Claude (opera)
| Opera dates | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Claude |
| Shape: | Opera in one act |
| Original language: | French |
| Music: | Thierry Escaich |
| Libretto : | Robert Badinter |
| Literary source: | Victor Hugo : Claude Gueux |
| Premiere: | March 27, 2013 |
| Place of premiere: | Opéra National de Lyon |
| Playing time: | approx. 1 ½ hours |
| Place and time of the action: | The prison Clairvaux |
| people | |
|
|
Claude is an opera in one act by Thierry Escaich (music) with a libretto by Robert Badinter based on Victor Hugo's story Claude Gueux. Like the original, the opera is an urgent plea against the death penalty . The world premiere took place on March 27, 2013 in the Opéra National de Lyon .
action
The worker Claude Gueux, impoverished by industrialization, was sentenced to seven years of forced labor for going on the barricades. In prison he has a homosexual relationship with the inmate Albin. The prison director harasses Claude and moves Albin to another quarter. After all pleading remains unsuccessful, the desperate Claude kills the director. He is then sentenced to death by the guillotine.
content
Three men remember the story of the silk weaver Claude Gueux: After wages fell as a result of industrialization, he could no longer support his family. He went to the barricades with his comrades, was arrested and taken to Clairvaux prison . There he has to do seven years of forced labor.
The prisoners in Clairvaux suffer from hard work and the cold and are tormented by the sadistic prison director. Albin, convicted of a theft, is educated, but weak in nature. He is tortured and raped by the other inmates for this. When Claude complains that he never gets enough to eat, Albin shares his bread with him. The two become friends.
The entrepreneur, for whom the prisoners have to toil, complains to the director about the fact that profits have fallen recently. He must encourage people to do more work.
The prison inmates eagerly listen to a song that the guard's twelve-year-old daughter sings outside of the prison. Claude feels this voice, like everything else in this place, as corrupt. He envies the supervisor for being able to see his child, although he has not heard from his family for three months. Being illiterate, he cannot even write to his wife. Albin promises to write the letters in his place. A homosexual relationship develops between the two.
Claude learns from the prison warden and one of his subordinates that his wife has to go on the streets to survive. His daughter would soon follow suit. The director warns Claude and Albin.
The prisoners are driven to work. Claude is assigned extra hard work. Albin is transferred to another quarter. Desperate to break up with his friend, he tries to flee.
Claude begs the director in vain to bring him and Albin back together.
Claude, Albin and the other prisoners suffer deeply from their fate. Claude is starving again, and the director lets him clearly feel his hatred. Nevertheless, Claude tries to hold out. One day when a fellow prisoner asked him how he was feeling, he replied that he was sitting in court over someone and that he was afraid that something might happen to "this good director". The director continues to ignore his requests for Albin to return. Instead, he has Claude thrown into dungeon.
Again the inmates are rounded up to work. The main jailer reports to the director about the increasingly irritable mood since Claude has been in prison. The director has the prisoners cut their rations, although the guard points out that they are already getting too little because of the increased canteen costs.
After ten days of solitary confinement, Claude is released from dungeon. He complains to the other prisoners of the director's cruelty and informs them of his decision to kill him even if it costs him his life. His fellow prisoners support him in this. He should only ask the director one more time for Albin to return. If he refuses, his death is only just.
The next day, Claude goes to the director to express his wish. When he refuses again, he murders him.
At the trial, the attorney points out that Claude was a good husband, father and worker. The inmates call him a "victim of fate". However, the audience thinks he is a criminal and a murderer. Claude himself truthfully explains his motives. He is sentenced to death.
While Claude waits for his execution by the guillotine, he sees a dancer in a vision - according to the Deutschlandfunk review, a "dying ballet swan [who] is pressed down by a maddening crowd, only to get up again and dare to laboriously flap its wings." Commentator reports that Claude was so weak prior to execution that he had to be nursed back to health. Then everything happened very quickly: "Once the machinery of justice was set in motion, who could have stopped it?"
orchestra
The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:
- Woodwind : two flutes , two oboes , two clarinets , two bassoons
- Brass : two horns , two trumpets , two trombones
- Timpani , percussion (two players)
- piano
- accordion
- organ
- harp
- Strings
Work history
The opera Claude was composed in 2013 for the Opéra National de Lyon . The libretto comes from the former French Justice Minister Robert Badinter , who had enforced the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981 and also ended legal discrimination against homosexuals there. It is based on Victor Hugo's 1834 story Claude Gueux (German: From the life and death of the poor man Gueux ) and the court files of the historical case on which Hugo relied. The libretto differs from the original in some respects. The reason for the initial condemnation of Claude here is not a mouth robbery, but his participation in an armed protest against the impoverishment of workers through industrialization. In addition, the real homosexual background is not concealed here. Nevertheless, the stage character Claude also differs from the historical person. Badinter designed him as a "rebel against social injustice in the sense of the heroes of Camus ".
