Jean-Philippe Rameau - Castor & Pollux

"The story of opera in France in the 17th and 18th centuries revolves around an extraordinarily volatile negotiation of outside influences. Opera, of course, was an Italian invention and Cardinal Mazarin's attempt to introduce it at the French court in 1647 was a dismal failure. If France was to have opera, it was to be distinctively French and free of all pernicious foreign tastes. France was to make opera its own. 

 

"Through the establishment of the Academie Royale de Musique in 1672, Louis XIV bestowed a monopoly on his Florentine-born 'surintendant de la musique', Jean-Baptiste Lully, for the production of opera in French. While heavily influenced by the original Italian model, Lully managed to forge a uniquely French style with the assistance of the great writer Philippe Quinault. The resulting genre, 'tragedie en musique', was inspired and guided by Aristotelian models of dramatic narrative. The role of the chorus was more important than in its Italian progenitor, and verisimilitude was underlined by speech-like declamation in both the airs as well as the 'recitatif ordinaire'. Ornamentation — lavish, to the ears of lovers of Italian lyricism — was understood to have accentuated correct prosody and outlined the richly varied rhyming schemes of French poetry. For the Italians, opera was about vocality and virtuosity; for the French, it was about narrative and nuance. 

 

"Lully's influence was so great throughout the first part of the 18th century that it was often very difficult for new composers to have their operas recognised by an increasingly conservative establishment that honoured the strength of existing forms. The pervasive and somewhat unyielding presence of the Lullian tradition may account for Jean-Philippe Rameau's late first foray into operatic composition. Having arrived in Paris in 1722, Rameau had attracted a formidable reputation as a theorist, composer and pedagogue but had yet to set an opera (though it appears he had had ambitions to do so). The 40-year-old Rameau bided his time. Apparently it was only on hearing a particularly moving production of 'Jéphte' by his old rival Montéclair in 1732 that he was inspired to take up his pen to set a libretto. 

 

"His first opera, 'Hippolyte et Aricie' (1733), sparked immediate controversy and divided Parisian audiences into those in favour of Rameau's new style (the Ramistes) and those who preferred the operatic status quo (the Lullistes, who derisively called their opponents ramoneurs, or chimney sweeps). Rameau essentially took existing Lullian conventions and intensified or heightened them, all the while taking into consideration the latest Italianate trends. He kept the diverse time signatures and painstakingly notated rhythms that Lully had initiated for correct declamation in much of the recitatif, but he made it more pliable, expressive, and above all harmonically richer. He introduced many Italianate melismas and turns of phrases in the paradoxically named ariettes (despite the diminutive - 'little arias' — these were the longest and most virtuosic) and he enriched the Lullian monologues and airs de mouvement with accompanied recitative and other kinds of orchestral accompaniment in novel and tonally imaginative ways. Overall, Rameau deepened French theatrical declamation with a profound sense of dramatic lyricism. Voltaire reported that Rameau told him: 'Lully needs actors, but I need singers.'

 

"Many of the Lullistes feared that Rameau was an Italophile iconoclast, but in reality he was far from it; the many revivals of his works attest to the attention he paid his critics. Many at the time said that Rameau's operas worked only in revival. The revisions appeared to have presented composer and audience with opportunities to better refine and appreciate, respectively, the works in question. 

 

"Through this process, it is fair to say that Rameau's 1737 'Castor et Pollux' only achieved success in 1754, at its first revival. By 1764, with the great Sophie Arnould creating her career-defining role of Télaïre, it was hailed by contemporaries as Rameau's greatest operatic achievement. Many now recognised the composer as France's greatest since Lully himself, a reputation he enjoyed thanks to the great success accorded the revived 'Castor et Pollux'. The 1754 version appeared at the height of the so-called 'Guerre des Bouffons' or 'War of the Comic Actors'. Earlier disputes between the Ramistes and Lullistes had taken on a new complexity in the 1750s, with discourse turning more to politicised debates on the relative merits of Italian and French music. 'Castor et Pollux' seems to have put an end to the increasingly empty debates, which had run their course. It very quickly became a touchstone of the 'tragedie en musique' genre. Composers as far afield as Telemann and Graun discussed Rameau's achievement. 

