Season of Love via Rameau and Strauss

Nicolas Joel’s artistic leadership of the Opéra has disappointed those who favor iconoclastic productions, but the audience can be relieved and grateful that for “Hippolyte” he imported Ivan Alexandre’s 2009 staging from the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse rather than subjecting the “tragédie en musique” to the radical, cliché-ridden treatment that marred the English National Opera’s “Castor and Pollux,” the current season’s other major Rameau staging.

In attempting to make a Baroque opera actually look Baroque onstage, Mr. Alexandre succeeds where others have failed. This is risky business. Action supposedly in Baroque style can seem stilted, while period sets run the danger of looking, as one Paris critic put it, like Monty Python cutouts.

The trick here is that arrays of columns and vaulted arches set in perspective, which are hallmarks of Antoine Fontaine’s décor, have a sufficient hint of modernity to keep them from looking dowdy, as do Jean-Daniel Vuillermoz’s elaborately formal costumes. Hervé Gary’s lighting, though uniform in keeping with the period, is carefully calibrated.

Mr. Alexandre’s direction balances stylization and naturalness, though I could have done with more human passion, particularly when, as Aricie is about to take vows as a chaste priestess of the goddess Diana, she and Hippolyte recognize their mutual love, or later when they are reunited after Hippolyte, killed by a sea monster, is restored to life.

Passion is at the heart of the opera. Because Racine’s “Phèdre” was one of the libretto’s sources, the Athenian king Tésée (Theseus) and his wife Phèdre (Phaedra) — who is consumed by a mad love for her stepson Hippolyte — are as important to the plot as the young lovers.

The drama builds slowly, in part because the allegorical prologue is rightly included, but it takes hold surely when Tésée discovers Hippolyte and Phèdra in an apparently compromising position. A transfixing moment follows when Tésée, reduced to despair, is jarred by lighthearted music (rescored here to include flutes) that begins a celebration of his return home.

This moment typifies the astute interplay between action scenes and the obligatory divertissements; within the latter are Rameau’s captivating dances, here elegantly choreographed by Natalie van Parys. Emmanuelle Haïm leads her period-instrument ensemble Concert d’Astrée in an exquisite, smartly paced performance, though she might have brought greater emphasis to the harmonic innovations that startled initial audiences.

The tenor Topi Lehtipuu sounds a little edgy as Hippolyte, but the soprano Anne-Catherine Gillet is a lovely, unpretentious Aricie who sings with generous tone. The splendid mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, in excellent form, makes a sympathetic character of Phèdre, whose fatal infatuation with Hippolyte is as repellent to her as it is to everyone else.

The baritone Stéphane Degout gives a masterful performance as Tésée, ably projecting the inner turmoil that leads the king to take rash action against his innocent son. Some of the most elaborate solo numbers occur in the divertissements; here Aurélia Legay and Jaël Azzaretti, who is also charming as Amour, make arresting contributions.