D ance
Diverting
Rodney Miines
Lina Lalandi's Rameau circus (part and Parcel, natch, of the English Bach Festival) Moved to the Royal Opera House this year, not altogether to its advantage. The Bantlueting Hall, scene of last year's revels, may have an impossibly reverberant acoustic, but it lent the baroque orchestral sound a Patina of grandeur lacking in the more matter-of-fact Covent Garden. The modest Size of Inigo Jones's double-cube, too, suited the enterprise better: feeling part of the entertainment is vital in these court sPectacles and it all seemed too remote in 8014, Street. But there are obvious financial advantages in a sold-out opera house, and sights were thus aimed higher in the matter uf the costumes copied from originals, but tint quite high enough: fabrics were too light 113 _,114118 properly, detail clumsily executed, Colours chosen from every pastel shade in the Sanderson book and the unfortunate d aucers looked like so many Woolworth i arnPshades twirling round the stage. The piece, which Isuppose is relevant, eertied to have been chosen simply because It hadn't been given since the eighteenth centurY. La Princesse de Navarre was commissioned to celebrate the marriage of o auPhin and Infanta in 1745. It was a col'aboration between Rameau and Voltaire, Who hated each other's guts and quarrelled ri°11sily by proxy throughout the gestation Period. The end-of-act divertissements only !ere given,
consisting of a number of consisting of a number of
!n1Pertinent orders given to the elements to bolster the gloire of the lucky pair. There Was as nn plot, unless that was four overdressed Navarrais peasants mystified by the arrival of goose-stepping toy soldiers, three !r4ce5, and four groups of nobles airily dis‘41ssing the abolition of the Pyrenees (`DisPtharaissez, tombez, impuissante barrierel. I °ught Louis XIV had already solved that Problem. As before, the main point of interest was elinda Quirey's amazing choreography, a Zing and convincing act of reconstruction. w,,,1 as before, since it consists largely of „ 'king around and fancy wrist-turning, it needs better glancers than the EBF can afford A collaboration between Miss _`4utrey and the Royal Ballet really would be be, 2riething. But there was Much excellently Idiomatic singing from Bruce Brewer, Anny ,,,
°rY, Marilyn Hill Smith, Sonia Nigoghos
Zl.an and Ian Caddy. Jean-Claude Malgoire, !?ng of French baroque music, I found a tittle too respectable in the pit. that performance was deeply authentic in ianat it was light enough to read the libretto 21d everyone chattered through the !ntr'acte. It also teetered on the edge of uncontrollable hysteria, whether caused by a stage drummer in twentieth-century glasses who glared into the pit throughout with undisguised disapproval, or a curious mating dance for Cupid and Hymen, witnessed with increasingly wide-eyed disbelief by Mlle Mary's L'Amour. The audience was a quivering volcano of barely suppressed mirth: perhaps we should have thrown reverence to the winds ('Fuyez, vents furieux') and really enjoyed ourselves.
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