Rameau designated Les Paladins as a comédie lyrique, a clear signal that the score was above all meant to be an entertainment. That is certainly the primary function of the production by José Montalvo that conductor William Christie, Les Arts Florissants and the dance company CCN de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne/ Compagnie Montalvo-Hervieu have brought to the Barbican for three performances this week, the work's first British staging.
Montalvo directed the piece, designed the set and all the video effects, and had a hand in the choreography (with Dominique Hervieu), too. The result is a multimedia spectacular, dazzlingly well executed by an inexhaustible troupe of dancers and a typically young Les Arts Florissants cast of singers, in which Topi Lehtipuu, Danielle de Niese, François Piolino and René Schirrer particularly catch the ear. As one witty image gives way to the next, the energy and imagination never falter, with the live performers and their computer-generated doubles interacting in ever more intricate liaisons.
The score is late Rameau, first performed in Paris in 1760, when the composer was in his mid-70s. Truthfully, though, it is not a late-comic masterpiece, no baroque equivalent of Verdi's Falstaff. The plot is paper thin - not unlike that of Mozart's Seraglio, though set in a world of knights errant - but, though some of the writing is extraordinary, the number of vocal numbers is strictly rationed. Much of the two and a half hours of music is dance, which gives maximum scope to Montalvo's imagination. So the stage is populated with an ever-changing array of acrobatic dancers, while behind them a vivid parade of images is projected on to the set.
Its relationship to the drama is often tenuous, though the effects are so adroit that it scarcely matters. But the level of visual activity hardly drops even when there is something important to listen to, when some vestigial plot point is made or an aria is sung, and then such hyperactivity becomes distracting and tiring. I suspect Les Paladins does not have hidden depths that are going unplumbed in this production, but they wouldn't stand a chance anyway. What you get is what you see, and much of that is a real treat.
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