PRESS FILE OPERA
MACBETH UNDERWORLD PASCAL DUSAPIN
Conductor ALAIN ALTINOGLU Director THOMAS JOLLY
Opera with a libretto in eight chapters by Frédéric Boyer based on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth
WORLD CREATION COMMISSIONED BY LA MONNAIE & OPÉRA-COMIQUE
LA MONNAIE / DE MUNT
INTRO “The story of those two continues to haunt our own time.” Pascal Dusapin When he created his terrifying Penthesilea at La Monnaie in 2015, the French composer Pascal Dusapin was already thinking about the next opera. With a dilemma: should he continue in a dark vein or distance himself from it in favour of a lighter work? His artistic instinct directed him to the first solution and the most dangerous recesses of the human soul, towards the worst, inevitably, towards Macbeth.
WORK The shortest tragedy of William Shakespeare, this play published in the Folio of 1623 remains to this day one of the greatest successes of the English playwright. Macbeth, a brave and loyal general, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that he will one day be King of Scotland. Blinded by ambition and encouraged by his wife, he murders King Duncan and takes his place on the throne. Once a sovereign, his guilt and paranoia make him commit many atrocities. This tyranny causes a civil war and Macbeth and Lady Macbeth sink into madness and death. Performed practically without interruption since its creation, the play has also been the subject of many film and musical adaptations. Be it through the productions of Glen Byam Shaw in 1955 with Laurence Olivier and of Trevor Nunn, and with Ian Mckellen and Judi Dench in 1976; films by Orson Welles (1948), Roman Polanski (1971) and Justin Kurzel ( 2015); the symphonic poem by Richard Strauss and Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, Macbeth has established himself as an unavoidable, essential cultural figure. With his two protagonists and an effective narrative, Shakespeare explores one of his favourite themes: the moral conflict within the highest levels of power. As in Richard III, he enriches his anti-heroes by lending them a conscience, ambiguity and paradoxes in order to place them at the heart of an uninterrupted cycle of violence where terror and ambition inevitably lead to their own destruction. It is also a political tragedy about the perils of a monarchy in the wrong hands, cleverly expressing some of the anxieties of Elizabethan society on the succession problems of the time. The interpretation desired by Dusapin is both a question and a metaphor of reality. The composer focuses more particularly on the supernatural dimension of the piece, crystallized by the image of the “weird sisters”, these three enigmatic witches who influence Macbeth’s destiny. The accursed couple is plunged into a world of confusion, blood and fear. The libretto is written by Frédéric Boyer, a French writer and translator familiar with the great classics of literature in general and the Shakespearian canon in particular. Written in close collaboration with Pascal Dusapin, the drama, interpreted in English, unfolds around the couple and their obsessions. It is a dark fairy where hovers the theme of the lost child, inherited from the play. Under the impulse of Dusapin, Boyer takes the essential elements of Shakespearean language that he arranges in a series of refrains and sentences to constitute the alphabet of the opera. This text, at once a poem and an exegesis of the original Macbeth, becomes a love story with protagonists haunted by their own savagery. The Underworld of the title represents the idea of a nightmare in which the past invades the present, a parallel world, strange and terrible also in the centre of the staging.
ARTISTIC TEAM Thanks to this new world premiere commissioned by La Monnaie and the Opéra-Comique in Paris, Pascal Dusapin further consolidates his affinity with our Theater. This is a collaboration that dates back to 1992
and the creation of Medeamaterial, the first opera of the composer, revived in 2010 in a concert version with a choreography by Sasha Waltz. In 2013, O Mensch! was also created in Belgium by La Monnaie, as well as Passion, and, in 2015, Penthesilea. A Pupil of Iannis Xenakis, Pascal Dusapin won in 1977 le Prix de la Fondation de la Vocation and in 1981 that of the Villa Medici, where he stayed for two years. In 1986, supported by Rolf Lieberman, he wrote his first opera, after Romeo et Juliette, combining since then his literary passion with his operatic works. Since 2007, he holds the Artistic Chair at the Collège de France. Pascal Dusapin’s Perelà uomo di fumo was one of the first operas directed by Alain Altinoglu at the beginning of his career as a conductor. With this experience with the complex writing of his compatriot, our musical director will lead the La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra and women’s chorus, prepared by Martino Faggiani and Alberto Moro. After a long research work, the staging of the opera was entrusted to Thomas Jolly, a French comedian and director who will be debuting at La Monnaie. Well versed in Shakespeare’s works, Jolly is particularly comfortable with strange or macabre universes. Involved in the performing arts since his youth, he has recently established himself as an essential figure of French theatre with the staging of Richard III and the complete trilogy of Shakespeare’s Henry VI. In 2014, he became associate artist at the Théâtre National de Bretagne, in Rennes. He directed his first opera, Eliogabalo (Cavalli) in 2016 at the Paris Opera, and in 2017, he directed Fantasio (Offenbach) at the Opéra-Comique. After his unforgettable performances at La Monnaie in Jakob Lenz, Il prigioniero & Das Gehege, and this season in Die Zauberflöte, and after having already performed Achilles in Pascal Dusapin’s Penthesilea, as well as Lui in Passion and the baritone part in O Mensch!, we will find Georg Nigl in the title role of Dusapin’s new opera. In 2019, the Austrian baritone sang, among others, Peter for the world premiere of Violetter Schnee (Beat Furrer), Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro, Mozart) and Don Alfonso (Così fan tutte, Mozart). The score moves away from the usual characterization of Lady Macbeth to make it almost Monteverdian, a complex role assumed by Magdalena Kožená and, for two performances, by Sophie Marilley. . The Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená became known in the 2000’s with a very eclectic repertoire ranging from Monteverdi to Janáček, through bel canto and verism. During the 2018-2019 season alone, she sang Phèdre in Hippolyte et Aricie (Rameau), Das Lied von der Erde (Mahler) and St John Passion BWV 245 (Bach). After a first recital at La Monnaie, a duet with Dorothea Röschmann in 2008, she will make her lyrical debut in our Theatre with this production. For her part, Swiss mezzo-soprano Sophie Marilley is no stranger to the public of La Monnaie where she has already sung Le Prince Charmant in our production of Cendrillon (Massenet), directed by Laurent Pelly in 2011. Three young singers will make their debut at La Monnaie to perform the Weird Sisters: the Norwegian soprano Ekaterina Lekhina, the Russian-Norwegian mezzo-soprano Lilly Jørstad and the German mezzosoprano Christel Loetzsch. Ekaterina Lekhina is a regular guest at the Bolshoi in Moscow where she sang major roles such as Gilda (Rigoletto,Verdi), La sonnambula (Donizetti) and the Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte, Mozart). This summer, she will be singing Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos (Richard Strauss) at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. She was Clémence in Kent Nagano’s 2011 Grammy Award winning album of de L’amour de loin by Kajia Saariaho. Lilly Jørstad recently made her debut at the Staatsoper in Stuttgart as Angelina in La Cenerentola (Rossini), a role she also performed in La Scala, as well as at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia. She has also sang the title role of Tancredi (Rossini) at the Teatro Pertuzzelli in 2018. Despite her young age, Christel Loetzsch has already a very diversified repertoire: Maddalena (Rigoletto, Verdi), Ljubow (Mazeppa, Tchaikovsky), Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro, Mozart), le Sphinx and Merope (Œdipe, Enescu). In April 2019, she interpreted Fricka in Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold. The Islandic bass Kristinn Sigmundsson will play (Banquo’s) Ghost. A professional opera singer since 1992,
he is best known for his performances of Sarastro and Commendatore in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Don Giovanni. At La Monnaie, he was La Roche in Capriccio (Strauss) in 2016. At 77, Graham Clark is not slowing down. He made his debut at La Monnaie in 2000 in Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair and came back in 2018 for From the House of the Dead by the same composer. He will now return to our theatre to perform the enigmatic role of Porter. Particularly associated with the works of Richard Wagner, the English tenor has notably interpreted Loge and Mime in Der Ring des Nibelungen more than 275 times. At the opposite end of the age spectrum, we will rely on Elyne Maillard and Naomi Tapiola, both members of our Children & Youth Chorus, to sing the role the Child. Finally, the French guitarist, composer and conductor Christian Rivet, a specialist in ancient instruments, will appear on stage to perform the solos of archlute, a European plucked string instrument conceived in the 1600’s. Bruno de Lavenère, a French scenographer whose artistic experience extends from theatre to opera to dance, will create the sets of Macbeth Underworld. Sylvette Dequest, a frequent collaborator of Thomas Jolly since 2011 and his staging of Henry VI and Richard III, will create the costumes. Antoine Travert, who was first an apprentice technician at the Brèche of Cherbourg before specializing in new technologies of light, will design the lighting, a function he has already performed with Thomas Jolly, notably for Piscine (pas d’eau), Eliogabalo and Fantasio. With this production, Bruno de Lavenère, Sylvette Dequest and Antoine Travert will all make their debuts at La Monnaie.
CAST Conductor Alain Altinoglu Director Thomas Jolly Set design Bruno De Lavenère Costumes Sylvette Dequest Lighting Antoine Travert Dramaturgy Katja Krüger Staging collaborator Alexandre Dain Lady Macbeth Magdalena Kozena / Sophie Marilley Macbeth Georg Nigl Three Weird Sisters Ekaterina Lekhina, Lilly Jorstad, Christel Loetzsch Ghost Kristinn Sigmundsson Porter / Hecate Graham Clark Child Elyne Maillard / Naomi Tapiola Archiluth Christian Rivet LA MONNAIE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
GENERAL INFORMATION PERFORMANCES
Opening night: 20 september 2019 20:00 24 & 26 september 2019 20:00 22 & 29 september 2019 15:00 01, 03 & 05 october 2019 20:00
LA MONNAIE
PRODUCTION De Munt / La Monnaie, Opéra-Comique (Paris), Opéra de Rouen Normandie
In coproduction with Shelter Prod and Prospero MM Productions With the support of taxshelter.be and ING With the support of the tax shelter of the Belgian federal government INFO & TICKETS + 32 2 229 12 11 - - MM Tickets, Entrance Hall of the theatre, entrance Rue des Princes, 1000 Brussels - www.lamonnaie.be - tickets@lamonnaie.be PRICES From € 10 to € 159 -30 years: € 10 / € 20 / € 50 -15 years € 10 / € 25 INTRODUCTION Half an hour prior to the performance, in Dutch and French. ENCOUNTER On the 19 september, one day before the opening night of Macbeth Underworld, the new opera’s four main creators will be meeting for a public encounter: comoiser Pascal Dusapin, librettist Frédéric Boyer, director Thomas Jolly and conductor Alain Altinoglu. STREAMING On www.lamonnaie.be This production will be accessible on our website from 17 October till 27 November 2019 in full version and free of charge. MM Channel, the audiovisual project of La Monnaie is supported by our Patrons. RADIO Musiq’3 and Klara WEBSITE Twitter – Facebook – Streaming – Online tickets
CONTACT AND PRESS WEBISTE
Camille Philippot Press Officer +32 2 210 84 65 c.philippot@lamonnaie.be Lise Vanparijs Press Assistant +32 (0)2 229 12 95 l.vanparijs@lamonnaie.be
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