Just suppose that the Sun King, Louis XIV, reappeared in his dancing guise to attend Opera Atelier’s remounting of Actis and Galatea opening tonight at the Elgin Theatre. He might well experience a tinge of pride to see how a contemporary opera company performs George Frideric Handel’s pastoral “serenata”  in the baroque style that the Sun King established.

The Bourbon king (1638 – 1715), himself a more than decent dancer, laid the groundwork for classical ballet mounting 26 ballets de cours in the royal theatre at Versailles. In such ballets, dance, instrumentation, song, spoken dialogue and acting were all given equal weight. As Opera Atelier co-artistic director Marshall Pynkoski, says, “Every aspect of theatre was treated with equal importance. I like to say [baroque ballet] is like a Broadway musical. You will not have a successful show if you have great singing and a great book, but the dancing is horrible…Everything must be firing at the same level to ensure success and that’s precisely what theatre was meant to be in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, and, I would argue, for the most discriminating audience in the history of the western world.”

Small wonder that Pynkoski and co-artistic director Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg are happy to have enticed two young, acclaimed French tenors to make their debuts with the company in the remount of Opera Atelier’s Acis and Galetea. Antonin Rondepierre, singing the role of Acis, began his training in the 17^th-century French baroque repertoire a mere eight years ago, when he began studies at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles. Praised for his musical intelligence and poetic sensibility, Rondepierre has performed in Opera Atelier’s productions at Versailles. For the final show of Opera Atelier’s 2024-25 season, the nimble young tenor will reprise his role of the violent villain Joabel in the company’s production of Marc Antoine Charpentier’s David and Jonathan, scheduled to run from April 9 to 13 in 2025.

Another rising star of French opera ballet, Blaise Rantoanina, singing for the first time in Canada, performs the role of the shepherd Damon, Acis’ close friend. Born in Madagascar, Rantoanina began his vocal studies in his native country and then enrolled in France’s Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), where he earned a master’s degree. He’s known for roles such as Belmonte in Die Entführung aus dem Serail with the Clermont-Ferrand Opera and, last season was cast as Joe in George Gershwin’s Blue Monday, with the Picardy Orchestra in France. Rantoanina is lined up for a role in a in a yet-to-be-announced Opera Atelier production in 2026.

“These two young men bring tremendous finesse musically to this production,” says Pynkoski. He and Zingg have worked with both of them in Versailles.

Rounding out the cast of four in Acis and Galatea is longtime Opera Atelier performer and soprano Meghan Lindsay, who has appeared in more than twelve OA productions, including Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Ilia in Idomeneo, Alcina in Alcina, and Agathe in Der Freischütz. Bass-baritone Douglas Williams, a featured performer wit Opera Atelier since 2017– cast as Figaro in The Marriage of Figaro and as the Don in Don Giovanni — performs as Polyphemus, the monster rival who wants Galatea for himself.

The Opera Atelier artists Eric Cesar de Mello da Silva, Juri Hiraoka, Elizabeth Kalashnikova, Kevin Law, Courtney Lyman, Kealan Mclaughlin, Julia Sedwick, Cynthia Akemi Smithers, Edward Tracz, Dominic Who, Laura Willis, Xi Yi, Jeannette Lajeunesse-Zingg and supernumerary Peter Akiki provide the dancing, while Tafelmusik and the Nathaniel Dett Chorale lend a big sound to complement set and costume designer Gerard Gauci’s immersive and dreamlike set.

Acis and Galatea has a history as Handel’s most popular opera, often considered a starter work for those new to opera. The pastoral masque, as it is sometimes called, is based on a tale from Ovid’s Metamorphoses  about Acis the shepherd and Galatea the nymph who fall in love. Their affair is upset by the jealous monster Polyphemus who wants Galatea for himself. Polyphemus threatens dire consequences for Acis, until Damon comes in with a stone to crush the monster.

“It’s a wonderful story for audiences of all ages. It’s a classic fairy tale,” says Pynkoski, comparable to the experience of an adult reading a fairy story to a child. “I mean Acis is probably the most sensual, the most sexual opera that Handel ever wrote. But there’s nothing there that parents might feel they should shield their children from. For children, it’s a fantasy with crazy people on stage doing crazy, improbable things to beautiful music.”

The excitement in Pynkoski’s voice as he talks about Opera Atelier’s evolution and its productions has not dimmed over the years since Opera Atelier began in 1985. Born of a dream of two classically trained ballet artists, Pynkoski and Zingg, who took to Versailles and Paris to research Louis XIV’s court ballets – they took jobs at Moulin Rouge in Montmartre, “sharing the stage with dolphins and horses” to support their studies – Opera Atelier today is struggling to make up for the vanishing audiences that COVID lockdowns brought. But there’s no shortage between them of imagination, inventiveness or enthusiasm for revitalizing a 17^th- and 18^th-century theatrical form that brings dazzle to the contemporary stage.

Acis and Galatea

By George Frideric Handel

Presented by Opera Atelier at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto

October 24 to 27, 2024

Photo by Bruce Zinger: Opera Atelier artists with soprano Mireille Asselin in a previous presentation of Acis and Galatea.