Les Fêtes Vénitiennes at Peter Jay Sharp Building

Celebrated conductor William Christie and his acclaimed early-music ensemble Les Arts Florissants explore the hedonistic side of the French Baroque with the rarely staged opéra-ballet Les Fêtes Vénitiennes, by André Campra (1660-1744), famed successor to composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. Gamblers, carnies, gypsies, and jilted lovers—baring lots of leg via scanty updates on period dress—populate a series of stories in this crimson-hued carnival of courtly music, dance from Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, and Venetian decadence, originally conceived in the anti-authoritarian ferment surrounding the Sun King Louis XIV’s final days. Play-within-a-play plot devices, melodies borrowed from Lully’s opera Atys, gliding gondolas, and dancing sheep round out Campra’s whimsical nod to French libertinism.