ode to fanaticism

0.0006961

Faithful to its Catholic tradition, French music of the 20th century has been very much given to the sacred and to hagiography, always from the sieve of the most symbolist language. Precisely the main cultivator of this aesthetic, Claude Debussy, was one of the first to attract attention, to the point of creating a monumental scandal in France, putting music in 1911 to the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian as Gabriele d’Annunzio had conceived it. in his homonymous literary work and with Ida Rubinstein as the protagonist of the scene.

Already at the gates of the Second World War, in 1938, and also at the request of the dancer of Ukrainian origin, the French poet Paul Claudel (a fervent Catholic) and the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger (a prominent member of Les Six and a convinced Protestant) join their respective aesthetic forces to illustrate the last moments of Joan of Arc, a true symbol and national reference in France, who had been canonized in 1920.

Just as the choir of Hebrew slaves of the Nabucco verdiano became in 1843 an expression of the nationalism of the Italian people against the Austrian domination, the striking genre typology musician-theatrical that both authors devised, this dramatic oratorio (a hybrid between opera and sacred oratorio) would do the same in the face of the expansionist threat of Nazism, which historically connects with the war scenario in which the life of the Maid of Orleans is framed : the Hundred Years War.

But Jeanne d’Arc au bucher It is not a hagiography to use (nor was it 93 years ago the opera, daughter of its time, by Giuseppe Verdi, the supernatural and romantic Giovanna d’Arco), but rather a whole spoken and sung succession of juxtaposed theatrical scenes, before and after their execution, as a kind of visions or mystical daydreams that the saint establishes with God, the Virgin Mary and saints Catherine and Margaret.

In this sense, this ethereal and beatific universe is reflected in the staging by Àlex Ollé, a member of La Fura dels Baus, in this co-production of the Teatro Real with the Frankfurt Opera, at the top of the stage, starring all those deities wrapped in golden garments to which Juana longs to aspire at the end of the work. Just below is the populace that judges her unjustly and cunningly, a whole mob of beasts more than humans who accommodate themselves like hooligans in the stands of a stadium to witness the ridiculous pantomime of the trial that Porcus, clad in his religious attire – Bishop Cauchon who condemned the young woman from Domrémy – and Asno organize with the victim tied to the stick on which they will burn her alive in a a kind of auto-da-fe, the moment of greatest musical and scenic impact, due to its impressive and dramatic nature, and which acquires overtones of Greek tragedy, with the death of Juana being especially impressive with the flames projecting onto the pyre made up of stacked chairs and tables.

linked part

In that climate of barbarism and open hostility, Joan of Arc at the stake shares certain similarities and equivalences with another title that has recently been seen on this Madrid stage, the angel of fire of Prokofievwhere the protagonist is harassed at the end of the opera by a crowd that mercilessly condemns her mental disturbances, until she falls into exhaustion.

Honegger’s ‘Joan of Arc at the Stake’. Musical direction, Juanjo Mena. Artistic direction, Alex Ollé. Madrid, Teatro Real, June 2022. © 2022 by Barbara Aumüller.

This is also the case with Joan of Arc in the work of Claudel and Honegger, seeing herself crudely insulted and vilified, and where the fanaticism and intransigence denounced by both authors -and not only religious- is reflected in a mass always present in the scenic proposal of Ollé -one of the trademarks of his theatrical company, the taste for community, the management of mass scenes-, who has brutalized all the men present by making them continually show their virile members under more or less dignified, which provokes the viewer’s immediate repulsion towards what is primary in the group – very familiar to what we could see several years ago here in his Rise and fall of the city mahagonny by Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht- and that achieves absolute identification with the martyrdom suffered by Joan of Arc and the consolation that Father Dominique brings her.

Two characters, mainly the titular one, facing a vis to vis declamatory of a text, Claudel’s, as refined and delicate as it is disturbing and brutal, full of elaborate poetic images rather than theatrical action proper, and that Ollé’s scene manages to shake off its sacramental staticism. Because the work that the Real has very opportunely inserted as a prologue to Joan of Arc at the stake embodies that absence of stage action, so, a prioriit would be impractical to stage it, even less so than his most famous cantata The prodigal sonwith which he won the Prix de Rome.

But here The lady elue, by a young Debussy, presents, with his evanescent orchestral garb of sweetened Wagnerism, that mystical universe that will reappear at the end of Honegger’s dramatic oratorio. Swedish soprano Camilla tilling faces with sensitivity and vocal beauty her part in this scenic contemplation from those celestial heights and those mists that the dark and hypnotic scenographic setting of Alfons Flores destines, only illuminated by the golden dress of that other maiden of the title (the same Juana in the other life, according to Àlex olle), who pronounces with rapture the elegiac and dreamy verses of Dante Gabriel Rossetti set to music by Saint-Germain-en-Laye, pure symbolist poetry of the time, who yearn for God, like Joan of Arc who we will see immediately after descending from that great wooden beam to attend her torment live. A Juana dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, such is the validity and timeliness of the myth.

Honegger’s ‘Joan of Arc at the Stake’. Musical direction, Juanjo Mena. Artistic direction, Alex Ollé. Madrid, Teatro Real, June 2022. © 2022 by Barbara Aumüller.

Because the attraction of the cast, the Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard, specialized like no other in embodying this role in recent years, surrenders to suffering from her indisputable talent as a dramatic actress, being able to instill compassion in a theatrical characterization of the highest carats.

Sébastien adapts excellently to her Dutrieux like Father Dominique, in that memory of the events that are presented to Juana’s eyes. An entire exhibition of French declamation in the mouths of both national actors. Apart from the secondary gallery (among which the histrionics in comical psalmody of the tenor Charles Workam in the skin of Porcus stands out), the omnipresent choral mass sustains the show through the complex sound treatments designed by the Swiss musician in this great and amazing network of polyphony, popular song and humorous jazz aesthetics (where unmistakable echoes of ballet For the by Satie in the scene of the card game), a sensational work obtained by the Intermezzo Choir and the episodic participation of the JORCAM Little Singers.

In this difficult game of balance and sound levels between the spoken word and syllabic chant, sometimes in antiphonal and homophonic songs, sometimes in contrapuntal designs, the baton of Juanjo Mena-which obtains aerial and transparent textures from the orchestra in Debussy’s cantata-, plans the motley organic of the eclectic score of Honeger with attention to the smallest detail, both of the serious and the more prosaic elements. His understanding of these pre- and post-impressionist works have allowed him to experience, to the ecstasy and final sublimation of a tragedy that concludes placidly and harmoniously in a sigh, that sensation of authentic sonorous poetry of choral songs that envelop the most vulgar worldliness and the most devout spirituality of Paul’s text Claudel.