2023-11-24 19:15:05
Aurore Bucher, in concert at La Marbrerie, in Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis), October 9, 2023. MATHIOU DE GLENCOE
Written in 1940 by Jean Cocteau for Edith Piaf, The Beautiful Indifferent takes the form of a monologue which echoes the painful questions raised by the absence of the loved one. A real descent into hell for the woman who, returning home after her “singing tour” in a Parisian club, desperately awaits Emile’s return, or at least a sign from him. The telephone then becomes an instrument of torture. Sloth for too long hours, he lends himself to the wildest interpretations of nocturnal silence. Tonic, through a quickly interrupted ringing, it is only disappointed hope, repeatedly.
Read the review: Article reserved for our subscribers “Works”: Jean Cocteau, prolific and plural
Although this one-act play gave rise to several cinematographic adaptations, it was never set to music until the Jean Cocteau Committee issued authorization to Jean-Marie Machado. A CD-book, superbly illustrated with black and white drawings by Laure Slabiak, recreates the show created in 2021 by the Virêvolte ensemble. The dramatic data – a woman seeking relief by telephone – obviously brings to mind The human voice, the masterpiece of Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), composed in 1959 to a text by… Jean Cocteau. But we cannot push the comparison any further.
The music of Jean-Marie Machado (born in 1961) is much more versatile, on an aesthetic level, than that of Poulenc, and, above all, the vocal part, entrusted to Aurore Bucher, the instigator of the project, extraordinarily developed in spheres foreign to each other, from the cabaret “song” of the 1950s to the timeless opera aria. Powerfully (words that rush to the head like rushes of blood) but discreetly (simple, almost ordinary sentences, repeated in an obsessive manner) cut from the original text, Emmanuel Olivier’s libretto is impressively effective.
Instrumental Glitter
As proof, there is no need for the visual dimension to capsize with Aurore Bucher in this Beautiful Indifferent. And this, from the Prologue, provided behind the voice by instrumental snatches of the “frying on the line” type (dissonant chords, scattered notes). A entrance drawn with a chalk line immediately sets the fiery tone of this series of scenes in which the blocks of silence have nothing in common with empty space. The next piece, Champagne, jazz and everything, is a model of assimilation as practiced, for example, by the Belgians Philippe Boesmans and Jean-Luc Fafchamps, whose operas are based on a troubled hybridization of musical languages. Before Lis ton journala song that Michel Legrand of Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) would not have denied, illustrates the talent as a melodist of Jean-Marie Machado.
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