links to yet another production of Les Indes galantes, this time from Geneva, that appears to take place in a very similar setting. Check out the very moving "Viens, Hymen" aria, and the extraordinary use of the "Les sauvages" music at the end, played very slowly as though returning to life after some catastrophe. rb.

And given that we were talking about them in class, I include links to the complete Paris production of Rusalka by Robert Carsen, which may well be as a brilliant as the Kusej, despite its obtrusive Spanish titles. I also include the trailer to the Brussels production by Stefan Herheim and the Song to the Moon from the old English National Opera production by David Pountney, set in a Victorian nursery, whose floor opens to reveal a pool of water. If any of these intrigues you, they are all available on DVD, as is the Kusej production played in class. rb.

RAMEAU: LES INDES GALANTES
  Paris, 2003   * Les sauvages excerpt (directed by Andrej Serban)
  Bordeaux, 2014   * Trailer (directed by Laura Scozzi)
* Prologue
* Les sauvages
  Paris, 2019   * Viens, Hymen (directed by Clément Cogitore & Bintou Dembélé)
* Les sauvages
  Geneva, 2019   * Viens, Hymen (directed by Lydia Steier)
* Les sauvages
  Other   * Les sauvages, harpsichord (1725 harpsichord piece played by Jean Rondeau)
* Les sauvages, dance (Houston Ars Lyrica)
 
DVORAK: RUSALKA
  Film, 1977   * Wood Nymphs scene (directed by Petr Weigl; complete)
  Munich, 2010   * Opening sequence (directed by Martin Kusej; complete)
* Father and girls
* End of Act I
* End of Act III
  NY Met, 2017   * Song to the Moon (Kristine Opolais)
  Other productions   * London 1986 (Song to the Moon)
* Paris 2002 (complete; Spanish titles)
* Brussels 2012 (trailer)

           
IMAGES
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COMPOSERS

The class contains work by the following composers, given here in chronological order. For bios of other composers in the course, click here.

Jean-Philippe Rameau, 1683–1764. French composer.
 
Rameau first won fame as a music theorist and composer of harpsichord music. It was not until his 50th year that he wrote the first of the elaborate operas (tragédies en musique) on which his fame now rests. These include Hippolyte et Aricie (1733), Les Indes galantes (The Amorous Indes, 1735), Dardanus (1737), and the posthumous Les Boréades (Sons of the North Wind, 1763).
Antonin Dvorak, 1841–1904. Czech composer.
 
Dvorak composed ten operas, many of which have a continued presence in his native land. But only his fairy-tale opera Rusalka (1901), a variant on the Little Mermaid story, has had true international success, cropping up in an astonishing range of productions in the last few decades.

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