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For his last year at the head of the Festival of Aix-en-Provence, Bernard Foccroulle has bet, among other things, on a contemporary creation long delayed, for budgetary reasons: "Seven stones" by the young Czech composer Ondrej Adamek on a libretto by the Icelandic Sjön, the lyricist of Bjork
Criticism: ***
It's a whole team, it looks like a "collective" who worked around Adamek and Sjön, since 2012, with singers "linings" of one of the triumphs of the Foccroulle era in Aix, "Written on skin" by Walter Benjamin, directed by Katie Mitchell. In this team we discover the director, dancer and choreographer Eric Oberdorff and later Eric Soyer, the faithful "luminist" and scenographer of Joel Pommerat (but also of Kohestani, Hirata, Denis Marleau, etc.). This "little band" has in common an immoderate taste for all-out artistic research and an opening to the world, its music, its people. They then embark on an adventure of which here is the beautiful result.
Research: the music is born from bizarre instruments, sound sculptures with surprising forms, sometimes "mineral", from which can emerge strange, minimalist or maximalist sounds. But it is also born of the voice that can be melody or singing (with a little "baroque", humorous nod)
Opening to the world: music borrows from all traditions, especially Asian, without entering the category "world music" But music is not only music, it generates the scenography … and reciprocally It arises from objects but it must be created by a group of actors-singers capable of handling these new instruments and if not to dance, at least to occupy the space by the elegance of the body in motion.And the conductor is an actor like the others.No old-fashioned hierarchy, but a rigor and precision of all times: we do not rest on a leader we are all responsible for all! There is here a political philosophy … implicit! And a trivial adventure, a group adventure. The ultimate goal is to create surprise at all levels / moments: musical, visual, narrative too.
Initially a seemingly simple fable with a "biblical" thread: the story of the adulterous woman whom Christ refused to stone. A man, a collector of stones, killed his wife in the distant past. "Seven stones", and as many small stories embedded as Russian dolls, which will lead us into a kind of permanent drift of the history and geography of the world. We participate in the drift of continents and its tectonic plates, we meet as well Borgès, the blind poet accomplice of authoritarian Argentine regimes that Marie Curie and her discovered mortals. Visually the story is scattered but regularly gathered around a central focus that is no other than the bar "Babelsteinu", a small "tower of Babel" which also crosses the continents.
And the surprises are increasing, as the sound sculptures. But the key to success comes from the incredible coherence of a set of 16 singers (without orchestra!) Including four soloists, and the excellent choir of the group Accentus / Axis 21. All are welded to defend this multiform score, also visual that sound, which travels time and space And where everything is permanently linked, with magical sound atmospheres that go from sound to speech, speech to song, silence to trepidation. Delicate happiness, refined for lovers of contemporary discoveries
In total an opera that will take time to be born but which keeps its promises. With the shadow of Bernard Foccroulle, unconditional defender of contemporary creation, as his successor, Pierre Audi.
NB: "Seven Stones" was broadcast by Arte and remains visible until 20/01/2020 via the following link
hattps: //www.arte.tv/en/videos/083403-000- A / seven-stones-of-ondrej-adamek-at-the-festival-of-aix-en-provence /
"Seven Stones", by Ondrej Adamek, libretto of Sjön, mes of Eric Oberdorff Festival of Aix -en-Provence until July 17.
Aix-en-Provence, Christian Jade (RTBF.be)
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