Rameau and Voltaire's first collaborative opera, Samson, never took off. Although Voltaire published his libretto, Rameau's score has been lost and survives only in fragments reused in later operas. So, when German director Claus Guth and French conductor Raphaël Pichon decided to stage Samson for the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, they turned to that most Baroque of techniques--pastiche.
Voltaire and Jean-Philippe Rameau were among the most prominent figures in the French artistic circle in the 1730s. By the time of their collaboration for Samson in 1733, Voltaire was already cultivating a reputation of impiety, and Rameau, new in the opera scene, was similarly becoming controversial for his use of Italian, rather than French, styles. Despite two attempts, Samson was never staged, and Rameau reused his score in Les Indes galantes, Castor et Pollux and Zoroastre.
It was to these works that Guth and Pichon turned for the 60 numbers that make up their Samson. They also used material from the later Rameau-Voltaire collaborations, Le Temple de la Gloire and Les Fêtes de Ramire, as well as Rameau's 1748 opera-ballet, Les surprises de l'Amour.
It is in sewing together so many different parts that the challenge of such a pastiche lies: "There are questions of connection," said Pichon. "The tonal relationships between everything, the harmonic journey, the details of orchestration."
The new Samson doesn't just reuse Rameau, either: it also features a rumbling, electronic soundscape designed to unsettle listeners. "There's a dialogue between the Rameau music and more contemporary sounds," Guth said. "Behind all this is my aim to get out of this kind of, 'I buy my ticket and I'm sitting in a Baroque opera and I know what the next two hours will sound like.' Here you have to open your ears again every 10 minutes."
With recreation impossible, Guth and Pichon have decided to create a work that is all their own, but one following in the spirit of Rameau. Their story reaches earlier into the Biblical story of Samson, (baritone Jarrett Ott) and includes his marriage to another Philistine woman, Timnah (mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre).
The Festival d'Aix-en-Provence's Samson opened on July 4, and runs until July 18.
