Les BoréadesNew production

Co-production with the Opéra du Dijon

A tempestuous love against all odds! Jean-Philippe Rameau's baroque masterpiece and last opera, which premiered only posthumously, enchants with a deeply human sensibility. Highly praised by audiences and the press, and awarded the Grand Prix de la Critique for the best European co-production in 2019, this rarely performed work is now being shown in Berlin for the first time.

Alphise, Queen of Bactria, is faced with a dilemma: according to the law she is forced to choose a husband from the House of Boreade – the family of the God of the North Wind, Boreas. But her heart yearns neither for Borilée nor for Calisis — the two sons of Boreas who she blithely sends to the wind — but solely for Abaris, the simple servant of Apollo. She would forfeit her love for Abaris for nothing in the world; she would rather renounce her crown than marry one of the Boreades. His honor insulted, the father and wind god Boreas cannot let this stand, and blows towards revenge ...
One year before his death, Jean-Philippe Rameau, free of all expectations and dogmas, composed The Boreades, perhaps his most revolutionary work, which still challenges musicians today with its technical demands. 

As in his production of Castor et Pollux, in Katrin Lea Tag's mysteriously abstract stage space Barrie Kosky unabashedly reveals the nuances of interpersonal dynamics in Rameau’s love drama and takes the audience up close to the deepest feelings of the characters. With Anne-Catherine Gillet as Alphise, Mathias Vidal as Abaris and Emmanuelle de Negri as Cupido, the god of love, the audience will be able to experience three singers who have impressively mastered the special vocal technique of French baroque music. The baroque specialist Konrad Junghänel conducts them on the podium.