Platée
I From the Barbican Theatre,
London, the Royal Opera's new production of Rameau's knockabout comedy, directed by the great American choreographer Mark Morris. Premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in August, this is the Royal
Opera's first-ever Rameau production. The composer was commissioned to write an entertainment for the marriage of the French king's son to a notoriously unattractive Spanish princess and came up with a story in which Jupiter "cures" his wife Juno of jealousy by pretending to court and marry a hideously ugly but impossibly vain marsh nymph.
Fortunately for Rameau, Platee went down well at Versailles, and its over-the-top slapstick feels remarkably modern today.
Royal Opera Chorus,
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, conductor Nicholas McGegan Prologue; Act 1
8.50 Novelists
5: Philip Hensher , author of Kitchen Venom, introduces and reads from his next novel, Slow Thunder, set in Berlin at the time of the fall of Communism, and his forthcoming short stories, The Inert Reveller.
9.10 Acts 2 and 3