Experience the modern-day premiere of Rameau’s masterwork — Le Temple de la Gloire (The Temple of Glory) — fully staged as Rameau intended, for the first time since the opera’s 1745 premiere. The magnificent libretto is by Voltaire. The original manuscript is housed at U.C. Berkeley’s Hargrove Music Library, making Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall the ideal setting for three spectacular performances. This co-production with Cal Performances and Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles represents a collaboration years in the making.
The version of this ballet héroïque that has been heard up until now is the second version which was substantially changed by Rameau to take into account the Parisian public’s aversion to moral maxims, and their preference for love scenes. Voltaire originally wanted this to be a philosophical reform of opera: an allegory around the idea of the temple of glory, a grandiose spectacle with moral and political overtones. This original 1745 version is much more spectacular, and its originality in the history of Enlightenment Theater calls for a twenty-first-century restaging. And this is the version audiences will experience in April 2017.
A co-production with Cal Performances and Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles.
Listen to PBO’s recording of the Ouverture for Le Temple de la Gloire:
