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Rameau: Les Indes Galantes - Andreas Wolf, Cappella Mediterranea, Chœur de chambre de Namur, Structure Rualité, Leonardo García-Alarcón - The Grange Festival (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith) |
Rameau: Les Indes Galantes; Laurène Paternò, Ana Quintans, Alasdair Kent, Andreas Wolf, Cappella Mediterranea, Chœur de chambre de Namur, Structure Rualité, director: Bintou Dembélé, Leonardo García-Alarcón; The Grange Festival
Reviewed 1 July 2025
Rameau's ballet héroïque reinvented as vivid music theatre in a collaboration between period performance and hip-hop-inspired dance at, astonishingly, the works first major UK staging
Full-scale productions of Rameau's major operas in the UK remain vanishingly small. Garsington Opera did Platée last year and Glyndebourne Opera presented Hippolite et Aricie in 2013. With Castor et Pollux making an appearance at ENO in 2011, and Dardanus at ETO in 2017. That's not a lot.
Partly, it is a problem of economics. Handel and Vivaldi's operas, whilst large-scale and somewhat problematic on the modern stage, were written for commercial opera houses, they usually require just a handful of major singers, an orchestra and perhaps a single set. Rameau was writing for the rather more lavishly funded opera in Paris, he presupposed a large orchestra, chorus and dancers, in addition to large-ish casts and plots that call for lavish scenic changes. Whereas in France, opera companies seem to be up to the challenge that Rameau's operas present, this is not the case in the UK.
Rather imaginatively, for its final operatic staging of the season the Grange Festival has partnered with a French company to bring their staging of Rameau's Les Indes Galantes. Amazingly this seems to be the work's first full staging in the UK.
We caught the second of three performances at the Grange Festival on 1 July 2025. Leonardo García-Alarcón directed his ensembles Cappella Mediterranea and Chœur de chambre de Namur with a staging by choreographer Bintou Dembélé featuring soloists Laurène Paternò, Ana Quintans, Alasdair Kent, Andreas Wolf, and Dembélé's dance company, Structure Rualité. Lighting was by Benjamin Nesme and Charlotte Coffinet,
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Rameau: Les Indes Galantes - Cappella Mediterranea, Chœur de chambre de Namur, Structure Rualité, Leonardo García-Alarcón - The Grange Festival (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith) |