Glyndebourne's first attempt at staging an opera by Rameau often seems to be just that, a brave, but ultimately flawed first attempt. It's an effort to get to grips with what is one of the hardest area of the operatic repertory to present and to perform that does not quite hit the mark, so that the evening ends up as rather less than the sum of its impressive parts.
Though he was nearly 50 when he composed it, Hippolyte et Aricie was Rameau's first opera, and dramatically it's not without its flaws. His reworking of the classical story of Phaedra and her infatuation with her stepson Hippolytus can never quite decide who and what the opera is really about - is Phaedra the central character, or is it Hippolytus and his lover Aricia, or even his father Theseus? - while the predictable happy ending seems just a little too conveniently pat.
Jonathan Kent's production can't make up its mind either. Apart from coming up with a thoroughly ambiguous ending, it doesn't appear to have many strong ideas about the work, and treats much of it as an excuse for a bit of a romp, strange in a piece that Rameau described as a tragédie en musique and which deals with incest, suicide and accusations of attempted rape. But 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.
Fun as much of this is, the action commutes awkwardly between the humour and the real emotions with the nagging sense that Kent doesn't trust the score to sustain the drama, and in an opera that already provides plenty of scope for dancing, he encourages choreographer Ashley Page to add 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 give 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.
* In rep until 18 August (tickets: 01273 813813). The performance on
Thursday 25 July will be streamed live from Glyndebourne, on theguardian.com/glyndebourne from 6.15pm
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