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Opera Review

Those Dancing Gods of Love

The Opera Lafayette production of Rameau's "Les Fêtes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour, ou Les Dieux d’Égypte," at the Rose Theater.Credit...Richard Termine for The New York Times

Where is a good, old-fashioned glut when you need one?

Jean-Philippe Rameau, the French composer and music theorist, died 250 years ago last month. In flusher times for the classical record business — 30 years ago, say — some enterprising label might have been all over the anniversary (probably losing its shirt in the process).

As it is, Rameau happenings are coming in dribs and drabs, at least in New York. And wouldn’t you know, two of them took place in direct conflict on Thursday evening. The harpsichordist Jory Vinikour played a Rameau recital at the Abigail Adams Smith Auditorium in Manhattan as Opera Lafayette was presenting “Les Fêtes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour, ou Les Dieux d’Égypte” (“The Festivities of Hymen and Cupid, or The Gods of Egypt”) at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Alas, a choice had to be made, and it fell to the greater novelty, the Lafayette production, said to be the first staging of “Les Fêtes” in modern times. And a grand one it was.

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Carly Fox Horton of the New York Baroque Dance Company in "Les Fêtes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour, ou Les Dieux d’Égypte."Credit...Richard Termine for The New York Times

“What floor for the ballet?” a woman asked an elevator attendant beforehand.

“You mean the opera?” the attendant said.

Each was right. Opera was fluid in the Baroque, often, as here, a gathering of tenuously related scenes, and in France especially, the pendulum could easily swing from drama toward dance.

“Les Fêtes” was produced in 1747 for the second marriage of the Dauphin, King Louis XV’s son, at Versailles. Having just finished “Les Dieux d’Égypte,” a motley series of ballet acts, Rameau and his librettist, Louis de Cahusac, added a prologue for the occasion, depicting the reconciliation of Cupid and Hymen, the gods of love and marriage.

To celebrate its own 20th anniversary, the adventurous Opera Lafayette, based in Washington and directed by Ryan Brown, devised an elaborate construct, enlisting three troupes — the New York Baroque Dance Company, Kalanidhi Dance and the Sean Curran Company — to share the terpsichorean wealth. They represented everything from Amazon women (the Kalanidhi company) to the waters of the Nile (the Curran dancers, undulating in tightfitting aqua). And their artistic directors alternated as stage directors, Catherine Turocy overseeing the prologue and “Aruéris”; Anuradha Nehru, “Osiris”; and Mr. Curran, “Canope.”

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Jeffrey Thompson and Clair Debono in "Les Fêtes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour, ou Les Dieux d’Égypte."Credit...Richard Termine for The New York Times

Perhaps not surprising, but painful for a music critic to report, the dance stole the show. To a nonspecialist eye, the troupes were endlessly entertaining in their separate inventions and even more so in their antic interactions.

Still, I came for the music, Rameau having been one of the liveliest, most colorful and most imaginative composers in history. But the music, conducted by Mr. Brown, failed to register strongly. The orchestra and chorus, placed behind the teeming stage action, sounded remote, and the playing and choral singing often lacked incisiveness.

Some vocal performances went well, notably, those of Jeffrey Thompson as Osiris and Aruéris, Ingrid Perruche as Mirrine and Memphis, Claire Debono as Orthésie and Orie, and Aaron Sheehan in various roles. But others were prone to serious pitch problems or bluff delivery.

There were no sets to speak of, but the costumes, mostly designed by Jennifer Tardiff Beall, were often sumptuous.

So this was an ambitious venture beautifully realized but soft at its musical core.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Those Dancing Gods of Love. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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