Jean-Philippe Rameau - Platee – Marc Minkowski, Les Musiciens Du Louvre

 

Release Date: January 27, 1992 Label: Erato Number of discs: 2 Composer: Jean-Philippe Rameau Performer: Marc Minkowski, Les Musiciens du Louvre cd info/ buy

Review:

Even the most committed Rameau collector may admit that some of his (mythological, pastoral, supernatural, etc.) plots are less than gripping for today's audiences, however richly he served them in musical terms. Platée, however, is a wicked comedy that has kept its bite, and that Rameau appears particularly to have relished setting to music. It has in abundance everything that's most engaging in this most engaging of composers: invention, color, pathos, wit, charm and surprise. Marc Minkowski seems to have something of a Midas touch. He has given us some of the best available performances of Händel and Rameau and - who knows, prompted perhaps by the sending-up of Olympus in Platée - has gone on since to give us an excellent Belle Hélène, indeed with one or two of the same singers in a successful new take on "crossover." This set is, in my opinion, one of the finest ever recordings of baroque opera and should be acquired while it's still available. Jennifer Smith's performance as La Folie alone is worth the price, and is just one of an abundance of musical and comic gems, from a love song to an owl ("le plus beau des hiboux" - Jupiter in disguise, of course) to a chorus of enquiring frogs.

 

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