PRESENTATION
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR
Based on the screenplay by Marguerite Duras for Alain Resnais’ film
Adapted and directed by Bertrand Marcos
« I had the immense pleasure of working with the actress Fanny Ardant on L’Été 80 (Summer of 1980) by Marguerite Duras. Orchestrating the encounter between that exceptional piece of literature and Fanny’s most singular voice, seemed completely natural and pre-ordained. A self-evident blend that needed to be renewed, with another text.
I rediscovered « Hiroshima mon amour » (Hiroshima, My Love), a book I had browsed through a long time ago, and which I didn’t remember too well. I was totally enraptured by the power of this screenplay. I believe it to be one of the most beautiful works by Marguerite Duras that I ever had the chance to read. And I immediately imagined Fanny Ardant speaking and embodying these stunning words.
It was a matter of adapting the text while at the same time preserving most of the script written by Marguerite Duras for Alain Resnais’ film, in order to arrive at a version that would make sense as a play.
My hope is to enable this story to be heard, quite plainly, without any unnecessary contrivance, and without the subjective effects specific to motion pictures. Have the text be heard for what it is, for the images it can trigger among the audience, and give free rein to everyone’s own imagination. »
Bertrand Marcos
CASSANDRE
Music by Michael Jarrell
Directed by Hervé Loichemol
« Cassandre’ is not really an opera, but a ‘monodrama’ based on a beautiful 1983 text by Christa Wolf, a writer from the former GDR whose fate is reminiscent of that of Shostakovich: independent of the Communist regime, and therefore closely watched by it, but who never wanted to leave her country.
The text is recited by Fanny Ardant, while the musical discourse of an instrumental ensemble combined with electronics encompasses, surrounds, supports and sometimes even masks the spoken voice. But this is no mere melodrama, for the central place of the text is fundamental: everything starts from it and revolves around it, so it occupies the whole of the work. So you need not a narrator but a real actress for such a performance. In Michael Jarrell’s eyes, it was essential that the text be carried by a spoken voice, whose delivery, variable according to the flow of the music, would preserve the fluid quality, the inner emotion, of a narrative that floated freely ‘in snatches, by leaps, by associations from one thought to another…’.
Thus was born ‘Cassandre’, a monodrama without vocals, a benchmark score for contemporary musical theatre ».
Ainsi est né « Cassandre », monodrame sans chant, partition de référence du théâtre musical contemporain.
