L'inondation

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Opera dates
Title: The flood
Original title: L'inondation
Shape: Opera in two acts
Original language: French
Music: Francesco Filidei
Libretto : Joël Pommerat
Literary source: Yevgeny Zamyatin: Наводнение ( Nawodnenije )
Premiere: September 27, 2019
Place of premiere: Salle Favart of the Opéra-Comique Paris
Playing time: about 2 hours
Place and time of the action: a suburb of Saint Petersburg
people

L'inondation (German: "The Flood") is an opera in two acts by Francesco Filidei (music) with a libretto by Joël Pommerat based on the 1929 novella Наводнение ( Nawodnenije ) by Yevgeny Zamyatin . The world premiere took place on September 27, 2019 in the Salle Favart of the Opéra-Comique Paris.

action

short version

The apartment of an unnamed childless couple in a suburb of St. Petersburg is flooded and destroyed when the Neva floods . The couple stayed with neighbors for a few weeks and eventually returned to their renovated apartment. They have a young orphan girl who they took in after their father's death. Much of the action takes place in the woman's imagination. She imagines her husband cheating on her with the girl, observes the supposed events in silence, and finally kills the girl. She gets pregnant. At the same time, I keep increasing her signs of madness until she collapses completely. She is admitted to a hospital where she will have her child. After a short time she becomes completely apathetic. The doctor is at a loss. Suddenly she jumps up and confesses to the murder. Your illness seems to have passed.

first act

The opera begins chronologically in the middle of the action. The man and the neighbor leave the apartment, leaving the two women alone. The woman watches the girl for a while, suddenly attacks her from behind, and after a brief fight, strangles her.

The plot jumps back some time. A narrator shares the background story with the audience: A married couple lives happily but without children on an island or peninsula. The man works on the mainland during the day while his wife waits for him. One day there are growing signs that the river will overflow. The man tells of strange changes at his place of work. Before he leaves, the two make love. The noises the neighborhood children make remind them of their childlessness.

The woman tells the neighbor that she does not know where her husband is. The neighbor had already started looking for him. She says they have been married for fourteen or fifteen years and still have no children. The neighbor thinks that a man without children is not a real man. The neighbor returns without having found the man. At the same time, he reports that the resident of the top floor, who lived there with his fourteen-year-old daughter, suddenly died. He suggested that the girl spend the following night in the couple's apartment. A policeman brings the girl in. Now the man is returning too. He agrees to take the girl. The following night the girl did schoolwork instead of sleeping. The couple anxiously decides to take it in permanently.

Gradually everyday life returns. The neighbor visits the woman with her little baby. The two women talk about how the man has changed. The neighbor picks up his wife to go to church with his family. When they are gone, the woman suggests that the girl do something together too. She asks the girl if she believes in God. Her husband arrives and interrupts the conversation. He says she shouldn't bore the girl with such topics. He has brought flowers for her birthday today and suggests taking a walk together.

One day the woman returns home earlier than expected and meets the girl in her underwear. Shortly afterwards, her husband comes out of the room. He tells the woman that he allowed the girl to meet friends outside. In the future he wants to sleep in the living room because the woman screams in her sleep and wakes him up.

The neighboring family comes to visit. While the others are talking, the woman observes from the sofa how lovingly her husband is towards the girl. The action takes place as if in slow motion.

When the woman gets up the next morning, she sees the girl twice in the apartment. On the one hand, it's standing by the sink as usual, on the other hand, it has apparently spent the night with her husband. It sings about a fly trapped in a glass. The man is going to work. A little later the neighbors come in and report an unusually strong wind. Because they fear a flood, they don't want to send their children to school and ask the girl to look after them for a while. The woman watches how the girl scares the children with scary stories.

Second act

Since her first floor apartment was flooded, the woman went to the neighbors. The neighbor reports on the devastation caused by the flood. A little later the man arrives and says that he has seen many deaths. The girl had left with friends before the rain. Although it comes back shortly, the man has to listen to accusations of irresponsibility. The neighbor offers that the three of them can stay with them for a few days.

The narrator reports that the couple slept in the same bed again for the first time in the strange apartment, but still couldn't find each other.

At this point the scene from the beginning of the opera is reached. The couple move back into their own renovated apartment.

When the man comes home, the girl is gone. His wife claims she doesn't know where it is. Her husband is surprised that she locks the front door as usual, although the girl could still come. That night the two love each other again.

Three months later, the woman's neighbor told the woman that her husband had asked about the girl. The policeman tells them that the search for the girl has been stopped because all testimonies indicate that she has run away. As soon as the policeman has left, the woman collapses and reveals her pregnancy to the neighbor.

The woman can no longer sleep at night and talks confusedly. The man tries to calm her down. For the first time he addresses her by name, Sofia. Believing that the birth is imminent, she hears noises and sees the girl's ghost before her. In her fantasy she relived the murder several times in a row. The man calls the neighbors to help and takes them to the hospital.

