What no dancing?

I went to the English Touring Opera production of Rameau's Dardanus last week in the delightful opera house at Buxton.  It is a very long time since I went and there has been a lot of restoration work  since then and the theatre was looking splendid.  My enjoyment was only partly spoiled by the fact that in the seat directly in front of me was an extremely tall gentleman: I had to keep moving from side to side to see the stage properly when the action was right in the middle.

This was the first time that I had seen Dardanus on stage, though I knew the music fairly well from the Minkowski recording.  Though I have to qualify that by saying that the Minkowski recording uses  the 1739 version and this was a performance of the 1744 edition, in which the last three acts are largely new.  In fact the Minkowski version does add some material from 1744 and this performance did slip in some 1739 music - I don't think that we are quite at the stage where ultimately purity of sources is the norm in Rameau: performances are still rare enough to make one glad to hear whatever is presented.

I enjoyed much of the performance but I left feeling a little deflated because I think that there was a missed opportunity here.  The staging was in a modern war-time setting, and I didn't have a problem with this - I don't really think that it is possible these days to stage these operas as they would originally have been seen, but there were two  big problems with the production.  The first was the almost total lack of dance.  Rameau was of course one of the very greatest of composers of balletic dance music (he is up there with Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky) and the dancing is an essential part of the operatic experience.  But we got virtually no dancing at all.  Some of the dance music was cut: some was used for fairly unconvincing pantomime effects and some was played as interlude music with the curtain down.  That simply doesn't work.  Audiences see the curtain going down as an opportunity to chat shuffle and cough and this does mean that it is not really possible to hear the music properly.  Dealing with the dance is the biggest single problem in staging Rameau.  It is not like 19th century grand opera where one can omit the ballet fairly easily as it is self contained.  In a modern setting like this is of course difficult to find a way of using the ballet music properly, but I got the sense that the producer hadn't really tried.  I think that the concept of the modern war-time setting came first and that led to the jettisoning of the dance.  Surely it should have been the other way round.  The producer should have started from the premise that the dance was an integral part of the opera and found a way of making it work in an appropriate setting.

The second problem was the lack of a chorus.  We had a few extra performers who did sing the choruses one to a part  but that simply was not enough to differentiate them from the solo singing.  One of the great pleasure of Rameau should be the variety: dance music, choruses, solos and ensembles.  But with no dance and with the choruses one to a part it did all become rather lacking in contrast.  Of course economics play a big part here and it is unreasonable to expect that a small touring company should have a large chorus in tow, but perhaps a few more voices could have been provided.

And finally while I am Beckmesser mode: why did they cut the prologue?  I suspect that it was partly for reasons of length but also because it doesn't really fit the concept.  But again , the prologue is an integral part of Rameau's music and dramatic ethos and a way of including it should have been found., not least because it has some delightful music.

Enough of carping.  I am glad I saw it on stage.  There is some magnificent music throughout the opera and there were some very strong performances. The stand out for me was Anthony Gregory in the title role.  He managed the high tessitura effortlessly and came across as utterly convincing. The audience took a while to get into the aesthetic , which is hardly surprising as the music doesn't break into neat sections of aria and recitative but neither is it through composed.  I am reminded of the stories of the first performance of Das Rhinegold, where the audience wanted to find somewhere to clap and ended up applauding Loge's narration, simply because it was the nearest thing they could find to an aria.  We didn't get any applause between numbers here - though it was a close run thing a couple of times and an audience with more experience of the style might well have clapped a few times.  I think that it would have given a bit of energy to the performance.

So why Rameau?

Yesterday I wrote about my conversion to Rameau.  So what it is about his music that I find so compelling.


Well first of all it is the sound itself.  Now I know that that seems self-referential because what is there in music apart from sound?  I suppose what I mean is that there is a richness of texture and a really good sense of balance between the bass line, the melody and the inner parts.  It is constantly inventive.


Digging a bit deeper I would say that the use of the orchestra is a constant joy.  Just three examples out of many.

• the use of bassoons in the recitatives in Zoroastre
• the low sustained notes in the horns in the musette in the last part of Les Fêtes d'Hébé
• and my favourite - the totally mad oboe parts in Platée representing the pond life



Then we have the ensembles.  Rameau is surely one of the great masters of the operatic ensemble - nobody came near him in my opinion until Mozart, and if one is talking about ensembles involving soloists and chorus then one has to look into the 19th century for anything as impressive as, say, the end of the first act of Platée or parts of Act 4 of Les Boreades

(although I must say that I find this too fast - Gardiner judges the tempo much more effectively in my view)

But finally there is the dance music. Surely Rameau must be counted as one of the great masters of theatrical dance music - in my view his only competitors are Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, and much as I adore both them I think that I would have to hand the gold medal to Rameau.  The variety is astonishing - at one time elegantly languid - at others infectiously foot tapping.    Of course it is the dance that is the biggest problem to deal with in modern productions.  I don't believe that there is any point in trying to recreate the original steps, but I do sometimes feel that modern choreographers must have a tin ear, given the astonishing gulf between the sense of movement in the music and what appears on the stage.  The dancing in the performances of Les Boreades above is a case in point - it seems far too busy and fussy, as if trying to overcompensate for what the choreographer doesn't hear in the music.

Rant over!

So lets finishwith the wonderful contredanse that ends Les Boréades.  I don't normally like clapping to live music but you can see why the audience wanted to join in.  

Rameau

Tastes change.

If you went through the playlist on my IPOD today I think that you would find that I have played more "tracks" by Rameau than any other single composer.  I would never have predicted this even 10 years ago.

I don't recall hearing a note of Rameau's music all the way through school or university.   We did cover Rameau a little in the history of music theory and also briefly in the history of opera.  If any Rameau was played as an example I have not memory of it whatsoever - not that there would have been many recordings back in the 1970s which could have been used.  I do remember looking at some Rameau scores, but didn't find anything of interest there.  I found them too fragmentary to get my teeth into and all of the ornamentation very fussy.

The only real memory I have of Rameau is a conversation with one of my lecturers in the music library.  He told me that they had a bit of spare money in the library fund - that dates it! - and that they were  going to use it to expand the range of complete editions which we held.  When he told me that the first priority was Rameau I can still recall my reaction, which was "why can't we get something more interesting".   I also remembering reading revues of the Rameau revivals by the English Bach festival and wondering why on earth anybody would bother!

Even when I started to develop an interest in Handel Rameau was still a closed book.    I can date my first real encounter fairly precisely.  In an early issue of one of the CDs which started to be included with Gramophone magazine.   John Elliot Gardiner was being interviewed about his musical experiences and he mentioned how Rameau had come to life for him when he started to work with original instruments.  The musical extract chosen to illustrate this was the Entreé from Act IV of Les Boréades.

I was hooked!   I immediately ordered the CD of the entire opera and never looked back.  I think that I now have at least one recording of each of the operas which have been released on CD or DVD.  I managed to get to a couple of concert performance of Les Boréades (including one at the Proms conducted by Simon Rattle which left an indelible impression) and two staged performances of Castor et Pollux.


In my next post I will try to explain a little just why I find Rameau so captivating.  In the meantime here is the wonderful Chaconne which ends the opera Dardanus.