Rameau's first comic opera comes to the Liceu conducted by William Christie

Jean-Philippe Rameau was fifty when he started composing for the stage. Thanks to the efforts of researchers, his music is more familiar to us nowadays than it was to his contemporaries. The sparklingly entertaining Platée is a flagship work of the Enlightenment, a jewel of Baroque opera and the most joyful and amusing of Rameau's creations. Every scene contains a blend of iconoclastic topics, choruses, dancing and a liberal dose of irony.

The plot tells how the water nymph Platée craves for Jupiter's love and how he deludes her. In the end, when the fake wedding is underway, the trickery is revealed and the humiliated Platée leaps back into her pond. Over 275 years later, the charm of the score and its freewheeling music is still irresistible.

Towards the end of his life, Rameau was asked what he liked better: the sound of applause or the music of his operas. He paused for a moment and then answered: "I like my music much better".

Platée

COMÉDIE LYRIQUE (BALLET BOUFFON) COMPRISING A PROLOGUE AND THREE ACTS (1745)​
Libretto by Adrien-Joseph le Valois d’Orville based on Platée ou Junon jalouse by Jacques Autreau.
World premiere: 31/03/1745 at La Grande Écurie de Versailles.
First performance at the Liceu.