Jean-Philippe Rameau was already 50 years old when he wrote his first opera, Hippolyte et Aricie, in 1733. Although Jean-Baptiste Lully—whose name at the time stood for French opera par excellence—had already died in 1687, the premiere sparked a bitter dispute between the conservative "Lullists" and the admirers of Rameau's daring, modern style. While some found his harmony too dissonant and his break with tradition scandalous, others were enthusiastic about the innovations that emerged from Rameau's long-standing preoccupation with questions of music theory and aesthetics. Les Indes galantes of 1735 was followed two years later by the tragédie en musique Castor et Pollux—Ramaeau's third completed opera. The premiere at the Paris Académie Royale de Musique was eagerly awaited, if only because of its subject matter; the mythical story of the two Dioscuri was a novelty on the musical theater stage at the time. Rameau himself probably suggested the material to the writer Pierre-Joseph Bernard, who wrote his first libretto, Castor et Pollux: The brothers, the mortal Castor and the immortal Pollux, are both in love with Télaïre, who herself prefers Castor. However, before the opera's action even begins, Castor is murdered. Pollux receives permission from his father Jupiter to free his brother from the underworld in order to reunite him with Télaïre, but he would have to pay for this with his own immortality. For Pollux, an inner struggle now begins between his brotherly loyalty to Castor and his desire for Télaïre. In Castor et Pollux, Rameau combined all the compositional elements for which he was equally famous and infamous, impressively conveying the respective dramatic situation musically in the sometimes highly virtuosic vocal lines as well as in the rich harmony and the differentiated timbres.

Marc Mauillon

Events

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27 - 29 Aug, 2025

Castor and Pollux · Salzburger Festspiele

Future and recently performed repertoire

Pollux in Castor et Pollux by Rameau

Salzburger Festspiele

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