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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Early Music Show

Music: Classical: Early Music

Performance and news from the world of early music.

An exploration of early music, looking at early developments in musical performance and composition in Britain and abroad. UK only: please note that not all episodes are podcast.

The Early Music Show: Opera Profiles

The Early Music Show: Opera Profiles: Episode 9: Rameau - Platee

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Music: Classical: Opera

Rameau - Platee

Episode 9

Episode 9: Rameau - Platee

Opera Profiles

BBC Radio 3 - The Early Music Show, Opera Profiles, Rameau - Platee

Lucie Skeaping delves into Rameau's comic masterpiece Platee.

Lucie Skeaping delves into Rameau's comic masterpiece Platee. A colourful work, it turned many of the operatic conventions of the 18th century on their head.

Lucie Skeaping looks at Jean Philippe Rameau's comic masterpiece, the baroque opera Platée.

Rameau wrote the opera when he was in his sixties, for an entertainment at a court wedding at Versailles. The story tells of a foolish and ugly nymph who believes she is loved by Jupiter. The sense of the absurd permeates Rameau's score, with the composer and his librettist managing to create a wonderfully imaginative and colourful piece which turn many of the operatic conventions of the time on their head.

Rameau's contemporary, Melchior Grimm, considered the piece "sublime" while for Jean Jacques Rousseau it was a "divine" work. Even today it succeeds in firing the imaginations of opera producers and conductors, not least the French conductor Marc Minkowski, who explains why in the programme.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Series celebrating baroque opera, broadcast as part of the Opera on the BBC season

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Episode 9: Rameau - Platee

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