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Aletta Collins (stage director), Sir Simon Rattle (conductor) – With Anna Prohaska (Aricie), Magdalena Kožená (Phèdre), Elsa Dreisig (Diane), Reinoud Van Mechelen (Hippolyte)
Jean-Philippe Rameau is now one of the most celebrated opera composers of all time—but he didn’t make his debut in the genre until he was nearly fifty! Already highly respected as a music theorist and harpsichord composer, his encounter with Montéclair’s Jephté in 1732 ignited a burst of creative energy that Rameau would forge into dozens of now-beloved operas, the very first of which was 1733’s Hippolyte et Aricie.