The narrator reports that the girl did not return and the woman continued to be unable to sleep until one day the child arrived. The woman is no longer responsive. The doctor cannot give a prognosis. He tells the man that she occasionally fantasizes about a dead girl with a fly on it. Suddenly the woman stands up and exclaims that she killed the girl because she wanted her own child. They cut up the body and threw the pieces into a hole in the wasteland in the dark. After she has calmed down, the doctor determines that she has recovered. She falls asleep while the policeman waits by her bedside to take her testimony.

layout

orchestra

The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:

music

The orchestra with its large percussion instruments uses Filidei to represent natural sounds such as howling wind, threatening swelling water, a police whistle, water glasses, etc. v. m. The music is dissonant, but not exclusively atonal. There are also some lyrical passages.

The vocal lines are based on the spoken language. The reviewer from Szeneweb.fr compared it with the spelling of Claude Debussy . The Bachtrack reviewer , on the other hand, felt reminded of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande by the tension-building orchestration (for example in the underwater scene ) . There are long-lasting rhythmic ostinati , motifs repeating themselves in loops and violent outbursts from the full orchestra.

Work history

L'inondation is the second opera by the Florentine composer Francesco Filidei , a student of Salvatore Sciarrino . It is a commission from the Paris Opéra-Comique . The libretto was written by the French director and playwright Joël Pommerat in close collaboration with the composer. It is Pommerat's first original opera libretto and, unlike his earlier libretti, does not go back to one of his theatrical works. The plot is based on the 1929 novella Наводнение (Nawodnenije) by the Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin . The authors began working on the work in autumn 2016. The singers were also involved in the creation at an early stage in the course of several one-week seminars. The first demo recordings of the music were made. The role of the narrator, whose function can be compared with that of the ancient choir , is an addition to the opera. Two actresses take on the role of the girl: a singer and an actress.

At the world premiere on September 27, 2019 in the Salle Favart of the Opéra-Comique, Chloé Briot (woman), Boris Grappe (man), Norma Nahoun (girl / singer), Cypriane Gardin (girl / actress), Enguerrand de Hys (neighbor ), Yael Raanan-Vandor (neighbor), Guilhem Terrail (narrator and policeman) and Vincent Le Texier (doctor). Emilio Pomàrico directed the Orchester Philharmonique de Radio France . The production was done by the librettist Pommerat, the stage and lighting by Eric Soyer, the costumes by Isabelle Deffin and the videos by Renaud Rubiano. It was a co-production with the Angers Nantes Opéra, the Opéra de Rennes, the Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg , the Théâtre de Caen and the Opéra de Limoges.

The production was received very positively by the critics. The magazine Diapason wrote of an "exemplary lyrical creation" in which the libretto, score, drama and interpreter were "alchemically" combined. The Concertclassic reviewer compared the beginning with that of Elektra by Richard Strauss or Il prigioniero by Luigi Dallapiccola . As in these works, the “raw, sharp music” captivates the listener right from the start. The “crackling, eruptive and frosty music” (“une musique crépitante, éruptive et glaçante”) Filideis creates an extreme tension on the border of the unbearable (“une tension extrême, à la limite de l'insoutenable”). Arte Concert made a recording available as a video stream on the Internet.

Recordings

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Information about the production (English) on the website of the Opéra-Comique Paris, accessed on November 12, 2019.
  2. ↑ a b c work information (French) from France Musique, accessed on November 12, 2019.
  3. ↑ Opera Seasion 2019-2020 (English) on umpgclassical.com, accessed on November 12, 2019.
  4. ↑ a b Filidei: WP of L'Inondation - Interview with the composer (English) on ricordi.com, August 27, 2019, accessed on November 12, 2019.
  5. ↑ a b c Christophe Candoni: Une Inondation qui submerge d'émotions. Review of the premiere (French). In: Sceneweb, September 30, 2019, accessed November 13, 2019.
  6. ↑ a b Raphaëlle Blin: L'émouvante Inondation de Filidei et Pommerat à l'Opéra Comique. Review of the premiere (French). In: Bachtrack , September 28, 2019, accessed on November 13, 2019.
  7. ^ A b Jean-Guillaume Lebrun: L'Inondation de Francesco Filidei en création à l'Opéra-Comique - Un flot d'invention bien maîtrisé - Compte-rendu. Review of the premiere (French). In: Concertclassic, accessed on November 13, 2019.
  8. ↑ a b Benoît Fauchet: Favart submergée par le triomphe de "L'Inondation" de Filidei et Pommerat. Review of the premiere (French). In: Diapason, September 29, 2019, accessed on November 13, 2019.
  9. ↑ a b L'inondation by Joël Pommerat and Francesco Filidei - Chronicle for a 2019 creation (English) on the website of the Opéra-Comique Paris, accessed on 12 November of 2019.
  10. ↑ a b Francesco Filidei - The flood. Video stream at Arte Concert , accessed on November 13, 2019.