Les Incas Du Perou or, The Incas of Peru

Musica Antica Present Jean-Philippe Rameau's Incas Du Perou alongside extracts from Antonio Vivaldi's Montezuma: two tales of love and death set in the final days of the Inca and Aztec empires.

​Les Incas represents the second act of Rameau's Les Indes Galantes (1735), a four act ballet-opera, with each scene set in an exotic local, namely Peru, the Ottoman Empire, Arabia and North America. Both Les Indes and Vivaldi's Montezuma (1733) are exuberant examples of the growing interest in choosing opera settings beyond those of Greco-Roman history and myth. Like many operas of the period, both works are love stories set loosely around historical figures and events: Vivaldi's Montezuma confects a happier ending for the Spanish Conquest of Mexico than the one we know. In Les Incas - even more fancifully - the Emperor Huascar is killed by a volcano he summoned to punish his beloved for falling for a conquistador!

As ever, a bar selling wine, soft drinks and Holy Trinity's famous home-infused gins will be open from 7pm.

This concert will finish at 9:10pm.