Opera: gripping “Autumn Journey” on the Capitole stage in Toulouse

On a stage tilted like the slippery slope that will lead the protagonists to their fall, “Autumn Journey” sets the scene for a destabilizing opera, populated by disturbing characters. Writers named Marcel Jouhandeau, Ramon Fernandez, Jacques Chardonne, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle and Robert Brasillach. In November 1941, they agreed to travel to Nazi Germany to praise fascist and anti-Semitic propaganda.

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The opera “Autumn Journey” addresses the Collaboration on the Capitole stage in Toulouse

The composer Bruno Mantovani takes this unusual subject to create a creation striking in its dramatic intensity, until November 28 on the stage of the Théâtre du Capitole. Made of high-pitched sounds and strident chords, his music creaks like the wheels of a train scraping the rails. The notes punctuate the movements and the sung dialogues of the performers of this dark epic, like film music with sometimes Hitchcockian accents. To play these collaborating writers and the German officers who accompany them, we find big names from the opera scene who also turn out to be good actors. Pierre-Yves Pruvot, Stephan Genz, Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, Vincent Le Texier, Yann Beuron, Jean-Christophe Lanièce, Enguerrand de Hys with a special mention for the countertenor William Shelton. The perfect placement of his high voice is to the best effect in playing a magnificently made-up operetta Goebbels. A feat that will not be enough to satisfy singing lovers. “Autumn Journey”, in its great sobriety, leaves no room for long sung tirades.

In the middle of this brutal world, Gabrielle Philiponet is the only woman in the cast. She interprets the Dreamer, an allegory of the massacre of the Jews, spectral and yet profoundly human, condemned to exist among unbearable characters who cannot stand themselves, aware of their cowardice.