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Bluebeard's Castle/La Voix humaine
Palais Garnier - from 23 November to 12 December 2015
Bluebeard's Castle/La Voix humaine
Béla Bartók / Francis Poulenc
Palais Garnier - from 23 November to 12 December 2015
1h55 no interval
Language : Hungarian / French
About
In few words:
"Beware, beware of my castle, beware of us both, Judith! - Bluebeard's Castle"
"If you did not love me and if you were clever, the telephone would become a terrible weapon that leaves no marks and makes no noise. - La Voix humaine"
Two dialogues which in reality are simply monologues. Because Judith, the sombre shadow-like fourth wife who appears “out of the heart of a star-studded night”, cannot be anything other than the wounded voice of Bluebeard’s subconscious, shut away in the windowless castle which is indissociable from his own psyche. And because She – but who is She and to whom is She speaking? – responds to the silence of the man who, at the other end of a broken telephone line, is perhaps not even there. Almost five decades separate the conception of Bluebeard’s Castle and that of La Voix humaine – even though Jean Cocteau’s stage play – used without adaptation in the libretto – in fact dates from 1930. In between lies half a century of profound soul-searching that saw the creation of Berg’s Wozzeck and then Lulu as well as Schönberg’s Moses und Aron. Nevertheless, the echo of Debussy’s Pelléas & Mélisande and his spoken-language-like prosody can be heard in the utterly different musical idioms of Bartók and Poulenc – the former composer propelled by the founding impetus of still infant Hungarian opera and the latter who, describing his monodrama as a lyric tragedy, traces its ancestry back to Lully. Working together for the first time, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Krzysztof Warlikowski lift “the veil of our eyelashes” to pierce the shadows in which the seventh door closes on a room overflowing with tears of blood.
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Bluebeard's castle
Opera in one act (1918)
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Music
Béla Bartók -
Libretto
Béla Balázs -
Conductor
Esa-Pekka Salonen -
Director
Krzysztof Warlikowski
La Voix humaine
Tragédie lyrique in one act
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Bluebeard's castle
La Voix humaine
Performances
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Gallery
Videos clips
Audio clips
Le Château de Barbe-Bleue / La Voix Humaine - Béla Bartók / Francis Poulenc
Backstage
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Article
The great debuts
© DT / OnP
Article
The great debuts
A fresh look at season 15/16
06’
During
the summer break, we offer our readers a retrospective glaze on Stéphane
Lissner’s first season at the Paris Opera. Singers, stage directors, stage designers…
The season 15/16 hosted the debuts at the Paris Opera of numerous acclaimed
artists. Looking back on a season-manifesto.
And Folly took over the Palais Garnier…
This
production of Platée directed by
Laurent Pelly must be a timeless classic: season after season, it conveys an
ever renewed pleasure. Furthermore, it still succeeds to surprise us and make
us burst into laughter. One must admit that this time, the show could rely on
the presence of Julie Fuchs, soprano of
a rising generation,
who was making her debut at the Paris Opera and enchanted the audience with her
interpretation of La Folie.
And Romeo Castellucci confronted himself with Moses und Aron…
The
inaugural event of this season unquestionably was Arnold Schönberg’s Moses und Aron given for the first time
at the Opera Bastille. Stage director, creator of shows for theatre and opera
that are as many visual shocks, the Italian Romeo Castellucci confronted himself to this biblical tale about
a people’s wandering and the limits of speech. The term “confrontation” isn’t
an overstatement when considered the importance of image in Castellucci’s
aesthetic, importance that is precisely questioned by Schönberg in his opera.
From this dialectical opposition between a major contemporary artist and one of
the 20th century’s most fascinating works emerged a memorable
artistic gesture, an aesthetic manifesto : on the vast stage of the Opera
Bastille, a desert stretched itself out – firstly
white then painted black – until ironing out the chorus, while
Schönberg’s notes resounded relentlessly.
And Barbara Hannigan set fire to La Voix humaine…
And Faust left the Earth for Mars…
For his Paris Opera debut, Latvian stage director Alvis Hermanis took over the myth of Faust and turned it into a very contemporary re-envisioning: basing himself upon the “Mars One” project which intends to colonize the planet Mars, seeing in cosmologist Stephen Hawking the scholar’s rightful heir, he imaged a production where the pact between the scholar and the Devil becomes a one-way ticket to the Red Planet. Under the musical direction of Philippe Jordan, Jonas Kaufmann, Bryan Hymel, Bryn Terfel and Sophie Koch were an outstanding vocal cast.
And Rosina escaped Bartolo’s claws…
And Rigoletto stopped laughing…
Unanimously acclaimed from New York to Salzburg, stage director Claus Guth hadn’t yet had the opportunity to direct a production for the Paris Opera. It now has been done with Rigoletto, for which he offered, as always, a chilling a chirurgical vision turning Gilda, the fool’s daughter, into the object of every fantasy: the opportunity for Olga Peretyatko to make a remarkable debut alongside Quinn Kelsey. A production that will be revived as soon as next season.
And Lear was created in its original version at the Palais Garnier…
Last new operatic production of the season, the representation of Aribert Reimann’s Lear based on Shakespeare for the first time in its original language at the Palais Garnier, was one of the high points of this season. On the occasion, stage director Calixto Bieito offered a breathtaking show, living up to the Shakespearian drama. So as to make us eager to discover his Carmen programmed next season… Remembering Bo Skovhus’ stunning interpretation of this king at death’s door still sends shivers down one’s spine…
This production will be recorded for television.
A coproduction by the Paris Opera, Telmondis and Mezzo with support from the CNC and directed by Stéphane Metge.
Broadcast live on Mezzo on 10 December and on France Musique at a later date.
