2023-12-10 18:40:30
From July 3 to 23, 2024, Aix-en-Provence will be in lyrical time, as it does every year. Even if, Aix in June, “ completely free event as a gift to the inhabitants of the city and the region », in the words of Pierre Audi, general director of the festival, is already launching the musical summer. With 5 staged operas and 2 in concert version, 2 musical theater productions and 13 concerts and recitals, the 2024 edition will offer a total of 48 curtain raisers over 21 festival days.
That’s it for the numbers. As for the content of the programming, it seems at first glance a bit disappointing, even surprising. Indeed, no opera by Mozart – until now the founding “guest” of the event since its creation in 1948 – other than a single performance of The Clemency of Titus (July 21) in concert version; the return of directors whose latest productions had hardly convinced, like the omnipresent Dmitri Tcherniakov who will offer the two Iphigenia (in Aulide and Tauride) of Gluck in the same (very) long evening, he who signed in 2023 a disastrous That’s what they all do ; a recovery whose necessity does not appear obvious from Pelléas and Mélisande by Claude Debussy entrusted in 2016 to the British Katie Mitchell, despite a renewed vocal cast…
However, a second reading gives hope for beautiful evenings, discoveries and emotions to come. Here are 5 ideas, among others.
► A “creation” by Jean-Philippe Rameau.
Censored for “impiety” shortly before its creation, Samson, composed by Jean-Philippe Rameau to a libretto by Voltaire inspired by the Bible, never saw the light of day. “ But we know that the composer reused the music in various of his later operas », explains the conductor Raphaël Pichon who, in duo with the director Claus Guth, developed “ a recreation and not an illusory reconstitution, thanks to meticulous investigative work in the archives but also by letting (me) be guided by intuition. » Raphaël Pichon, with great eloquence, thus announces a “new” Rameau, “ where the human and tragic depth of the characters, the preponderant place of the choruses and the tight and stripped action of the entertaining episodes should touch the listener. »
► A double entrusted to director Barrie Kosky
Here is another overactive director but, until now, his productions remain rather rare on French stages. However, if Barrie Kosky sometimes crosses the border of “too much”, his dramatic momentum, the beauty of his sets and costumes, the intensity of his direction of actors are the mark of a true artist. The show Songs and Fragments will bring together the Eight songs for a mad king (1969) – in this case George III of England – work by Peter Maxwell Davies and the Kafka-Fragmente (1987) but György Kurtag.
Two magnetic singers are expected there: the baritone Johannes Martin Kränzle and the soprano Anna Prohaska joined by the virtuoso and unclassifiable violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja.
► Ermonela Jaho, bouleversante Butterfly
For the centenary of the birth of Giacomo Puccini, Madame Butterfly will benefit from the musical direction of Daniele Rustioni, a staging by Andrea Breth (author of a rather successful Salomé in 2022) from which we can legitimately hope for strength and poetry, and the emotional incarnation of the soprano Ermonela Jaho, whose young Japanese victim of Western fantasies is one of the signature roles.
The soprano is renowned, admired and loved for the way she gives her all on stage, with a supremely moving theatrical and vocal generosity. And if we wonder about the relevance of programming in Aix a “hit” from the lyrical repertoire which we imagine will be performed time and time again in this anniversary season, why shy away from the pleasure?
► The singular universe by William Kentridge.
Co-produced with the Luma foundation in Arles, The great yes, the great noa new opus by South African visual artist William Kentridge, is inspired by the adventure of the liner which took on board, in 1941 in Marseille, numerous artists and intellectuals (Anna Seghers, Claude Lévi-Strauss, André Breton, etc.) among the passengers fleeing the Vichy France (1).
A play, oratorio and contemporary opera, combining the talent of singers, dancers and actors in the visual setting imagined by William Kentridge, this creation will also feature many languages, from Zulu to English and from French to Swati.
► Monteverdi, the untouched youth of the “father” of opera.
« So that the festival remains dynamic and creative until the last day », Pierre Audi chose to offer during his last week The Return of Ulyssesin his homeland by Claudio Monteverdi. The head of the festival is in charge of the staging while the musical direction of this jewel to the glory of love, fidelity and courage is entrusted to Leonardo Garcia Alarcon, whose Le boussant Coronation of Poppea was one of the best moments of the 2023 edition of the festival.
We can count on the conductor to bring to life, vibrate, with joy and tears – without forgetting some irresistible comic scenes – a score with sensuality tinged with melancholy.
(1) The novelist Adrien Bosc took up the same episode in his work Captain (Stock).
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