Anacréon 1985Les Arts Florissants
Read more about the opera Anacréon
The operatic contribution to the 1985 Edinburgh Festival was largely French in origin. At the King's John Eliot Gardiner displayed his Lyon company in two revelatory productions - a fresh look at Pelléas et Mélisande and an unknown delight in Chabrier's Etoile. We also enjoyed the first visit by William Chistie's Les Arts Florissants, in a double-bill of baroque delights, Rameau (Anacréon) and Charpentier (Actéon).
The first visit to Edinburgh by Les Arts Florissants worked very well, even if, with only two performances, the theatre was inevitably packed out. Anacréon was given as the first half of a double bill. It was beautifully presented in every way, and the charmingy ornate late-Victorian Lyceum was the perfect intimate venue for the performance. Perhaps the only reservation about the opera itself arose because it is perhaps not the greatest of Rameau's stage works and it did suffer in any comparison with the astonishing earlier composition that made up the second half of the evening - Charpentier's Actéon.
