Le Soulier de satin

The drama is divided into four parts, entitled “days” in the style of Spanish theatre. The action unfolds during the period of the Great Discoveries, when Spain is at the helm of an empire over which the sun never sets and the world is testing its contours.

THE FIRST DAY

The play opens with the last prayer of a Jesuit friar for his young brother Rodrigue: may the love and desire of a woman finally break down the walls of this proud heart and open it to infinity. Following a shipwreck, the young Don Rodrigue de Manacor was cast on the African coast; the first face he saw upon opening his eyes was that of Doña Prouhèze, the wife of Don Pélage, Governor General of the “presidios”. An overwhelming passion was born between the two young people. Unable to resist the call of Rodrigue’s voice any longer, Doña Prouhèze took advantage of a trip to Spain to send Rodrigue a message giving him a rendezvous in an inn by the sea in Catalonia. Before leaving, Don Pélage has to marry off six young orphan girls from his family, including the young Musique, with whom his friend, the faithful Don Balthazar, is secretly in love. Pélage entrusts Balthazar with the task of accompanying Prouhèze to Catalonia, where he will join her to return to Africa. At the same time, Don Camille, a cousin of Don Pelage, an unscrupulous adventurer, urges the young woman to leave with him for Mogador, on the African coast, where he is to rejoin his command. Despite the refusal he receives, Camille arranges to meet Prouhèze there. Upon the advice of his chancellor, the King of Spain decides to appoint Don Rodrigue Viceroy of his Latin-American empire. He sends his messengers to seek him out. Before leaving her husband’s house, Prouhèze warns Balthazar that she is going to attempt to flee to join Rodrigue and asks him to prevent her. She prays to the Virgin of the Seven Sorrows to help her not to dishonour her husband and offers her satin slipper to her, so that if she rushes towards evil she can only limp. But the lovers’ rendezvous does not take place because, in the night, Rodrigue, believing himself to be defending a procession of St James, is wounded by false pilgrims who have come to kidnap the mistress of one of them, Doña Isabel. Rodrigue is carried off dying to his mother, Doña Honoria. To avoid being married against her will, Doña Musique has run away with a Neapolitan sergeant who has promised her the love of the Viceroy of Naples. In secret, she meets up with her cousin Prouhèze and tells her of her plans. Overwhelmed by Prouhèze’s passion and in despair at the impossibility of marrying Musique, Don Balthazar lets the two young women escape so that each may join the man she loves. In order not to dishonour his friend Pélage, he allows himself to be killed by pretending to defend the inn where the two women met. A guardian angel takes over from Don Balthazar to watch over Prouhèze and accompany her.

THE SECOND DAY
Prouhèze has reached Doña Honoria’s castle, where Rodrigue lies between life and death. However, she forbids herself from entering the wounded man’s room. Don Pélage soon arrives. He reminds the young woman of the sacred commitment she has made - «it is not love that makes a marriage, but consent» - and offers her «instead of a temptation, a greater temptation»: Africa, which she loves so much, the command of the citadel of Mogador where Don Camille is suspected of playing a double game. Doña Prouhèze leaves without seeing Rodrigue again. The latter, barely recovered, sets sail in the wake of the young woman’s boat. The King of Spain has asked him to carry a letter to the new Commander of Mogador before he takes up his post in the Americas... Saint James appears. Above the ocean, his constellation “illuminates the night of those separated by the abyss”. He consoles the two lovers “who are both fleeing and pursuing each other”. At sea, Prouhèze has given the order to fire on Rodrigue’s ship in order to prevent him from pursuing her. Off the coast of Mogador, on his dismasted ship, Rodrigue confides his incomprehension to the Captain, and allows jealousy and bitterness to invade him: is Prouhèze, observing him from the ramparts of the fortress, not offering herself to Camille? When he finally reaches Mogador, Rodrigue is not received by Prouhèze. Camille takes it upon himself with scathing irony to give Rodrigue her reply to the royal letter, which she has not even opened: «I am staying, go away». In the moonlight, the double Shadow appears, printed on a wall during an embrace between Rodrigue and Prouhèze: it launches its indictment against this man and this woman who have provoked its existence, only to sever it. In the sky, the Moon contemplates Rodrigue and Prouhèze as they sleep in the pain of their separation, one in Mogador, the other on his boat on the way to America. She can hear the thirst for the absolute that runs through their unfulfilled desire. In contrast to her relative’s tortuous journey, Doña Musique has miraculously found the Viceroy of Naples. An unbridled love ensues between them.

