A well-known figure in Greek mythology, Io is a priestess of the temple of Hera (in Argos) seduced by Zeus. Which, surprised by his wife in her adulterous antics, metamorphoses her into a white heifer. Io is also the title of an unpublished work by Jean-Philippe Rameau that Opéra Lafayette has just premiered in the United States on the stage of the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, on May 2. An opera that this troupe, specializing in 18th century French music, is preparing to perform again in a theater on the prestigious Fifth Avenue in New York *, on May 9.
The play, in one act, mixes tragedy and humor, but also song and dance. It tells of the rivalry between Apollo and Mercury to win the favor of this woman abandoned by the ruler of Olympus and who, according to Aeschylus, would have given her name to the Ionian Sea. Love drives humans and gods mad, and this madness is embodied on stage in the guise of Belgian soprano Gwendoline Blondeel. Emmanuelle de Negri slips with delight into the costume of Io, facing tenors Maxime Melnik and Patrick Kilbride, and baritone Doug Williams. We laugh, we shiver and, obviously, the outcome of the story is not necessarily the one we expect.
Three centuries after it was written, this opera by the French composer admired by Voltaire is finally shown to the public. And this thanks to the obstinacy of the musicologist Sylvie Bouissou, who reconstructed the score like an archaeologist facing a broken ceramic. “We don’t know much about this opera: neither its date of composition, nor the author of the libretto, nor even the theater for which it was intended”, recognizes the French researcher, member of the prestigious Iremus laboratory within the CNRS.
Some will see in Io the draft of another lyrical comedy by Rameau dated 1745, Platée. A work that narrates in the same satirical tone the thwarted loves of a human and the gods of Olympus, even going so far as to mock Juno’s jealousy. Sylvie Bouissou does not exclude that the pieces were composed one after the other. This opera-bouffe is, in any case, very characteristic of the genius of a man who explained that “true music is the language of the heart”.
*El Museo del Barrio, 1230 5th Ave, New York. More information on the Opéra Lafayette website
