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-disciplines including 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.
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.
Part I Factions and Rivalry
1 A little-known contribution to the Lulliste-Ramiste dispute: Jean Galli
Bibienas Mémoires et aventures de monsieur de *** (1735)
Francesca Pagani
2 Destouches and Collin de Blamont: two surintendants in the face of the
Ramiste threat
Françoise Escande and Benoît Dratwicki
3 Rameau versus Mondonville: the construction of a post-Lullian musical
identity in France
Thierry Favier
Part II Librettos: Gestation, Attributions, Interpretation
4 Jean-Philippe Rameaus Art daimer: music and eroticism in the Age of
Enlightenment
Raphaëlle Legrand
5 Re-assessing attributions to Louis de Cahusac of the librettos of Rameaus
Io, Zéphire and Nélée et Mirthis
Thomas Soury
6 The Triumph of Generosity, or Lets Make an Opera-Ballet
Roger Savage
7 New light on the genesis of the ill-fated opera Linus by La Bruère and
Rameau
Marie Demeilliez
Part III Borrowings and Creative Renewal
8 A cluster of allusions to Vivaldis Le quattro stagioni in Rameaus
Anacréon (1757)
Graham Sadler
9 Recreating Rameau: J.-S. Mangot and his role in Parma
Margaret Butler
10 An anonymous Messe des morts on themes by Rameau and Mondonville
Thomas Leconte
11 Objet détude et de curiosité: Candeilles Castor et Pollux and its
audiences, 17911815
R. J. Arnold
Part IV Production, Performance and Criticism
12 The impact of human and material contingencies on artistic creation: the
case of Rameaus Les Indes galantes
Laura Naudeix
13 Staging time and space in Rameaus tragédies en musique
Lois Rosow
14 Stage sets and music in Rameaus operas
Rémy-Michel Trotier
15 Do Rameaus dances impose physical movement? A collaborative
exploration
Rebecca Harris-Warrick and Hubert Hazebroucq
16 Through the Mercures lens: mid-eighteenth-century acting styles and vocal
aesthetics at the Paris Opéra
Thomas Green
Part V Discography
17 Rameaus operas on disc
Patrick 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 Hildas College, Oxford.
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