Hippolyte et Aricie was Rameau’s first work for the stage, written when he was nearly 50. It is also Glyndebourne’s first opera by Rameau and does still, as it did in Paris in 1733, have a richness of invention.
So there's hope for us fifty somethings?
"The lighter moments do bring the best out of Paul Brown's fabulously inventive and glowingly colourful designs. The prologue is set inside a domestic refrigerator, a very obviously French one, to judge from the tins of escargots and cassoulet on its shelves, while the underworld that Theseus visits in the second act is the grimy area behind it; the costumes cheerfully mix the 18th and 21st centuries, as well as camp get-up for a dance troupe of matelots (don't ask) that belongs in neither."
The ladies in the Glyndebourne 'ladies' just didn't get this, at all, but maybe they were more desperate for a pee than any operatic analysis.
However, The Guardian continues; "Fun as much of this is, the action commutes awkwardly between the humour and the real emotions and in an opera that already provides plenty of scope for dancing, choreographer Ashley Page adds even more during some of the arias. With William Christie conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, though, the music couldn't be better presented; Christie's ability to conjure up ceremonial grandeur, tender intimacy and rhythmic variety may be sleight of hand from the greatest Rameau interpreter of our time, but it's totally compelling. So too is much of the cast, especially Ed Lyon's Hippolytus, Christiane Karg's Aricia, and Stéphane Degout's Theseus; as Phaedra, Sarah Connolly plays the stepmother from hell to the manner born."
This was one of the better reviews. The Telegraph hated the opera, but then they were pushed into their uncomfortable zone and probably felt too challenged cos they had to think independently and weren't wearing their comfortable beige slip-ons.
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