Surprising as it sounds, this spirited production of Rameau’s Les Indes galantes represents the work’s first staging in the UK. Then again, French opéra-ballet has always presented challenges, from the substantial forces required to do it justice to the need for specialist vocal techniques rarely encouraged this side of the Channel: a gifted practitioner of the French baroque must be across a dizzying nine different types of trill.
Premiered in Paris in 1735, Rameau’s ballet héroïque tapped into Enlightenment tropes of the noble savage and the export of European ideals to the New World, whether the inhabitants wanted it or not. Its exotic locations – Turkey, Peru, Persia and the North American wilderness – present a modern-day director with a veritable minefield of cultural sensitivities. Happily, Bintou Dembélé, whose roots are in French hip-hop, navigates these perilous waters with ease, conjuring up an irresistible blend of pop culture and inclusive storytelling.
