Music Theatre: Theatre of the Mind
La Passion de Simone
Music: Kaija Saariaho
Libretto: Amin Maalouf
Concept and realization: La Chambre aux échos
Musical direction: Clément Mao - Takacs
Stage direction: Aleksi Barrière
Performers:
Karen Vourc’h, solo soprano
Raquel Camarinha, soprano
Magali Paliès, mezzo-soprano
Johan Viau, tenor
Renan Carteaux, actor
Isabelle Seleskovitch, actress
Secession Orchestra:
Julien Vern & Edouard Sabo, flute
Philibert Perrine, oboe
Bertrand Laude, clarinet
Victor Dutot, bassoon/contrabassoon
Alexis Crouzil & Nicolas Josa, horn
Johann Nardeau, trumpet
Romain Durand, trombone
Jehanne Drai, harp
Yoan Héreau, celesta
Aurore Bassez, timpani
Guillaume Le Picard & Thibault Lepri, percussions
Joseph Metral & Élise De-Bendelac, violin
Cécile Marsaudon, viola
Dima Tsypkin, cello
Xavier Serri, double bass
Répétiteur: Yoan Héreau
Scenographer and stage manager: Pauline Squelbut
Lighting designer: Étienne Exbrayat
Costume designer: Liisa Nieminen
Production and administration for La Chambre aux échos: Clémentine Marin
Production by La Chambre aux échos.
Co-production by La Chambre aux échos, Music Centre Slovakia, CODES Festival, Festival de Saint-Denis, with the support of ADAMI and SPEDIDAM.
The artistic team wishes to thank all its partners for their long-lasting support, and especially Kaija Saariaho, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Oscar Zepeda-Arias (OZ Management), James Rushton and Gill Graham (Chester Music), Francis Auboyneau (Secession Orchestra) and Arcal (rehearsal space) for making this project possible.
Music theatre, theatre of the mind
La Passion de Simone, a “musical path in fifteen stations”, with words by Amin Maalouf and music by Kaija Saariaho, premiered in Vienna in November 2006, in a stage version by Peter Sellars. It was born from a spark ignited six years earlier, when the trio was working on its first collaboration, the now famous opera L’Amour de loin. Without knowing he was quoting one of the composer’s favorite authors, Sellars read texts by Simone Weil to the singers. Upon discovering this extraordinary philosopher/activist and her life, Maalouf, a master in the art of biographical fictions, was immediately drawn to her intensity. They later agreed to pay together an artistic tribute to the life and thought of a woman who consumed herself in trying to live up to her moral standards and hopes for mankind.
The newborn work, however, so original in its form that no better term could be found to name it than “oratorio”, was not an opera in the same way as L’Amour de loin, but still required great vocal and instrumental manpower, and therefore never enjoyed the same success or interest within the institution. This is why we hope this new chamber version Kaija Saariaho so generously crafted for us will give it a new life, more adapted to the means of small companies, theatres and festivals willing to explore its dense and meditative mysteries.
The very fact that La Passion de Simone is not a conventional opera is what makes it so interesting and necessary: rather than putting Simone Weil’s life on stage as drama, the work addresses it from the perspective of our present time, and becomes therefore a collective meditation to which we are all invited to participate, as individuals and as a society; very much like Bach’s Passion-plays inspire a community to contemplate from a contemporary perspective what “binds it together” (the literal meaning of the Latin religare, from which the word religion supposedly originated). Rather than witnessing a patronizing attempt to reconstruct events and situations as in a commercial “biopic”, we have the opportunity to dig in deeper, under the surface, and reflect on the extremely complex and controversial life-choices of an individual who, against all odds, tried to fight ideas bigger than herself and the force of what could be called “History”, in ways that can seem extreme or even at times absurd to us.
All the participants of this exceptional ritual will be gathered on the stage because this new chamber version allows us to avoid hiding the orchestra into a pit. Therefore, all the performers, whether singers, actress or instrumentalists, will share one space to tell together a story that belongs to our shared past. Each interaction this collective retelling is made of will be visible to us, and give birth to an intimate and unknown form of theatre we tried to set in space and pictures. A theatre born from the music, an invisible theatre of the mind, most relevant to explore subtle questions at the core of our society and its memory.
This attempt, based on close collaboration of all partners, emanates from the deep belief that art can play a role in public debate, and that music is, perhaps, the purest and most refined form of theatre.
Aleksi Barrière & Clément Mao – Takacs