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Eléna Bauer / OnP

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Les Indes galantes

Jean-Philippe Rameau

Opéra Bastille

from 27 September to 15 October 2019

3h50 no interval

Les Indes galantes

Opéra Bastille - from 27 September to 15 October 2019

Synopsis

A masterpiece of the Enlightenment, Les Indes galantes is a sparkling entertainment. Yet Rameau’s first opera‑ballet also testifies to the ambiguous view held by Europeans concerning other peoples – Turks, Incas, Persians, “Savages”… In 2017, film director Clément Cogitore made an explosive and critically acclaimed film adaptation of an extract from Les Indes galantes in collaboration with the Krump dancers. This time, with choreographer Bintou Dembélé, he takes up Rameau’s box of delights in its entirety to set it once more in an urban and political space whose frontiers he explores.

Duration : 3h50 no interval

Language : French

Surtitle : French / English

  • Opening

  • First part 110 min

  • Intermission 30 min

  • Second part 90 min

  • End

Artists

Opera in four acts and a prologue

1735

Creative team

Orchestre Cappella Mediterranea
Chœur de chambre de Namur
Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine / Chœur d’enfants de l’Opéra national de Paris
Compagnie Rualité

Media

  • Stage memories: Julie Fuchs

    Stage memories: Julie Fuchs

    Watch the video

  • Podcast Les Indes galantes

    Podcast Les Indes galantes

    Listen the podcast

  • Recipe of the day: Les Indes galantes

    Recipe of the day: Les Indes galantes

    Watch the video

  • The metamorphoses of Louis Fuzelier

    The metamorphoses of Louis Fuzelier

    Read the article

  • Finding connections

    Finding connections

    Watch the video

  • When K.R.U.M.P meets Rameau

    When K.R.U.M.P meets Rameau

    Watch the video

© Little Shao / OnP

Stage memories: Julie Fuchs

Watch the video

Soprano talks to us about her Indes galantes

5:26 min

Stage memories: Julie Fuchs

By Octave

The video streams offered by the Paris Opera allow you to discover or rediscover some of the productions that have marked recent seasons. Alongside the videos, Octave invited a number of artists who participated in these productions to add their own personal touch. Willingly playing along, they agreed to film themselves at home in order to relate their experiences, share their memories of rehearsals and performances and discuss the technical and artistic challenges of their roles. They also explain how they continue their artistic activity during lockdown, whilst waiting to return to the stage and their public.

Podcast Les Indes galantes

Listen the podcast

"Dance! Sing! 7 minutes at the Paris Opera" - by France Musique

07 min

Podcast Les Indes galantes

By Charlotte Landru-Chandès, France Musique

"Dance! Sing! 7 minutes at the Paris Opera" offers original incursions into the season thanks to broadcasts produced by France Musique and the Paris Opera. For each opera or ballet production, Charlotte Landru-Chandès (opera) and Jean-Baptiste Urbain (dance), present the works and artists you are going to discover when you attend performances in our theatres. 

Recipe of the day: Les Indes galantes

Watch the video

Ingredients of Clément Cogitore and Bintou Dembélé’s stage production

000:56 min

Recipe of the day: Les Indes galantes

By Octave

© BmO / BnF

The metamorphoses of Louis Fuzelier

Read the article

A Portrait of the librettist of Les Indes galantes

09 min

The metamorphoses of Louis Fuzelier

By Judith le Blanc

Who was Louis Fuzelier (1674-1752), the librettist of Les Indes galantes? Doubtless one of the most versatile actors of the parisian theatrical life of the first half of the 18th century and one of its most prolific and singular authors. A craftsman who was cosmopolitan in outlook, he left behind a legacy of over 230 plays, all written for the Parisian theatres of the period, from the Théâtre de la Foire (Parisian fairground theatre) to the Comédie Française and the Académie royale de musique.

Louis Fuzelier made a successful debut at the Fair in 1701 with a play for marionettes entitled Thésée ou la Défaite des Amazones. Considering himself, quite rightly, as “the godfather of the Opéra-Comique”, he was the only writer of his generation to have worked for all the Parisian theatres: the Fairground Theatres, the Marionettes, the Comédie Italienne, the Comédie Française and the Opéra. Whilst he was the author of over 200 plays written alone or in collaboration – many of which remain in manuscript form – this polygraph was also a journalist and co-director of the Mercure de France, a theoretician, stage manager, theatre entrepreneur, director of the Opéra-Comique, poet, fabulist, polemicist, a composer of songs and cantatas, a spearhead exponent of parody – in short, a protean figure.

