Laser Guided Melodies

Hippolyte et Aricie may have turned Rameau into the toast of Paris when it first appeared in 1733, but it would have to wait almost another three centuries before making its big splash in Berlin. The new production at the Staatsoper – presented in its third version of 1757 as the centrepiece of this year’s Barocktage – was nothing if not dazzling: there were enough reflective surfaces, psychedelic lighting effects and smoke-machine fog-banks to give any self-respecting stadium-rock band a run for its money. If the blinding lights couldn’t quite illuminate the tragic essence of the story, the staging worked more often than not as a musical and visual spectacle, with Rameau’s lively, intricate score and the meticulously-constructed stage images coalescing into a prismatic, occasionally hypnotic whole.

Admittedly the text of the opera does…