Rameau - Platee

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.