Rameau's Platée EMS: 16 march

[doversoul1]

Opera Profiles Episode 9 of 9
Saturday 18 December 2010
Lucie Skeaping looks at Jean Philippe Rameau's comic masterpiece, the baroque opera Platée.
Rameau wrote the opera when he was in his sixties, for an entertainment at a court wedding at Versailles. The story tells of a foolish and ugly nymph who believes she is loved by Jupiter. The sense of the absurd permeates Rameau's score, with the composer and his librettist managing to create a wonderfully imaginative and colourful piece which turn many of the operatic conventions of the time on their head.
Rameau's contemporary, Melchior Grimm, considered the piece "sublime" while for Jean Jacques Rousseau it was a "divine" work. Even today it succeeds in firing the imaginations of opera producers and conductors, not least the French conductor Marc Minkowski, who explains why in the programme.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wh2zk

Please can we have the other 8 repeated?
Blow: Venus and Adonis
Handel: Alcina
Vivaldi: Orlando Furioso
The Begger’s Opera
Hasse: Piramo e Tisbe
Lully: Armide
A. Scarlatti: Griselda
Cavalli: Giasone

[ardcarp]

Taking your request at face value, dovers (I'm never very good at spotting irony) those Baroque opera programmes would certainly be great candidates for a repeat.
Maybe not all at once though, and certainly not so as to let The Management off the hook. We need EMS to carry on making good, new Lucie-presented programmes in their customary format.

[MickyD]

Ah, Platée! I remember seeing it for the first time in the early 80s at Sadler's Wells - an English Bach Festival production. Jean-Claude Malgoire was conducting, if I remember rightly.