“You have to get rid” the rose knight “of wigs and powder! »» | EUROtoday

QUI will see The Rose Knight -1911 opera, which has a very long time lacking, that of Empress Marie-Thérèse-must put together to really feel acute melancholy that goes hand in hand with the sensation of the tip of a world …

Logic, due to this fact, that Michel Franck-the director of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées since 2010 who’s making ready to go away his submit to provide strategy to Baptiste Charroing-has chosen, to shut his 15 years of demanding and passionate programming, this work, one of the well-known moments of which issues the passage of time,-“Time is a strange thing […] Sometimes I hear it sink – irresistible, unstoppable. Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and I stop all the clocks, all, ”sings the marshal.

“It was one of many first operas that I noticed at 18, on the Paris Opera,” says Michel Franck, with Christa Ludwig who marked me a lot. It is a sublime work. And then I found that, symbolically, when giving way to my younger successor, as the marshal does in history by yielding Octavian to another, it was a nice wink. I turned to Krzysztof Warlikowski, because it is an exciting director, who thinks the works related to our time. And in The Rose Knightthere is both the question of gender, sexual identity and social hierarchy, themes that could not be more current. »»

“We can think about that the three girls stay girls”

Themes which are indeed at the heart of the impactful reflection of Krzysztof Warlikowski, whose staging is not going – at the risk of upset the spectators most respectful of tradition – in the sense of fantasy XVIII^e suggested by Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s booklet. One of the mysteries of the work is the following: why the tandem formed by the poet-Libretist and Richard Strauss chooses to turn away from the madly modern Vienne from the beginning of the XX^e century to resuscitate a Mozartian world where a young man, Octavian, is sung by a mezzo-soprano (exactly like the cherub of Figaro wedding))?

“It is a surprising writing, judges the director. On the one hand, it seems regressive. Why, at the beginning of the XX^e century, turn to the XVIII^e ? But very quickly, we realize that it serves something, because Von Hofmannsthal was an extremely sophisticated self -employed, who reached summits in his work for Richard Strauss. So, is it to hide modernity all the greater as it goes through the 18th century^e ? Undoubtedly, because this trio of lovers – the marshal, Octavian and the young Sophie -, composed only of women’s voice is very modern at the bottom, very disturbing. One can imagine that the three women remain women, without travesty. »»

When Richard Strauss meets Annie Ernaux

Unexpectedly, it is the reading of Annie Ernaux in general and her story THE Young man (Gallimard, 2022) who counted in the vision deployed by the Polish director, awarded in 2021 by a golden lion for the whole of his career. The Nobel Prize tells its affair there with a 30 -year -old penniless student, echoing the affair between La Maréchale, a married woman belonging to high society, and the very young Octavian.

“I do not assume a director as we speak can cover behind this 18th century masks^eexplains Krzysztof Warlikowski. But if we make the hyperlink with this very trendy little story of Annie Ernaux, in her simplicity, we discover this energy to see the love of an growing old girl and somebody youthful, the cruelty of what’s taking place between them ”.

The marshal – which the director solely calls Marschallin, in German within the textual content – is the one who “opens and closes the opera, we start with her, we close with her, she gives all the depth”. Here she is camped for the primary time by Véronique folks, a powerful Mozartian singer seen this winter in Carmelite dialogues. “She is the ideal interpreter in terms of maturity, she has the desire to rub shoulders with the tragic as a singer and as a woman,” enthuses Krzysztof Warlikowski. Her octavian is the younger Niahm O’Sullivan and Sophie von Faninal – the lady who might be definitely worth the marshal to be deserted – regulated Mühlemann.

This character of Sophie, Krzysztof Warlikowski gives an authentic imaginative and prescient: “I see it as a result of a Jewish family perhaps freshly converted, but in any case treated very differently by the company of the time,” he explains. She fights for her place, she fights for her happiness. She is conscious of what society expects from her, and she or he doesn’t agree, she is nearly an activist. »»

To uncover



The kangaroo of the day

Answer

This sharp look could be very removed from the standard staging of the Knight Where Warlikowski detects a remanence of “Nazi taste” which he goes again to the productions led by Herbert von Karajan. “You have to get rid of this opera of wigs, powder, folklore and the little black boy at the end which appears on stage as a gimmick, it must belong to the past,” he pleads. Way of claiming that regardless of its outdated picture, the opera can – and should – reside within the current.

“The Rose Knight”by Richard Strauss, booklet by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Direction: Krzysztof Warlikowski. Musical path: Henrik Nánási. National Orchestra of France. With Véronique folks, Niahm O’Sullivan, Regula Mühlemann, Peter Rose. Until June 5. www.theatrechampselysees.fr