2023-07-06 18:39:00
Sometimes, contemplating a flower, a landscape or a jewel, the word “perfect” comes to mind. Everything seems perfectly aligned: shape, color, texture, proportions. Without this supreme harmony taking away its life or its vibration from the admired jewel.
Thus appeared, Wednesday, July 5, Picture a day like this, George Benjamin’s new opera to a libretto by his accomplice Martin Crimp. In the small Jeu de Paume Theater, at the head of some twenty instrumentalists of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the composer revealed his own creation where emotion is readily tinged with humor and truth with phantasmagoria.
Is he a truly happy person?
It all begins with the very simple monologue of a mother in mourning for her child. Her immense grief can however be averted if she manages to meet a truly happy person who will agree to give her a button of her clothing… Under the woman’s words, the orchestra stealthily enters, leaving the “singing free” by voice.
Later, he will also be able to unleash brassy storms, while the quest will stumble on false happiness: that of lovers not really in love, of a craftsman whose talent has been denied, of a hyperactive and egocentric composer (very funny), of a collector so alone in the midst of his masterpieces. Finally, in a fairy garden, the woman thinks she is reaching her goal…
Variety of voice writing
Imaginative and varied in its curves and angles, its whispers and its outpourings, the balance of its phrasing or the sophistication of its volutes, the vocal writing plays on the singularity of timbres and testifies to an invigorating eloquence, served by a flawless platter. Starting with the mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa, a subtle actress with a voluptuous voice, full and yet fine. From lamentation to anger and incomprehension to – perhaps – a form of appeased resignation, she is… perfect.
The scenography, signed Daniel Jeanneteau and Marie-Christine Soma, explores the nuances of black and gray in a tailor-made setting offered to music as well as poetry. Stripped down, sculpted by light, it escapes, becomes vegetated and metamorphoses during the last painting, as we can experience it in our dreams. When reality takes over, nothing seems to have changed. Unless this scintillating freshness which diffuses in the orchestra, as one sees nature being reborn after a beneficial rain, does not open to something else. The harmony of a new day, the possibility of reconciliation?
#Picture #day #miracle #déquilibre