"I want something like Verdi's last opera, something comic". It was among friends, in Aix-en-Provence, that Philippe Boesmans launched that idea. Soon the name of Georges Feydeau came up in their conversations. And it became one of his French vaudevilles, "On Purge bébé". Together with librettist Richard Brunel, Boesmans made it an almost Belgian musical farce. But because of his illness, Boesmans could not finish his last work. His choice to have it finalized by former student Benoît Mernier was an obvious one for Boesmans.
Feydeau's play contains three central characters that correspond with the archetypes of opera: a soprano, a tenor and a baritone, enough for Boesmans to get started and immediately begin with the orchestral score.
And so begins the staging of that comic opera and it is graced by the sober direction of Richard Brunel: an attic room where the little one with the nickname Bébé gently wakes up, a mother who comes by angrily to inspect whether Bébé has taken his laxative (because constipation is THE problem throughout the entire opera) and a father who shamelessly sits on the toilet. That gives enough irritation to see and hear the couple bickering all the way to the end. They are a harried Jodie Devos (delightful voice) and a hot-tempered Jean-Sébastien Bou (loud baritone). The parents are equally matched in quarreling. But all of that unfolds at an inopportune moment, when the father wants to sell a load of his unbreakable toilet pots to a commander of the French army (tenor Denzil Delaere) who comes to visit. Everything naturally goes wrong: the pots turn out to be NOT unbreakable, the little one refuses his laxative entirely, in the end the wrong people get purged….
It all happens at a hellish pace with an orchestra kept under control by conductor Bassem Akiki. A member of the "family" of De Munt for years as well. Because that offers the spectacle in abundance: an insight into how intimately composer Philippe Boesmans was part of that "family", of that more than professional circle of friends, of that true "Friends of the Munt". It has become a joyful tribute to what a delightful collaboration among friends can mean for opera. Boesmans gave his Munt and the public a delightfully entertaining Bébé.
© Jean Louis Fernandez © Jean Louis Fernandez © Jean Louis Fernandez
WHAT: On purge Bébé, opera by Philippe Boesmans, finalized by Benoît Mernier.
WHO: Richard Brunel [director], Bassem Akiki [conductor], Jean-Sébastien Bou [baritone], Jodie Devos [soprano], Denzil Delaere [tenor] and others.
WHERE: De Munt, Brussel
WHEN: 13 December 2022, world premiere.