Rare satiric Rameau-Voltaire opera beautifully staged

18th century piece suggests that satire is not a new phenomenon

BERKELEY — With its luminous score and frequent flights into choreographed dance sequences, “Le Temple de la Gloire” (The Temple of Glory) is a rare example of the largescale works of the French Baroque era.

Music lovers might wait a lifetime for a revival of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s 1745 “ballet-héroique” (or opera-ballet). But thanks to a co-production by Cal Performances, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, the composer’s score is getting a top-notch production this weekend in Berkeley.

In the first of three performances Friday night at Zellerbach Hall, Philharmonia music director Nicholas McGegan led his orchestra, the Philharmonia Chorale and a large cast of singers, dancers and extras in this 18th century masterwork. The nearly three-hour opera sounded, well, glorious — as it suggested that satire, as a response to the politics of the day, is hardly a 21st century phenomenon.

Friday’s opening benefited from expert leadership by McGegan in the pit, and lavish stage direction and choreography by Catherine Turocy, whose New York Baroque Dance Company brought a vivacious corps of artists able to navigate the gigues, gavottes, forlanes and other French dance forms specific to the score.

Scott Blake’s set, augmented by Pierre Dupouey’s atmospheric lighting, turned the Zellerbach stage into an 18th century proscenium theater ornately framed in gold leaf. Projected backdrops suggested palace interiors and pastoral scenes, and the special effects were striking — in one scene, a group of muses danced downstage, while their projected images floated overhead.

McGegan conducted with his trademark verve and attention to detail, drawing forceful orchestral responses in the triumphant music and gentle, opulent sound in the pastoral scenes. The singers, decked out in Marie Anne Chiment’s rich-toned costumes, were magnificent. Baritone Philippe-Nicolas Martin was an emphatic Bélus, and soprano Chantal Santon-Jeffery, who sang expressively in her extended first act aria as his scorned lover, Lydie, returned in the third act as the dazzling embodiment of Glory.

Introduced in a ribald episode dominated by a giant ostrich, the high-voiced haute-contre Artavazd Sargsyan made an agile Bacchus. Soprano Camille Ortiz-Lafont was an alluring Érigone. Aaron Sheehan sounded elegant as Trajan, who, once he wins the contest, dedicates the Temple of Glory to the public good. Gabrielle Philiponet was an insinuating Plautine. The large supporting cast played muses, demons, satyrs, kings, nymphs and shepherds, gods and warriors.

Rameau’s score scarcely resembles “modern” opera — there’s not a lot of extended action, and no great psychological depth. In one sense, this is an arcane piece, an artifact of a distant era.