 

"The librettist, Pierre-Joseph Bernard, had wrought a rather unusual subject for the stage. Rather than the usual romantic pairing of man and woman, Bernard instead focused upon the fraternal devotion of Castor and Pollux. Graham Sadler has argued that in its revised form, Bernard's libretto 'is arguably the tautest, best constructed and most elegant of any that Rameau set'. Sadler notes the powerful conjunction of varying conflicts in the story: the struggle for Pollux between his duty and his unconditional love for Télaïre, and Castor vying with the fatal consequences of the jealousy of Phœbé.

 

"'Castor et Pollux' exhibits in its revised form a great and multi-faceted range of dramatic expression, from the solemnity of Castor's funeral chorus, to Télaïre's extraordinary outpouring of grief, to Castor's mournful air on the Elysian Fields, a place of repose in which he finds no succour. Above all, there is the fluid and sensitive setting of Bernard's elegant poetry, together with the sublime dances of the entrées and divertissements of the Spartans, the shades of Hades and the followers of Hébe. Rameau's word-setting is particularly beautiful in its extraordinary attention to detail: to pick one instance from many, when the two brothers are reunited in Hades, Rameau manages to perfectly convey, through a delicate filigree of mirrored part-writing, unison, dissonance and resolution, the tender reunion of the twins ('O mon frere, est-ce vous?'). The savagery of the off-stage confrontation in which Castor is slain is depicted in what was understood at the time to be a newly naturalistic fashion, with real-time responses from chorus and soloists alike to represent the bloody tumult of battle. The extraordinary contrapuntal treatment of the trio and chorus of demons in Act 4 was exactly the kind of texture that confused the Lullistes and galvanised the Ramistes.

 

"Diderot summed up the feelings of many when he wrote: 'Old Lully is simple, natural, even, too even sometimes, and this is a defect. Young Rameau is singular, brilliant, complex, learned, too learned sometimes; but this is perhaps a defect in his audience... Before Rameau, no-one had distinguished the delicate shades of expression that separate the tender from the voluptuous, the voluptuous from the impassioned, the impassioned from the lascivious.'" (Erin Helyard. From the live program.)

 

Performers: Orchestra of the Antipodes, Cantillation, Anthony Walker, Jeffrey Thompson, Hadleigh Adams, Celeste Lazarenko, Margaret Plummer, Paul Goodwin-Green, Anna Fraser, Pascal Herington, Mark Donnelly

