
The central work of this course, on which all the singers, instrumentalists and dancers cooperate, is this year's opera-ballet Les Indes galantes ("The urbane Indians"), the first of a series of ballet operas in 1735 by French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau to a libretto by Louis Fuzelier. By 1730 there was a fad for operas in the form of ballet operas based on mythological themes. In Rameau's Les Indes galantes he returns to that form, but he gives the roles more contemporary, modern characters, just as Campra did in L'Europe galante (1697).