Name: Les Indes galantes
Start: 2016-07-24T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2016-07-30T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Opernstudio der Bayerischen Staatsoper München

Organization

Conductor

Ivor Bolton

Stage director

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Set designer

Anna Viebrock

Costume designer

Greta Goiris

Lighting designer

Michael Bauer

Singer

Soprano

Lisette Oropesa

Hebe

Baritone

Goran Jurić

Bellone

Ana Quintans

Zima

Tareq Nazmi

Osman

Elsa Benoit

Emilie

Tenor

Cyril Auvity

Valère

Bass

François Lis

Huascar

Anna Prohaska

Phani

Mathias Vidal

Don Carlos

Damon

John Moore

Adario

L'Amour

Bayerische Staatsoper

Orchestra

Münchner Festspielorchester

Choreographer

Chorus master

Detlef Bratschke

Others

Balthasar Neumann Choir and Ensemble

Ballet

Eastman Ballet Company

French

Les Indes galantes -  (The Amorous Indies)

Munich

Germany

Opernstudio der Bayerischen Staatsoper München

Les Indes Galantes by J. P. Rameau, from Bayerische Staatsoper, performed at National Theatre Munich, 2016. Directed by Sidi Labi Cherkaoui, conductor Ivor Bolton, starring Lisette Oropesa, Anna Prohaska, Ana Quintans, Cyril Auvity, Elsa Benoit,Goran Juric, Mathias Vidal, Tareq Nazmi and Francis Lis. Performed in French.

From Turkish gardens to Peruvian deserts, from Arabian palaces to the forests of North America, Rameau’s Les Indes galantes explores the themes of love, jealousy, and redemption through the peoples of far-flung lands. In a recent production of the opéra-ballet as part of Munich’s 2016 Opera Festival, stage director and choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui turns the composer’s original fascination with exotic cultures on its head, stripping the tales of their foreign trappings and in doing so transforming them into reflections on traditions, assumptions, and superstitions closer to home. Music Director and early music specialist Ivor Bolton leads the Münchner Festspielorchester in Rameau’s luscious score, while the talented vocal soloists are joined by the choir and dancers of Cherkaoui’s Antwerp-based Compagnie Eastman.

Prinzregententheater

When the European youth chooses War above Love, Cupid decides to seek out new followers on other continents. The opera thus recounts the way people love, hate, envy or trust overseas, all the while asking its Western audience a burning question: how do we love right? In Indes Galantes, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui raises the sensible issues of population movements, fragmented and ever-changing territories and borders, but also the refugee crisis that has shaken Europe to its very core…

Very much in keeping with the spirit of his age, Jean-Philippe Rameau measures the European culture of being lucky or unlucky in love against the image of the noble savage and takes the audience on a journey to four exotic realms. Given that, in the mythical land of Arcadia, people are walking away from Love and choosing to follow the god of war, Amor encourages Love to seek new followers on other continents. Regardless of whether the portrayals of distant lands are accurate representations of reality as conveyed by geographers, or simply a propagation of colonial clichés, Europeans are reflected just as much in the sultan who declines to take advantage of the highly desirable prisoner; in the self-destructively jealous Inka priest; in the love games of Persian princes; and in the prairie Indians who love faithfully and peacefully, as Rameau's furiously portrayed storms and volcanic eruptions stand for their emotional turbulence.

 

Recollecting the origins of French music theatre within a culture of dance, Rameau plays with a genre which was enjoying a high degree of popularity among his contemporaries, but which today classifies as terra incognita, ripe for rediscovery: the Opéra-ballet. Using a balanced mix of music, drama and dance, and with multiple long-distance location changes, the focus alternates between four couples and their handling of fidelity, trust and jealousy - variations on the increasingly pertinent question: How do we love right?

Production booklet

Further reading