1.1. Acte I, Scène I: Ouverture

1.2. Acte I, Scène II: 'L'Himen Couronne Vôtre Sœur'

1.3. Acte I, Scène III: 'Éclatez Mes Justes Regrets'

1.4. Acte I, Scène IV: 'Ah! Je Mourrai Content, Je Revois Vos Appas'

1.5. Acte I, Scène IV: 'Non, Demeure Castor, C'est Moi Qui Te L'ordonne'

1.6. Acte I, Scène IV: 'Chantons, Chantons L'éclatante Victoire'

1.7. Acte I, Scène IV: Air Très Pointe

1.8. Acte I, Scène IV: 'Quel Bonheur Règne Dans Mon Ame!'

1.9. Acte I, Scène IV: Tambourin I & II

1.10. Acte I, Scène V: 'Quittez Ces Jeux!'

1.11. Acte I, Scène V: Combat.../'Castor, Hélas!'

1.12. Acte I, Scène V: Bruit De Guerre

1.13. Acte II, Scène I: 'Que Tout Gémisse'

1.14. Acte II, Scène II: 'Tristes Apprêts, Pales Flambeaux'

1.15. Acte II, Scène III: 'Cruelle, En Quels Lieux Venez Vous?'

1.16. Acte II, Scène IV: Marche Fière.../'Peuples, Cessez De Soupirer'

1.17. Acte II, Scène IV: 'Que L'enfer Applaudisse À Ces Nouveaux Concerts'

1.18. Acte II, Scène V: 'Princesse, Une Telle Victoire'

1.19. Acte II, Scène V: Air Pour Les Athlètes. Marche Fière

1.20. Acte II, Scène VI: Air Gai

1.21. Acte II, Scène VI: 'Éclatez, Fières Trompettes'

1.22. Acte III, Scène I: 'Présent Des Dieux, Doux Charme Des Humains'

1.23. Acte III, Scène II: 'Le Souverain Des Dieux Va Paroitre En Ces Lieux'

1.24. Acte III, Scène III: Descente De Jupiter.../'Ma Voix, Puissant Maître Du Monde'

1.25. Acte III, Scène IV: Entrée D'Hébé Et Sa Suite

1.26. Acte III, Scène IV: 'Tout L'Eclat De L'Olimpe Est En Vain Ranimé'

1.27. Acte III, Scène IV: 'Qu'Hébé, De Fleurs Toujours Nouvelles'

1.28. Acte III, Scène IV: Sarabande.../'Voici Des Dieux L'azile Aimable'

1.29. Acte III, Scène IV: Air Gracieux.../'Que Nos Jeux Comblent Nos Vœux!'

1.30. Acte III, Scène IV: Gavotte I & II

1.31. Acte III, Scène IV: 'Quand Je Romps Vos Aimables Chaines'

2.1. Acte IV, Scène I: 'Esprits, Soutiens De Mon Pouvoir'/...Descente De Mercure

2.2. Acte IV, Scène II: 'Phoebé, Tu Fais De Vains Efforts'

2.3. Acte IV, Scène III: 'Rentrez Dans L'esclavage'

2.4. Acte IV, Scène III: Air Des Démons

2.5. Acte IV, Scène III: 'Brisons Tous Nos Fers'

2.6. Acte IV, Scène IV: 'O Ciel! Tout Cede À Sa Valeur!'

2.7. Acte IV, Scène V: 'Séjour De L'éternelle Paix'

2.8. Acte IV, Scène VI: 'Qu'il Soit Heureux Comme Nous'

2.9. Acte IV, Scène VI: Gavotte Gaye.../'Sur Les Ombres Fugitives'

2.10. Acte IV, Scène VI: Menuet.../'Dans Ces Doux Aziles'

2.11. Acte IV, Scène VI: Passepied I & II

2.12. Acte IV, Scène VI: 'Fuyez, Fuyez, Ombres Légère!'/Scène VII: 'Rassurez-vous Habitans Fortunez'

2.13. Acte IV, Scène VII: 'Oui, Je Cede Enfin À Tes Vœux'

2.14. Acte V, Scène I: Prélude Tendre.../'Le Ciel Est Donc Touché Des Plus Tendres Amours'

2.15. Acte V, Scène II: 'Mais J'entends Des Cris D'allegresse'

2.16. Acte V, Scène III: 'Peuples, Éloignez Vous'

2.17. Acte V, Scène III: Vite Tonerre.../'Qu'ai-je Entendu? Quel Bruit?'

2.18. Acte V, Scène III: 'Mais Le Bruit Cesse'

2.19. Acte V, Scène IV: 'Les Destins Sont Contens, Ton Sort Est Arrêté'

2.20. Acte V, Scène IV: 'Palais De Ma Grandeur Où Je Dicte Mes Loix'

2.21. Acte V, Scène IV: Chaconne

2.22. Acte V, Scène IV: 'Que Le Ciel, Que La Terre Et L'onde'

2.23. Acte V, Scène IV: 'Tendre Amour, Qu'il Est Doux De Porte Tes Chaînes'

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