The Operas of Rameau Genesis, Staging, Reception

In recent years, interest in Rameau’s operas has grown enormously. These works are no longer regarded as peripheral by performers and audiences but are increasingly staged in the world’s major opera houses and festivals, while the production of first-rate recordings on CD and DVD continues to flourish. Such welcome developments have gone hand in hand with an upsurge in research on Rameau and his period. The present volume, devoted solely to the composer’s operas, reflects this scholarly activity. It brings together a substantial group of essays by an international team of scholars on a wide range of aspects of Rameau’s operas. The individual essays are informed by a variety of disciplines or sub-disciplinesincluding literature, archival studies, musical analysis, gender studies, ballet and choreography, dramaturgy and staging. The contents are addressed to a wide readership, including not only scholars but also practical musicians, stage directors, dancers and choreographers.

Part I – Factions and Rivalry 1A little-known contribution to the Lulliste-Ramiste dispute: Jean Galli Bibiena’s Mémoires et aventures de monsieur de *** (1735) Francesca Pagani 2Destouches and Collin de Blamont: two surintendants in the face of the Ramiste threatFrançoise Escande and Benoît Dratwicki3Rameau versus Mondonville: the construction of a post-Lullian musical identity in FranceThierry Favier Part II – Librettos: Gestation, Attributions, Interpretation 4Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Art d’aimer: music and eroticism in the Age of Enlightenment Raphaëlle Legrand5Re-assessing attributions to Louis de Cahusac of the librettos of Rameau’s Io, Zéphire and Nélée et Mirthis Thomas Soury6 The Triumph of Generosity, or ‘Let’s Make an Opera-Ballet’Roger Savage7New light on the genesis of the ill-fated opera Linus by La Bruère and RameauMarie Demeilliez Part III – Borrowings and Creative Renewal 8A cluster of allusions to Vivaldi’s Le quattro stagioni in Rameau’s ‘Anacréon’ (1757)Graham Sadler9Recreating Rameau: J.-S. Mangot and his role in ParmaMargaret Butler10An anonymous Messe des morts on themes by Rameau and Mondonville Thomas Leconte11 ‘Objet d’étude et de curiosité’: Candeille’s Castor et Pollux and its audiences, 1791–1815R. J. Arnold Part IV – Production, Performance and Criticism 12The impact of human and material contingencies on artistic creation: the case of Rameau’s Les Indes galantesLaura Naudeix13Staging time and space in Rameau’s tragédies en musiqueLois Rosow14Stage sets and music in Rameau’s operasRémy-Michel Trotier15Do Rameau’s dances ‘impose physical movement’? A collaborative explorationRebecca Harris-Warrick and Hubert Hazebroucq16 Through the Mercure’s lens: mid-eighteenth-century acting styles and vocal aesthetics at the Paris OpéraThomas Green Part V – Discography 17Rameau’s operas on discPatrick Florentin

Graham Sadler is a research professor at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Hull. Shirley Thompson is Interim Principal of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Jonathan Williams is a leading Rameau specialist in Britain and director of the Rameau Project based at St Hilda’s College, Oxford.