Last night, wearing a red ribbon for World Aids Day, as many others in the audience were also, I attended a performance of Rameau's opera 'Castor and Pollux' at the English National Opera. The opera is seldom performed in the UK but is considered one of the jewels of the French baroque opera. It has ravishingly beautiful melodies and some very beautiful dances, which is typical of Rameau's work, but also of the French operatic style as a whole.
Based on Greek mythology of the two brothers, one mortal and the other immortal, it deals with death and loss and indeed with loss of love also. The programme notes stated that there are numerous references in the opera to departure and farewells. This is indeed true and there is a deep sense of melancholia throughout the work. I think it was a very suitable work for World Aids Day - a day when I remember many I knew who died as a result of AIDS, or who still live physically or psychologically damaged by its effects.
The aria 'Tristes apprets, pales flambeaux' is probably the most beautiful in the opera and is funeral song deeply infused with that sense of darkness and despair which accompanies the death of a loved one. It is one of Rameau's most beautiful songs. I include it here. At this dark time of the year, this dark music reminds us that many continue to die from this terrible illness and that the world must continue to ensure that all people receive treatment, as well as remembering the many whom we have lost to it.
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