Gallant Indies

In 2019, eight opera singers and 30 dancers from a wide variety of artistic and demographic backgrounds convened at Paris’s Opéra Bastille to begin work on an ambitious new production of Les Indes galantes. The baroque composition by Jean-Philippe Rameau is a cornerstone of French musical history, but its beautiful melodies come alongside a host of outdated conceptions of “exotic” locations and peoples. Philippe Béziat’s documentary captures the work of this multifaceted troupe under the direction of artist and filmmaker Clément Cogitore; together, they work to deliver Rameau’s opera into the 21st century and the everyday diversity of contemporary France, integrating questions of racism, classism, and colonialism into a radical new staging that both honors and transforms the original text.