I've been waiting since his `Platee,' and tonight, Nicholas McGegan came through in Berkeley with a major fix for a bad case of Rameau craving. The Philharmonia Baroque gave a crackerjack of a performance of the orchestral suite from `Les Boreades,' a unique, absolutely wonderful work. Fourteen movements in the 43-minute suite gave only a rough idea of the opera, but everything in it was first-class, making the mystery of the work even greater. Although `Les Boreades' was rehearsed in Verailles in 1763, to be given at the royal court, it was not performed, and then pretty much disappeared, until its first stage performance in *1982*. (McGegan is generously suggesting in the program notes John Eliot Gardiner's Erato recording for the whole opera.) `Abaris, ou Les Boreades' is a complicated story about gods and nymphs and the like, but the music is exciting, enchanting, peculiar: while it holds its own against Gluck or Handel, it also provides glimpses into the future, more than a century ahead. Some of the music has the intriguing ambiguity of Berlioz, even of Wagner. The `Boreades' Ouverture has Handel's stately sweep, but -- unlike the generic `festive music' of the HWV 333 and 334 Concerto a due cori on the first half of the program, played fabulously by the woodwinds and brass -- there is vigor, individuality, strength in Rameau that seems downright strange in the mid-18th century. A couple of enchanting Gavottes, lyrical Airs, and a closing Contredanse that puts even the most riotous Last Night at the Proms to shame -- just some of the riches of this score. McGegan and the Philharmonia have long fused gloriously and tonight's performance was just one in a series of truly great concerts. What's new and welcome is the audience response. Philharmonia Baroque concerts are now selling over 100 percent, with chairs added in the back. Berkeley police must have been jumpy over the noise pollution from the shouted ovation that greeted the Rameau. Flicka has done `Dardanus'; how about a good mezzo part in `Boreades'? Janos Gereben/SF [log in to unmask]