Biography

WORLD PREMIERE
May 19th, 2012 - Paris - Comic opera.

Order from the Comic Opera, the Monnaie De Munt (Brussels), the Ensemble intercontemporain, the Pompidou Ircam-Center, Francoise and Jean-Philippe Billarant, and the French State.

NOTES
Legend of Arrigo Boito | Music Marco Stroppa | Libretto Catherine Ailloud-Nicolas and Giordano Ferrari | Director Richard Brunel | Conductor Susanna Mälkki | Stage and Costume Design Bruno De Lavenère | Lighting Design Laurent Castaingt | Motion Collaborator Thierry Thieû Niang | IRCAM Computer Music Design Carlo Laurenzi |IRCAM Science Consultant Jean Bresson

Rodrigo Ferreira Re Orso

Monica Bacelli the worm

Marisol Montalvo Oliba, a courtesan

Alexander Kravets lle trouvère, a courtesan

Cyril Anrep, Geoffrey Carey, Daniel Carraz, Piera Formenti, Papiol courtesans, the brother…

Ensemble intercontemporain

A legend by the most famous of Verdi's librettists, Re Orso by Arrigo Boito has captured the attention of Marco Stroppa for several years.

A political satire, a fable about power, through lyric verse Re Orso tells the story of a horrible king, Ours, who reigned over Crete before the year 1000. Ours was afraid, above all, of the presence of an earthworm. A solo musician personifies each character of this court and the writing lies in the rhythmic characteristics of the Italian language and the technology of OM Chant. Opera with numbers, with litanies, confessions and orgies, with a disklavier singer and solos of bravery stylizing the rhythms of dance, Re Orso is reminiscent of the rapidity of Verdi's Falstaff. During the second act, the opera becomes purely electronic music, where the meticulous work of the projection of sound in the concert hall becomes a part of the spirit of an opera bouffe.

 

SYNOPSIS

Exordium

Zuzzurellone (big child)

A two-part legend will be told and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Part One: Living Bear

Scene 1: Ruffled ancient stories (rock passacaglia with verve)

At the court of Crete before the year 1000, King Bear carries on a reign of terror. He commits murder in public and forces his courtiers to sing of his paradoxical glory: his riches, his heinous crimes, his concupiscence.

Scene 2: Spectrum (pompous, uninhibited)

But the following night a mysterious voice haunts him. Is it the voice of the woman he killed? Did she survive his murder? Is it the voice of conscience, which, like a worm, gnaws at King Bear?

Scene 3: Stone serenade (zany)

To escape his nightmares, he wants to marry Oliba, a young foreign woman he has abducted. Petrified, she refuses to give herself to him and he attempts to rape her with the help of his henchmen.

Scene 4: Dialectical duel (muddled) and tango larva (crumbled)

The voice is embodied. The woman or her ghost reappears, it is the Worm.

A dialectical duel begins with the King that turns into a duet. The King acknowledges his soul’s ambivalence.

Scene 5: Nuptials and songs (presumptuous) and historical interlude (festive, chaotic)

The following day is the wedding feast of the King and Oliba. A Trouvère sings to the accompaniment of his instrumental counterpart, a robotized piano. Papiol, the King’s jester is requested to perform tricks. The Worm tells Oliba of the hidden side of this strange court. Then the Trouvère imprudently sings his love for Oliba. King Bear unleashes his violence. He kills the Trouvère, Oliba and the Worm. He summons his horrified court to an orgy of violence and blasphemy.

 

Part Two: Dead Bear

Scene 1: Confession (harsh, obsolete)

King Bear, now dying, is facing his confessor. He offers him money in exchange for the absolution for his crimes. But his confession turns into a nightmare. The dead from Part One reappear to perform the King’s misdeeds in front of him. The Worm recounts his journey to find King Bear.

Scene 2: Litany, great messy tutti (great pandemonium, like a lame jig)

All assemble in a devilish litany that accompanies the King’s death, a death without redemption.

Scene 3: Tombstone, coffin, shroud (serene, serious, simple, confident)

The Worm, who has become the voice of the people, the voice of the poet, celebrates his victory over the tyrant.

Catherine Ailloud-Nicolas

 

COMIC OPERA PROGRAM

“(…) Commissioned to Marco Stroppa in 2008 and initially due in June 2011, the world premiere of Re Orso was postponed until May 2012 to give the composer enough time to complete his opera. Such flexibility prevailed as long as theaters relied upon their repertoire – Pelléas et Mélisande was thus completed three months prior to its premiere and the interludes were composed only a few days ahead. In 2010-2011 the dramaturgy of Re Orso was thoroughly reformulated in close collaboration with director Richard Brunel and the two playwrights Catherine Ailloud-Nicolas and Giordano Ferrari.

The libretto results from the adaptation, for today’s music and stage, of an Italian dramatic poem by Arrigo Boito – Verdi’s famous librettist and a composer-playwright like Wagner – which was meant to be read only and published as several versions between 1864 and 1902. Written in heterometric verse and structured like a musical pi

ece, Boito’s Re Orso is composed of two parts: Orso vivo(Living Bear) and Orso morto (Dead Bear).

A twofold piece, Marco Stroppa’s Re Orso consists of a first part chiefly made of instrumental music completed in March 2012, and an electronic second part devised at IRCAM, perfected in April 2012 after years of research with computer programs and systems. Through amplification of the vocalists and actors throughout the performance and the use of systems that transform their voices or produce synthetic voices and imaginary sounds, there is no break between the two musical languages, but rather a play of continuity, combination and contrasts as part and parcel of the dramaturgy.

King Bear, who gave his name to the opera, exterminates his subjects and believes he is invincible and immortal. In due time, he is confronted with the ultimate power of a worm embodied – for show and allegorically – by a woman belonging to a people persecuted for too long. Marco Stroppa’s musical legend questions power in the spirit of opéra bouffe but also of Victor Hugo’s drama and especially Shakespeare’s, which was well known to Boito as he had translated it or adapted it for opera. It examines the effects of power on the relationship to reality and truth in those who exercise it or suffer from it: the tyrant’s doubts, the compromises around him and the fascination he exerts over his victims. Inspired by Boito’s verse, Re Orso is Marco Stroppa’s first opera.

Familiar with the operatic repertoire, he chose to confront his musical world to the features of the genre, attending to the creation of the characters and the implementation of a dynamic dramaturgy. Vocalism, which highlights lyric voices, shapes the instrumental and electronic compositions alike. The scenography mobilizes the instrumentalists of the Ensemble InterContemporain, their music director Susanna Mälkkiand even a robotized piano, as the gloomy counterpart of a trouvère, which dies with him on stage. The electronics follow the conductor’s tempo like the other instruments. The spatialization device takes advantage of the frontal relationship between the audience and the performance owing to the architecture of the Salle Favart before taking hold of the stage in the final scene. Thus, drama truly gives substance to the musical utterance and the sonic course of the fable.

Re Orso results from the meeting, across one century, of an artist of yesterday, Arrigo Boito, who strongly wished for the revitalization of opera, and an artist of today, Marco Stroppa, who addresses this issue with a view and means of expression of his time based on electronics.

The Opéra Comique firmly supports this kind of confrontation, especially when the musical legend it brings forth appears as a true political fable.”