2023-07-30 19:30:09
“Picture a Day Like This”, by George Benjamin, directed by Marie-Christine Soma and Daniel Jeanneteau, June 27, 2023. JEAN-LOUIS FERNANDEZ
ARTE.TV – ON DEMAND – OPERA
After having long tried to find “his” librettist, the Briton George Benjamin (born in 1960) ended up meeting a chosen partner in his compatriot the playwright Martin Crimp (born in 1956). Together, they signed four lyrical works: Into the Little Hill (2006), Written on Skin (2012), Lessons in Love and Violence (2018) et Picture a Day Like This (2021-2022), which has just premiered at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
This seven-scene opera, widely acclaimed by critics, is once again a sophisticated yet affordable masterpiece. Martin Crimp’s text practices the art of radiant banality, with very simple, sometimes trivial situations and words. They had also shocked the composer at the start of their collaboration, who did not see how to put “driver”, “limousine”, “refrigerator” to music…
The stories that Crimp offers Benjamin often sound like a familiar tale: Picture a Day Like This, which narrates the initiatory journey of a woman whose child has died, brings forth distant echoes of The Magic Flute (1791), Mozart,expectation (1909), by Schoenberg, or by Love and the life of a woman (1840), Robert Schumann’s lieder cycle, on poems by Chamisso (where a child is born and a husband dies).
Opera tradition
And Crimp is not unaware of the commonplaces (in the noble sense of the term) of the operatic tradition: love scene, scene of hell or fury (the Artisan dependent on drugs), fairy scene (the last one) , and even a character of a composer, as in Richard Strauss – in this case a vain star composer, flanked by an assistant in her pay.
For his part, George Benjamin wrote a score of a very beautiful harmonic and orchestral richness. Its unfathomable complexity – which can be observed on re-listening or by immersing oneself in the score – never obliterates its immediately perceptible beauty. Moreover, it respects the intelligibility of classical prosody.
Without winks or quotes, Picture a Day Like This also evokes certain past works: how not to think of the heartbreaking duet of the Child and the Princess in The Child and the Spells (1925), by Maurice Ravel, on a libretto by Colette, during the last scene, miraculous in sound (and visual, with unreal projections), which mixes the ethereal chant of Zabelle and the desperate song of the Woman?
Added to this contest of successes is a fair staging – except that it abuses the “trick” consisting of mixing the props men with the extras – and a perfectly prepared young cast. With, first of all, the French mezzo Marianne Crebassa, whose close-ups from the camera of François Roussillon accentuate the resemblance of the face to that of Chiara Mastroianni.
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Her vocal colors – loud and dense lows and highs, or subtly lightened – and the suppressed pain she expresses make her unforgettable in this custom-written role.
Picture a Day Like This, opera by George Benjamin (music) and Martin Crimp (libretto), Marie-Christine Soma and Daniel Jeanneteau (stage director), recording by François Roussillon. With Marianne Crebassa, John Brancy, Cameron Shahbazi, Beate Morda, Anna Prohaska, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, conducted by the composer (Fr., 2023, 68 min.) On Arte.tvuntil July 13, 2024.
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