Platée, ironic opera

Written for the wedding of the Dauphin of France (the son of King Louis XV) to Marie-Theresa of Spain on March 31, 1745, Platée premiered on this occasion before the Court of Versailles. The storyline may seem an odd choice for the wedding of a prince: an ungainly nymph falls in love with Jupiter, who contrives to go along with betrothal to the nymph only to punish his real wife Juno for her legendary jealousy. The unconventional libretto by Valois d’Orville, based on a previous version by Autreau, could well have offended the court—not least the young bride, who was said not to have been blessed with beauty… But for all its brazenness, Platée was performed many times at the Académie royale de musique from 1749 to 1750, and again in 1754, meeting with ever greater acclaim and success.

This fast-paced ballet bouffon with its sharp irony—a fertile terrain for the inexhaustible imagination of Rameau at the peak of his glory—is a delicious satire of the opera genre. Indeed, it leaves out none of the clichés, from the Nymph’s lamento to the choruses of praise and dread, from the metamorphoses to the theme itself—love, parodied to the extreme through the grotesque features of the main character.

It is no surprise, then, that such a work—one breaking all the rules and conventions—has long held a special place in the heart of William Christie, uncontested master of rhetoric and great connoisseur of the prosody, ornamentation and expressiveness of Grand Siècle music. All the comedy of Platée stems from this freedom, revealing the incredible modernity of the writing, with which William Christie has taken great care, entrusting the staging to a collaborator of many years, Robert Carsen. By transposing the parody into our own era, into the present-day fashion world, Platée becomes a farce as cruel as it is inventive.

Fannie Vernaz, Les Arts Florissants musical resources and library officer

> Learn more about the Platée production