1745: Louis XV marries his son, the Dauphin Louis, to the Spanish Infanta Maria Theresa. For the festivities of this Royal Wedding, a new work commissioned from Rameau is performed in the Grand Manège of Versailles, transformed into a temporary theater: the comic opera Platée. This grand opera-bouffe, in which the gods mock a frog by making it believe it is loved by Jupiter, is undoubtedly the most extraordinary comic opera of 18th-century France – even though the audience at the premiere thought they recognized the ugly little Spanish princess in the croaking heroine! A remarkable score, setting inventive and unexpected rhythms to a dazzling orchestra, it also delivers Italian virtuosity through the character of La Folie, while the title role creates a unique character in the history of opera, entrusted to a haute-contre tenor who must be ready to embody a frog, the Queen of the Marshes…

Comic opera-ballet in a prologue and three acts on a libretto by Adrien-Joseph Le Valois d’Orville, created at the Grand Manège in Versailles in 1745.

New Production