Exiles, a tribute concert to Rosa Luxemburg

Exile is the first lyrical show of a new cycle proposed by the Opera National Orchestra of Montpellier around works by artists and composers who have undergone exile.

Luxembourg Rose Constitutes the common thread of the concert, which covers the First World War to the current conflicts. The revolutionary and pacifist activist is embodied by the actress The chemsseddoha loses. We discover by a voiceover his calls for peace, his love of nature and other writings of Sonia Hossein-Pour which reinvents a contemporary Rosa Luxemburg.

Images and war reports

Berliner Requiem (1928) by Kurt Weill is the main composition. The work with innovative or even creaky textures, inspired by Rosa Luxemburg, is an order from Frankfurt radio for the tenth anniversary of the end of the First World War. By its radio format and its vocation of popular education, this partition has reached a large audience. On poems of Bertolt BrechtThis secular cantata brings together a limited workforce: the tenor Fabien Hyonthe baritone Julian ArsenaultA men’s choir and the orchestra with saxophones, a guitar, a banjo…

The conductor George Jackson direct the musicians and the three soloists including Natalia RudaUkrainian mezzo-soprano who joined Montpellier’s choir in 2023.

For the staging, Mathilda du Tilleul McNicol shows the sensitivity to the nature of Rosa Luxemburg which was passionate about botany, mineralogy and by ornithology. On stage, his prison cage is invaded by plants, crazy herbs. Mathieu Cabanes Intervenes for light, an important dimension of scenography.

Mathilda du Tilleul McNicol is also based on war reports: ” Journalistic work is an integral part of the show which includes productions of Dutch photoreporter and filmmaker Jelle KRINGS. “L‘Ode to a nightingale (1985) from the day before the New Year of Valentin -One of the largest composers in Ukraine, forced to the exodus in 2022 -is a musical crossing of Jelle Krings images, as close as possible to the misfortune of those who have lost everything.

Nostalgia of sounds

Born in 1937, Silvestrov composed the music of the film The time that remains by François Ozon. Very marked by melancholy, it translates the trauma of a change of world where what was in particular in the 20th century disappears forever. His music is characterized by a nostalgia of sounds -often imaginary -, and a vocal lyricism for a rereading of the famous poem of John Keats.

Rumor (1980) of Russian composer Sofia Goubaïdoulina is a meditation on the meaning of existence, vocal writing has a strong mystical dimension. In 1979, this artist was registered on the black list of musicians because her too abstract creations did not correspond to the musical expectations of the Soviet Union. After an internal exile, she flees her country in 1992.

Peace on earth opus 13 (1907) – which means peace on earth – de Schoenberg concludes the concert – The inventor of dodecaphonism fled Nazism as Weill. This is another form of exile for Stravinsky-who did not feel enough recognized in France and who finally chose the United States. His partition Wind instrument symphonies (1920) opens this very rich spectacle, desired by Valérie ChevalierDirector of the Opera Comedy.

Fatma Alilate

Exile

Comedy Opera, Montpellier

Friday, 7 and Saturday 8 February at 8 p.m.

Program

Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971) Wind instrument symphonies

Kurt Weill (1900 – 1950) Berlin Requiem

Valentin New Year (born in 1937) Ode to a nightingale

Sofia Goubaïdoulina (born in 1931) Rumor

Arnold Schoenberg (1874 – 1951) Peace on earth opus 13

Luxembourg Rose (1871-1919), Letters in prison (Alix Guillain translation), collection Les Cahiers de Curiosités, Éditions Marguerite