Glories of the French Baroque opened with the lively overture to Jean-Philippe Rameau’s penultimate opera Les Paladins, first performed in 1760, dispatched with vigour by students of the Australian National Academy of Music led by Benjamin Bayl at the harpsichord. Playing on modern instruments, with violinist Shaun Lee-Chen in the concertmaster’s chair, the students brought charming life to the lilting inégale of the opera’s Air gay Loure and robust panache to the drums, tambourines and trilling flutes of the Air trés gay.

Dance music formed a significant part of Rameau’s opéra-ballets, and in this concert his dances proved an apt device for framing the arias, performed by American soprano Brenda Rae, making her Australian debut.

^{Soprano Brenda Rae. Photo © Kristin Hoebermann}

Rae is a soprano in demand. She sang the title role in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor with Santa Fe Opera earlier in the year and kicked off her 2017/2018 season with a Queen of the Night for Bayerische Staatsoper on tour in Japan, and she’ll return to the company in November to sing the title role in Barrie Kosky’s production of Die Schweigsame Frau.

Hearing her in the Melbourne Recital Centre...