Once again you can blame the French for not looking after their own. They sniffed at Berlioz’s magnum opus, Les Troyens, gave nul points to Bizet’s Carmen, and, in 1739, it was the same story when it came to Rameau’s now largely forgotten Dardanus.
So why didn’t Dardanus reach the same heights as its initially ill-received successors? Why has it been left to the Royal Academy to produce the first UK staging? Apparently Rameau broke the rules; specifically, the inclusion of a sea monster in the third act apparently violated the conventions on supernatural beings. This being rule-bound Versailles, such infractions were clearly the kiss of death.
And yet of all Baroque composers Rameau seems most concerned with real life, not so much in his plot detailing, but in his pacing. Delicate, introspective arias swerve into explosively rhythmic dances, only to make way — in one heady instance — for a languorous, flute-tinted orgy that Saint-Saëns patently ripped off a hundred years later in Samson et Dalila. The message is authentically hedonistic: take your pleasures while you can.
In any case Rameau establishes the parameters for his chaotic world from the start of Dardanus in his coyly allegorical introduction. As shown by Robert Chevara’s shrewd staging of the scene, Claire Watkins’s fruity Venus and her court of fops soon realise the problem of worshipping love: it’s a very messy idol indeed.
The rest — centred on an Aïda-esque love triangle between Julia Sporsén’s impassioned and nobly sung Iphise, her father’s mortal enemy Dardanus and her hirsute lover Anténor (Thorbjørn Gulbransøy, fluent but a tad underpowered) — is no less plausible than many a repertory opera. The RAM’s ensemble dispatched it with palpable glee. Chevara’s staging made the most of his bright young things, deftly managing both singers and a useful sextet of dancers through the set pieces, and even negotiating said sea monster without garnering unwanted laughs.
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Two trump cards ensured that this really was a premiere to remember. Some sagging intonation aside, the RAM’s orchestra sounded wonderfully zingy and spry under Laurence Cummings, who never let the score’s joie de vivre sag. But best of all was Allan Clayton’s stellar turn in the near- unsingable title role. This young tenor, possessed of a supple, sturdy and meltingly beautiful voice, is surely destined for great things.
Final performance tonight (with an alternative cast) 020-7873 7300