After a successful start of the new season with the UK premiere of Weinberg’s The Passenger and a new production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, English National Opera will stage its first ever Rameau opera: Castor and Pollux is regarded as the crowning achievement of French Baroque opera, a work of ethereal beauty, rich in affecting airs, elegant dances and powerful choruses, with a plot that sweeps spectacularly from ancient Sparta down to the gates of Hell and up to the starry vault of Heaven.

Castor and Pollux was first performed in 1737 while the controversy ignited by Rameau's first opera Hippolyte et Aricie was still raging. Conservative critics held the works of the "father of French opera", Jean-Baptiste Lully, to be unsurpassable. They saw Rameau's radical musical innovations as an attack on all they held dear and a war of words broke out between these Lullistes and the supporters of the new composer, the so-called Rameauneurs (or Ramistes).

This new co-production with the Komische Oper Berlin is the London opera directing debut of the innovative Australian-born Barrie Kosky. Conducting is period specialist Christian Curnyn, whose previous ENO credits include Partenope and After Dido. Allan Clayton and Roderick Williams star as the legendary twins whose mutual devotion is so strong that each is willing to die in place of the other. The production opens on 24 October [http://www.eno.org/see-whats-on/productions/production-page.php?&itemid=1659

Opus Arte offers five of Rameau’s masterpieces in its catalogue including Castor et Pollux from De Nederlandse Opera. Les Boréades  was Rameau’s last opera – also a tragédie en musique like Castor et Pollux, yet never performed in his lifetime. Les Indes Galantes is an opera-ballet, basically a dance spectacle with sung element; Les Paladines  a musical comedy and Zoroastre another tragedy with the remarkable innovation that the subject matter is not drawn from the classical mythology of Greece and Rome, as was usual, but from Persian religion. All five operas are also available in a special box set . The DVD Rameau– Inconvertendo presents choral and chamber music pieces by Rameau as well an insightful documentary about the composer’s life.

Christian Curnyn, the conductor of the ENO production, released very well-received interpretations of Handel’s opera Semele and Partenope with the Early Opera Company. Roderick Williams, who will star as Pollux, recorded songs by Butterworth in Naxos’ acclaimed English Song Series . To explore further operas by the French Baroque master why not try recordings of his operas Hippolyte et Aricie or Dardanus with the renowned interpreters of this repertoire, Marc Minkowski’s Les Musiciens du Louvre.