Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Baroque “tragédie lyrique” Castor et Pollux recalls a pair of twins from Greek mythology, one immortal, the other deceased. As in the tale of Orpheus, a living person braves the underworld to bring a beloved shade back to the world of light—only in this case, it’s not a matter of restoring a union but of trading places. There’s a princess in the mix, you see, beloved of both brothers. She, alas, has eyes only for the one who died. Greater love hath no man than this…. The director of this rare revival is Peter Sellars, identified for decades as an enfant terrible, and at 66 an inveterate provocateur. “In preparing a production,” he once told me (I quote from memory), “the first thing I do is take all the stuff everyone always cuts and focus on that.” Thus, in The Merchant of Venice, the inconsequential gossipmongers Solanio and Salerio emerged as paparazzi, personifying La Serenissima’s craving for scandal. For his Castor et Pollux, Sellars is going back to the original version of 1737, giving weight to an apparently extraneous allegorical prologue celebrating the end of the War of the Polish Succession. Why? Because it asks a question of burning contemporary concern: How do we stop war and its attendant hatreds and resentments? Seems like Sellars might be moving Castor et Pollux in the direction of Benjamin Britten’s monumental pacifist War Requiem, with its “strange meeting” of two enemy soldiers in a twilight zone perhaps beyond the grave. “Strange friend,” says one (the text is by Wilfred Owen), “here is no cause to mourn.” The other quietly demurs, building to the desolate revelation. “I am the enemy you killed, my friend.” Two numinous tenors are heard in Rameau’s title roles, Reinoud Van Mechelen as the mortal Castor, Marc Mauillon as Pollux. Jeanine De Bique sings Télaïre, the princess they love, opposite Stéphane d’Oustrac as Phébé, who is smitten with the twin who is theoretically available. The musical direction is in the hands of Teodor Currenztis, a conductor of indubitable but sometimes exasperating gifts. —Matthew Gurewitsch