After the failure of his musical tragedy Arion, composed by Matho (1714), he turned to the genre currently in vogue, ballet, of which he became the principal reformer. Ballet after ballet, he attempted tirelessly to renew its aesthetic. In the preface to the Ballet des Âges composed by Campra (1718), he defended the importance of comedy on the stage of the Academie Royale de musique. With Les Fêtes grecques et romaines by Colin de Blamont (1723), he presented a “ballet of a completely new type”, with no divinities, no miraculous enchantments. In the preface to the libretto, he defended the right of opera to draw on History and gave legitimate standing to the historical ballet, in the tradition of “Scarlatti and the Buononcini who made those heroes sing whom Corneille and Racine would have had speak”. In the preface to Les Indes galantes (1735), he once again rejected “the intervention of magic” and gave “physical reasons” for the volcanic eruption in the Entrée of the Incas of Peru, quoting the example of “Popocatepetl, which is the equal of Vesuvius in Naples”:

“The volcano that serves as the focus of this American Entrée is not as fabulous an invention as the operations of magic [...]. Plenty of esteemed travellers have attested to having encountered these subterranean furnaces, composed of bitumen and sulphur, which ignite easily and produce terrible fires when a single piece of rock is rolled into their formidable abysses. The most skilful naturalists support the travellers’ testimony with physical reasoning and by experiments even more convincing that their arguments. Shall I be condemned when I introduce to the theatre a phenomenon more realistic than a magic spell? And just as apt to give rise to dramatic symphonies?”

Partition originale des « Indes galantes », 1735.
Partition originale des « Indes galantes », 1735. © BmO / BnF

The parodists were prompt to echo this in demystifying the theatrical “device”:

PHANI

Air: When they say that I love
Lord tell me then how this burning passion came about?

CRISPINOS

Shall I explain it to you?
Here is the physical reason.
Air: Turlurette
To set alight
A loft full of faggots
You need only a match
Turlurette turlurette
My tantourlourette.

But the most original feature of his output is doubtless his taste for self-derision. This manifests itself in his self-parodies: his Fêtes grecques et romaine thus become Les Saturnales, then, in their one-act version, Le Débris des Saturnales. In La Rencontre des operas (1723), a “sort of parody” of Fêtes, Clio confides to Chriseis, the slave of Erato, the subject of his next ballet: “It’s the invasion of Spain by the Goths”, to which Chriseis replies that “Nothing could be more gracious than a chorus of Goths accompanied by barrel organs”. Each Entrée of the ballet is then dissected by a Suisse spectator, expert on “trinkink sonks”.

In his short comedy Les Malades du Parnasse, the character of the Critic is the founder of the hospital to which the invalids come to be cured and at which the surgeon “Sabrepièce”, or “Slashplay”, officiates. The ward for new operas is full to bursting. Stalls is the “learned doctor” who prepares the remedies. Fuzelier provides a critique of a dozen works including Le Nouveau monde by Pellegrin, (the future librettist of Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie), a play first performed at the Comédie-Française, bedridden ever since it was printed, and Persée by Lully and Quinault, revived in November 1722, which “should have expired in the theatre after fifteen days” and which however bore up for “almost three months”. He also makes an apology for his parody, Arlequin Persée, performed in December 1722 by the Italians and which, in the hospital for invalid works, shines by its absence although it was in “great need of purging”.

All these short plays promote their author, either by self-denigration or by advocacy. Should one see in this a form of pride on the part of one who, in the manner of a Cyrano, prefers to flagellate himself rather than let other people do it? Should one interpret it as a simple conjugation of his works in different registers according to their place of performance? Or a taste for self-mockery aggrandized to an art de vivre? One thing is sure: when we read these plays, we venture into the mysteries of an authorial psychology and strategy that is complex to say the least.

Fuzelier himself gives us one of the keys to his strategy in a text published in the Recueil Clairambault-Maurepas. In a fable written in 1729, he represents himself as an author with the features of “a green and yellow toad” (the colours of madness), a runaway from the Fair, in fact sent to the Opera to mine it from within. This strategy of the mole infiltrating the repertoire of the enemy is staged in an original manner. For once, the Comédie-Française and the Foire, perennial enemies, seem to be allied against a common foe: the Opéra. Fuzelier’s skill consists in revealing the superiority of the Fair over the Comédie-Française in its strategies for ruining the enemy: 

The Foire with the Comédie
Had been plotting recently
How to ruin the Opéra.
[...]
The Foire had more poets
Than there were owls in Athens,
It was F*** that she summoned.
So the toad said “Here I am”:
Thus the Ballet des Déesses
Was born, give us two more plays
In that style and adieu Opéra.