THE THIRD DAY
While the Amazon is being invaded by the conquistadors, people are being tortured in Mogador, and religious wars are raging in Europe, Doña Musique is in the church of St Nicholas in Prague, where she has accompanied her husband, the Viceroy of Naples. Pregnant with the future John of Austria and surrounded by four saints, she prays. She hears the pain around her, whilst feeling in her womb the new life that is being prepared. She is filled with the hope promised by the meaning and harmony to be born of the chaos and suffering shaking today’s peoples. Rodrigue, now Viceroy of the West Indies, leads a bitter life in his rundown palace, surrounded by a court without pomp or gaiety. He concentrates all his activity on the construction of a passage through Panama that will allow ships to cross from one ocean to the other. Doña Isabel, who has become his mistress, plots to get rid of this lover who does not love her and to transfer his power to her husband Don Ramire. Prouhèze, for her part, now the widow of Pélage, has married Camille in order to retain power over Mogador. In the throes of a day of excessive suffering, she wrote to Rodrigue asking him to come and rescue her. This «letter to Rodrigue» became a legend on the seas between the old and the new world. Bringing misfortune to all those who touch it, it will take ten years, passing from one continent to another, before reaching its intended recipient. This is the letter that Doña Isabel will use as a weapon to be rid of Rodrigue, for as soon as he receives it, Rodrigue leaves for Mogador to free Prouhèze. In the meantime, Prouhèze has been visited by her guardian angel in her sleep. He explains the meaning of this impossible love. «Even sin, sin also serves»: this love has made the proud Rodrigue feel the need for the other, deep down in his flesh. The Angel proposes to Prouhèze to prolong this love by making her a star... apart, yet guiding, to guide Rodrigue towards eternal light and love. To do this, she must ask Rodrigue to consent to her death. In turn, Camille, in the midst of a spiritual crisis, pushes Prouhèze to the brink and asks her for an additional sacrifice: she must also renounce Rodrigue beyond death. This, he says, is the condition for saving his own soul. When Prouhèze boards Rodrigue’s caravel below the fortress of Mogador, it is not to leave with him but to entrust him with Marie des Sept-Épées, the daughter she had with Camille. As for her, after a great love duet in which she tries to make Rodrigue feel the joy towards which she hopes to lead him, beyond absence and death, she returns to land where all is ready for the citadel to explode.

THE FOURTH DAY
The entire fourth “day” of Le Soulier de satin takes place at sea, off the Balearic Islands. Ten years have passed since Prouhèze died in Mogador. The opera focuses on the story of Sept-Épées, the child Prouhèze had with Camille and whom she entrusted to Rodrigue before she died. Rodrigue is an old man who lost a leg fighting the Japanese in the Philippines where he was sent in disgrace for abandoning his post in the Americas. He now earns his living by painting «pictures of saints», coloured images highly popular with sailors throughout the Mediterranean. They convey a spirituality, an aesthetic and a political vision that goes against the established canons. Sept-Épées, highly exalted, explains to her faithful friend, La Bouchère, that she wants to attack the fortresses of Barbary to free the Christians in the North African prisons. It is her way of joining her mother. She explains to the Bouchère how she fell in love with John of Austria, son of Doña Musique and the Viceroy of Naples, whom she wants to join in the battle of Lepanto. She is determined to awaken the adventurous spirit of her adoptive conquistador father and convince him to join her. But Rodrigue tries to explain to her that he is not suited to this particular war. He seeks something more absolute: a liberation that leaves man with no other boundary than the sky. A disappointed Sept-Épées swims off to join John of Austria, followed by her faithful Bouchère. Considered to blasphemous provocations, the pictures of saints that Rodrigue spreads across the Mediterranean attract the wrath of the royal authorities. He is arrested. On the boat taking him to the slave market, an old monk receives his confession: still broken with grief after the death of Prouhèze, and although in chains and humiliated, he at last experiences a sense of release. He feels that he is now at one with the sea and the stars. Just as an old gleaner nun agrees to take him away with an armful of old junk, a cannon shot in the distance announces that Sept-Épées has reached the boat of the one she loves. The worst is not always certain.