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| Cast member Svetli Chaumie |
The European Opera Centre will present the world premiere performance of Jean-Philippe Rameau's rarely heard 18th century opera Dardanus on July 20 (Limerick, Ireland) & 22 (Liverpool, England). "The musicians are French, handpicked and each of them is specific to their basse de viole, clavecin, hautbois and hautes-contre de violin. There’s a list of 28 instruments in all..." The opera is performed on occasion around the world, but generally in its first version given in Paris in 1739 at the Académie Royal de Musique. This production presents the revised edition by Rameau five years after the premiere, which has never been revived in modern times.
"This new edition – commissioned by the European Opera Centre from the French musicologist, Dr Gilles Rico - is based on the 1744 version of the opera. It incorporates the numerous emendations made by Rameau during the 1744 and 1760 runs of the opera to tighten the dramatic grip and enlarge the emotional range of musical expression. Using autograph and non-autograph eighteenth-century manuscript and printed sources, it makes available for the first time to modern audiences some of the most beautiful and inspired musical passages of an opera which epitomizes the evolution of French opera in the eighteenth century from a court entertainment - constrained by the grand display of technical prowess and a pronounced taste for extraordinary stories - to a more intimate and more humanistic drama."
[Watch an excerpt of Christiane Eda-Pierre as Vénus singing "Marlgre le Dieu Des Mers" in a 1980 production of Dardanus at the Théâtre National de Paris with conductor Raymond Leppard]
