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EARLY MUSIC REVIEW
Rameau, A Striking Original
October 6, 2001
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By Robert Commanday
In a pleasant coincidence, today's editorial on the neglect of much fine music was illustrated by the major musical event of the past week here, the performances of Rameau's comédie lyrique, Platée, at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall. It is a mystery why this composer who ranks high among France's musical geniuses — Platée demonstrates that — is so seldom performed.
It was with his 30 operas, in the various sub-species of opéra-ballets, pastorales, ballets, that Rameau made his greatest mark on his musical world. Yet they are barely known. His very first one, the dramatically stunning Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) was so distinctive and different that the epithet "baroque" was hung on it by the critics, and that was said to be the first time the word was applied to a piece of music, the word that eventually represented the whole period. Striking originality marked his stage works. Platée (1745) exemplifies that.
Those who took in the by-now-famous Mark Morris production at Cal last week might understandably have attributed much of the vividness of the comedy, sharpness of the satire and a modern eccentricity to the choreographer-producer. While his interpretive liberties were indeed pure Morris, Morris was truly carrying out the spirit of this comédie lyrique. If we were delightedly "outraged" by the goings-on, that is the very response that Rameau and his playwright, Adrien-Joseph Le Valois d'Orville, calculated their royal audience would have. Their Platée skewered not only the very participants in the royal wedding it celebrated, the Dauphin Louis and particularly his reportedly homely Spanish bride, the Princess Maria Teresa, but also the royal court at Versailles they were entertaining.
Platée deals with the gods' plot to disabuse Juno of her insane (if appropriate) jealousy of Jupiter by siccing him on the ugly and pathetically vain nymph Platée. When, at the dénouement, Juno is brought in to see Jupiter pretending to marry the poor thing, the joke dissolves everyone except of course, the object of the game. It would have been transparently obvious to the courtiers that the gods, overbearing in their cruel sport, represented themselves, and that the royal bride herself was the butt. It couldn't have been dared at a less "sophisticated" court in any century. Musically, Rameau spared no trick, his fertile imagination allowing him to include all manner of musical forms, large arias, ariette, dance songs, recitatives that skip along with syncopations, leaps and accents, quick and catchy harmonic shifts, and an abundance of rich, lively and sonorous choruses of a variety for which he was unsurpassed in his century. All this was performed excellently and in high style by fine soloists in the principal roles, Marika Kuzma's UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus, sounding professional, and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, with Nicholas McGegan conducting in his finest form. This was a revival. The premiere was given at the Edinburgh Festival in 1997, and Morris' production had been performed here two years ago, also with McGegan conducting and the Philharmonia Baroque in the pit. Furthermore, Saturday's performance was the fifth of this set, this cast having done the work in Orange Country twice last week and here Wednesday and Friday nights. The polish and pace were then high.
A striking aspect of Rameau's score was the rapidity and ease with which the music picks up a shift in the text, meaning, dramatic emphasis, characterization, and reflects it instantly and clearly, and as swiftly as brush strokes . The music's expressive aim is unerring. Down the centuries since, pictorial devices in music became commonplace and often dismissed as naive, but Rameau produced his thunder claps, lightning and the rest in altogether engaging ways, incisively and briefly, just long enough to catch it, like a quick joke. The rhythm is sophisticated and intricate, the melodic lines elegant and lyrical, the orchestration cunning and colorful. All of this, McGegan and his musicians picked up and delivered keenly. So did Morris. It was a toss-up whether the music was playing the choreography or vice versa, movement and music were so closely integrated. Often, a dancer or singer would pick up a cue from the music, do something like flutter hands in time with a trill or string tremolo, and it just fit, amusingly. It was not that tiresome kind of miming of the music known as "mickey-mousing," perhaps because it happened too fast and seemed like a decorative elaboration that came out of the music. The costumes (choice!) by Isaac Misrahi and Adrianne Lobel's set were as remembered, and delightful. Morris had made some inventive passing modifications along the line since two years ago, and I had the impression that the ending this time softened or shortened the crushing effect of Jupiter's rejection and the general derision on Platée.
The principals were a consistently high stock of singers, Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, a counter-tenor/high tenor, splendid in the title role; a fine tenor Philip Salmon as Mercury and Thespis; Marcos Pujol, first as a Satyr, then as the initial object of Platée's desires, Cithéron; Lisa Saffer, with her sure bright soprano as Clarine, Platée's lizard-in-waiting; a strong bass baritone, Bernard Deletré as Jupiter and Momus; Amy Burton, a soprano with generous and smooth voice, as L'Amour and La Folie; and Mary Phillips, a soprano of striking, almost dramatic voice to match her stature in the role of Junon. The 17 members of Mark Morris Dance Group were splendid disporting themselves in multiple roles (including the creatures of Platée's marsh) throughout this great operatic-dance frolic. The very success of this production, now four years old, leaves the puzzling question: Why aren't producers poking into Rameau's other lyric works? Platée isn't just a chance, single success by any means. (Robert P. Commanday, the editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.) ©2001 Robert Commanday, all rights reserved |