Plan de la Foire de Saint-Germain.
Plan de la Foire de Saint-Germain. © BnF

The Amours des Déesses by Fuzelier and Quinault was also self-parodied by Fuzelier at the Saint-Laurent Fair under the title L’Enfer galant (The Galant Inferno) in August 1729. In the fable, Fuzelier’s name is written with a capital F followed by three asterisks (F***). “The great Fuzelier” written next to it is crossed out: the author-saboteur advances wearing a mask but points the mask out. Because he worked for all the theatres, Fuzelier can be considered as an emblematic figure of the absence of clear-cut distinctions between types of theatre and as a figure head of parody. A chameleon-like writer, he adapts his discourse according to the range of expectations of each theatre. These texts trace a gallery of self-portraits of Fuzelier that enrich the protean figure of this little-known author. Depicting himself as a toad, as Apollo, as the “Count of Lanlère and marquis of Lanturelu” by turns, Fuzelier gives himself up to any number of metamorphoses – in the image of his own texts – and stages himself with a sense of self-derision that was unique at the time. But through this kaleidoscope of changing portraits, the image of Fuzelier never ceases to elude us. His penchant for apologues and fables goes hand in hand with the taste he cultivates for coded messages. Perhaps he is also that gluttonous poet, an author as bulimic as he is prolific, from whom Slashplay, the surgeon at the Parnassus hospital takes blood only to find, instead of blood, “whipped cream”; or even the so-called “Flonflon, inspector general of itinerant Music in Paris, and purveyor of modern operas” from the short fairground comedy entitled La Rencontre des operas.

It is certainly no coincidence that it is from his pen that we have the most striking reciprocal exchanges between so-called “classical” and “popular” music: “A doctor must pass from tongue to tongue as men pass from white to black, and certain brunettes from black to white; as lawyers pass from for to against; as doctors send their patents from this world into the next; as music passes from the Pont-Neuf to the Opéra and from the Opéra to the Pont-Neuf...” Ironically, as history would have it, Fuzelier, despite his legendary corpulence – it was said he had himself carried around in a wheel barrow by a valet whom he called his “baptised horse” – was the principal architect of the circulation of arias and of the porosity between the various Parisian theatres.

© Little Shao / OnP

Finding connections

Watch the video

In conversation with Clément Cogitore and Bintou Dembélé

6:38 min

Finding connections

By Anne-Solen Douguet

The visual artist and videographer Clément Cogitore and the choreographer Bintou Dembélé gathered around Jean-Philippe Rameau’s ballet opera for the first time during the filming of the short film Les Indes galantes for the Paris Opera’s platform “3e Scène”. This captivating initial dialogue between street dance and baroque music was pursued in order to present the whole opera on the stage of the Bastille Opera. The two artists evoke their work together and their intention to make us hear and see the work of Rameau differently, through bodies, gestures and sounds that intertwine to invent their own spaces of freedom.

When K.R.U.M.P meets Rameau

Watch the video

Interview with Clément Cogitore

11:29 min

When K.R.U.M.P meets Rameau

By Milena Mc Closkey

Visual artist and filmmaker Clément Cogitore has created for the digital stage of the Paris Opera Les Indes galantes. Made for the 3e Scène, this movie was shaped by different encounters. First, when an artist met the enfant terrible of hip hop: the K.R.U.M.P. And then, the connection of this intense dance with the music of an opera-ballet: Les Indes galantes. Keeping always in mind his desire to share his fascination to the dancers and offer them a moment on the Bastille’s stage, the filmmaker made a striking and jubilant movie. This interview takes us back on the film’s set, while Clément Cogitore evokes both his ambition to see one day the K.R.U.M.P take the Paris Opera by storm, and how this dance casts new light on the inherent tensions of Rameau’s opera-ballet.


Watch "Les Indes galantes" by Clément Cogitore

« Les Indes galantes » by Clément Cogitore

  • Les Indes galantes by J-P. Rameau (Florian Sempey)
  • Les Indes galantes by J-P. Rameau (Jodie Devos)
  • Les Indes galantes by J-P. Rameau (Edwin Crossley-Mercer)
  • Clément Cogitore about Les Indes galantes
  • Les Indes galantes (saison 19/20)- Jodie Devos

  • Les Indes galantes (saison 19/20) - Sabine Devieilhe

  • Les Indes galantes (saison 19/20) - Florian Sempey

  • Les Indes galantes (saison 19/20) - Julie Fuchs

  • Les Indes galantes (saison 19/20) - Alexandre Duhamel

  • Les Indes galantes (saison 19/20) - Sabine Devieilhe

  • Les Indes galantes - Edwin Crosseley Mercer

Access and services

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

Book your parking spot

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

Book your parking spot

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

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