Video clip: Les Indes Galantes

An example of the wonders of baroque opera. Jean-Philippe Rameau is the greatest of the French baroque composers and one of the greatest French opera composers in history.

In my opinion, his opera Les Indes Galantes is his greatest opera. Les Indes Galantes is translated by wikipedia as "The Amorous Indians" although the French word 'galant' can also mean the English word 'gallant' which I think is preferable. It was first performed in 1735.

The opera consists of a prologue and four different stories or Entrées with quite a lot of ballet alongside the more straightforwardly operatic sections. The fourth Entrée is called Les Sauvages or The Savages and it has some of the most compelling of the opera's music. It is set in the borders of the French and Spanish colonies in America and you might think from the title that it's an attack on Native Americans as "savages" which was a derogatory term used of the indigenous population.

In fact, it's about the love of Adario, a Native American, for Zima, the daughter of a Native American chief. He fears that she will instead choose from her French and Spanish suitors. However she dismisses her French suitor as too fickle and her Spanish as too jealous and prefers the natural and honest love of Adario.

I've linked to a performance at the Opéra Bastille in September last year where the production had been updated and could be happening in the banlieues.