Pygmalion

In cooperation with Musikfestspielen Potsdam Sanssouci and Centre de musique baroque de Versailles

Sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with the statue of a Muse he created himself. He blames the gods for his peculiar love and despairs in light of the apparent hopelessness of the amorous situation he is in. But Amor brings the sculpted Muse to life, and, to the sculptor’s utter amazement, she declares her love for him. Pygmalion calls the Charites and asks them to teach his beloved various dances: air, minuet, gavotte, chaconne, passepied, rigadoon. Because life is a dance – at least according to the French opera of the late baroque period, when Jean-Philippe Rameau took the ballet opera genre, called Acte de ballet, to its greatest heights.

The Innsbruck Festival presents a staged Acte de ballet for the first time. The outstanding Compagnie Les Cavatines, which is in the process of bringing about a magnificent renaissance of the French ballet opera, will perform a choreography by Natalie van Parys. Rameau’s harmonic system, rich in overtones, the rhythmic pulse and the tone colours which were used as a technique in its own right for the first time in “Pygmalion”, will be served by Les Talens Lyriques under the direction of Christophe Rousset as a delicately sparkling musical champagne.

The vocal ensemble is headed by the Swedish tenor Anders J. Dahlin, an “haute-contre” with “crystal-clear diction and an effortless rendition in the highest heights”, as the Berlin-based newspaper Tagesspiegel described Dahlin’s performance in “Pygmalion” at the 2016 Music Festival Potsdam Sanssouci. The celebration of dance and the Muses begins even before “Pigmalion”, however, with the staged cantata “La Muse de l’Opéra”, in which Louis-Nicolas Clérambault used the then prominent types of aria to full effect, and with Jean-Féry Rébel’s choreographed intermezzo “Les Caractères de la Danse”, the catalogue of popular baroque dances.