The world premiere took place on March 27, 2013 as part of a festival entitled “Justice / Injustice”. The orchestra, choir and children's choir of the Opéra de Lyon played under the musical direction of Jérémie Rhorer . The production was done by Olivier Py , the decoration and costumes by Pierre-André Weitz , the choreography by Daniel Izzo and the lighting design by Bertrand Killy . The actors were Jean-Sébastien Bou (Claude), Jean-Philippe Lafont (director), Rodrigo Ferreira (Albin), Laurent Alvaro (entrepreneur and chief prison guard), Rémy Mathieu (1st man and 1st prison guard), Philip Sheffield (2nd prison guard). Husband and 2nd prison guard), Loleh Pottier (girl), Anaël Chevallier (echoed voice), Yannick Berne (1st prisoner), Paolo Stupenengo (2nd prisoner), Jean Vendassi (3rd prisoner), David Sanchez Serra (lawyer ), Didier Roussel (prosecutor) and Brian Bruce (president). The dancer Laura Ruiz Tamayo also took part. A recording of the premiere was broadcast on Deutschlandradio Kultur .
The work was received mixed by the critics. While some critics unreservedly praised it, others were disappointed with Escaich's first opera:
The Uraufführungs-reviewer of the opera world was the opera compared to Janáček thematically related Opera House of the Dead less complex. Badinter's text is a “black and white manifesto” in which the “vulnerable victims” are contrasted with the “cold-hearted perpetrators”. The music of the organist Escaich is "colorful, tasty and disturbingly explosive". It sounds "often as if improvised [...] - entirely in the tradition of composing French organists". Some passages seemed to him like a new orchestration of Alban Berg's Wozzeck by Claude Debussy . The orchestral setting occasionally reminded the Opernwelt reviewers of the DVD release of Anton Bruckner , but also of the patterns of minimal music and the art of improvisation .
The reviewer of Deutschlandfunk described the libretto as "concise, finely spiced [...] with sharp individual scenes". The score is "hectically shimmering" and "somewhat structured by fast, semi-solo piano runs and shrill organ interventions". There are “artfully used, 'bad' flutes, dirty fairytale sounds and a two-part choir”.
The reviewer of the Neue Musikzeitung found the opera “surprisingly successful”. The music is "gloomy, expressive, sometimes onomatopoeic and extremely expressive". Because of the “enormously intelligent music”, “no politically pathetic kitsch emerged” from the text. Escaich's compositional technique "weaves, like the Lyon silk weavers once, always on a structure of complex simultaneity that grows from many components and threads". Although it makes high demands on the listener, it "never seems too complex".
The reviewer of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung was unimpressed by the performance. He found the music "purely illustrative, casual and faceless". The changes based on the court files also falsified Hugo's “powerful plea”, although they brought the play closer to reality and the resulting “sharpening” served the theater.
The magazine Gramophone gave the opera a consistently positive rating in the DVD review. The libretto updates and intensifies Hugo's text and clarifies some of what is only hinted at. The music is colorful and captivating. It stands in the tradition of Berg's Wozzeck and Bernd Alois Zimmermann's opera The Soldiers . Also Messiaen and Dutilleux were not far and Escaich have explicitly patterns and textures from Messiaen Turangalîla Symphony adopted.
Recordings
- April 2013 - Jérémie Rhorer (conductor), Olivier Py (staging), Pierre-André Weitz (decoration and costumes), Daniel Izzo (choreography), Bertrand Killy (lighting design), orchestra, choir and children's choir of the Opéra de Lyon .
Jean-Sébastien Bou (Claude), Jean-Philippe Lafont (Director), Rodrigo Ferreira (Albin), Laurent Alvaro (entrepreneur and chief prison guard), Rémy Mathieu (1st man and 1st prison guard), Philip Sheffield (2nd man and 2nd man) . Jailer).
Video of the world premiere production.
Bel Air Classiques BAC118 (DVD).
Web links
- Flyer (PDF) of the Opéra National de Lyon
- Work information on the composer's website
- Joachim Lange: Festival “Justice Injustice” of the Opera de Lyon. Review in the online music magazine
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b work information on IRCAM , accessed on December 9, 2018.
- ↑ a b c Gerhard Persché: Law and Justice. Review of the premiere. In: Opernwelt , May 2013, p. 22.
- ↑ Program information from the TV station Arte from November 2, 2015, accessed on December 18, 2018.
- ^ A b c Philip Kennicott: DVD review. In: Gramophone , August 2015, accessed December 18, 2018.
- ↑ Plea against the death penalty. Article from April 27, 2013 in the archive of Deutschlandfunk Kultur , accessed on December 18, 2018.
- ^ Albrecht Thiemann: Explosive. Thierry Escaich's "Claude" from the Opéra de Lyon. DVD review. In: Opernwelt , July 2015, p. 22.
- ↑ Jörn Florian Fuchs: From jail to space. Touching and crazy things at the opera festival “Justice / Injustice” in Lyon. In: Deutschlandfunk , April 1, 2013, accessed on December 20, 2018.
- ^ Hans-Jürgen Linke: Projection surfaces of a utopian justice. Review of the premiere. In: Neue Musikzeitung , 5/2013, accessed on December 20, 2018.
- ↑ Peter Hagmann: Music theater, hard on reality. Review of the premiere. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , April 2, 2013, accessed on December 20, 2018.