The 30-year-old Ars Musica and the French-language cultural venue Théâtre de la Balsamine – virtually unknown to Flemish audiences – a former factory in Schaarbeek – welcomed the chamber opera 'Ce qui vit en nous' in its premiere.
It is a new opera, part of a trilogy, brimming with a kind of hilarious dream of living and therefore dead (or vice versa?) states as Hergé or Jacques Tati might have told them.
In short, you can describe this opera by Stéphane Arcas (libretto) and Baudouin de Jaer (music) as follows: bizarre, surrealist irreverent reality of life that is actually dead. The story is peppered with humor, drama, absurdity, gruesome confusion: all of this united in music that aligns with the avant-garde, yet is comprehensible and lyrical where the narrative demands it. Baudouin uses an unconventional orchestra, but knows precisely how to calibrate the drama and create dreamlike atmospheres where the story calls for it. The singers – nameless extras who happen to stumble into the story – have a rough time of it, especially the mezzo and the baritone (sung by a heldentenor) whose roles are demanding for the voice, character immersion, and musicality. The tenor role presents similar demands, though it's more of a baritone part, but being a shorter role, the singer has a somewhat easier time of it.
We jump between the 18th and 19th centuries, but also the present and the future. A living person turns out to be dead while he sketches an entire situation with another 'living still-living' person. The living woman is a nurse but suddenly turns out not to be, though she might be her own mother. Everything takes place on an island, but that doesn't matter because it's in space. And so it continues with complicated back-and-forth banter in an overture that doesn't consist of music at all, but of spoken text by the two main opponents: the male figure and the young woman who may or may not be a nurse. She disappears behind the curtain, the man continues talking and enters into discussion with a voice from a megaphone. Then he too vanishes and the music kicks in with thunderous force.
The curtain opens. We see the orchestra sitting to the side on stage, and further on, apparently a couple of brains lying on a plate at the front of the stage, just off to the side of the orchestra. On a table lies a body under a white sheet. It's gruesome because it's the autopsy room of a research institution. It's the dream of a project manager who hasn't been paid in five years to finally connect the brains via wireless connections. He still needs a third brain that's no more than 24 days old in the dead, because after that the dead are truly dead – and so those are the brains of that corpse under the white sheet. The confused scholar gets into an even more confused conversation with the nurse who is indeed actually a nurse. It's about the project and the fact that they haven't been paid in five years and would really like the institution's director to visit them. He's never shown himself to them…
The corpse pulls the sheet off himself – it's the male figure – and looks around in surprise. What is he doing on that table? Is he dead then? Aha… He's naked (not shocking at all) and puts on surgical clothing.
Before the Vietnam War, in the '70s of the last century, the scholar suddenly managed to make silver through sloppy experiments – is he some kind of Dr. Mengele? – In the French text, there's wordplay with 'argent' which means both silver and money. Translated to Dutch, this doesn't come across as clearly, but that's not so bad given the absurdity of the whole situation.
The actor and singers throw themselves magnificently into their unusual roles and manage to draw laughs from the audience countless times. And behold, suddenly there's the director, after five years he finally shows up. Does he pay his staff now? Is the project finished? Is it approved? We don't know. The conductor apparently has had enough and goes to stand among the audience to conduct. That's difficult because he can't follow his score that way… He goes back to his podium, but where, on which page are the musicians now? He looks at their parts, but nothing to be done, he's lost his bearings. Angrily he walks back into the audience and breaks his baton. Thus the conductor and orchestra become participants in the surrealism of the story.
The orchestra plays on a bit longer, the singers and actor disappear from the stage and so do almost all the musicians, one by one… Thus ends an unusual chamber opera that I can recommend to everyone. A laugh and a tear, a moment of meditation (a very subtle guitar solo beautifully performed), fine harp, almost frightening percussion, keyboards and strings, a flute and saxophone… They make this opera into what it is: a masterpiece that gives meaning to 'senseless nonsense.' You certainly get a story, musically and scenically complete. This work has a future!
- WHAT: chamber opera Ce qui vit en nous – premiere
- LIBRETTO, DIRECTION & SET DESIGN: Stéphane Arcas
- MUSIC: Baudouin de Jaer
- MUSICAL DIRECTION: Martijn Dendievel
- SINGERS & ACTORS: Sarah Théry (mezzo-soprano), Xavier de Lignerolles (tenor) Nicolas Luçon (actor), Thomas Van Caekenberghe (baritone)
- ORCHESTRA: Ensemble Besides
- PHOTOS: © Hichem Dahes
