FIRST NIGHT REVIEW

Opera: Les Fêtes d’Hébé at the Britten Theatre, SW7

This charming production — wittily staged, vividly designed and meticulously choreographed — perfectly captured the élan of the original

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★★★★★
What a blissfully shallow, sensual, surprising soufflé of a show. I wasn’t looking forward to two and three quarter hours of French baroque opera-ballet. And knowing that Rameau’s Les Fêtes d’Hébé had waited 278 years for its UK stage premiere didn’t do much to dispel my forebodings. There’s usually a good reason why significant works by significant composers have been shunned for centuries.

After seeing this production, however — an entente-cordiale collaboration between students of our own Royal College of Music, the Centre de Musique Baroque in Versailles and the Académie de l’Opéra nationale in Paris — I can’t imagine what that reason is. The shame is that the show ran for only two nights.

Yes, the plot is slight. Hébé, a bored goddess,