An Armchair for the Orchestra – The Parisian theater reviews site » Picture a day like this, by George Benjamin and Martin Crimp, directed by Daniel Jeanneteau and Marie-Christine Soma, at the Opéra-Comique

© S. Brion

ƒƒ article from Emmanuelle Saulnier-Cassia

Sir George Benjamin continues to seduce French audiences with his fourth opera, Picture a day like thisagain in complicity with the playwright Martin Crimp. Without a doubt, the composer's dramatic and always tense tones are in total harmony with the disenchanted universe of the author, both British.

In the form of a contemporary fable, cruel as the genre always imposes, we find all the obsessions of the author (published by L'Arche in French by translators as diverse and prestigious as Philippe Djan or Alice Zeniter): free will, relationships of domination between men and women, repressed desires and fantasies, violent introspections, cruelty of social appearances, restlessness, vanities…

Like the variations in twelve and seventeen scenes of When we have sufficiently tortured each other and of Attempts on her life Martin Crimp works in Picture a day like this with a serial thought condensed into four tables. The desperate quest for what happiness can be, as vain as In the Republic of Happiness published ten years before the premiere of this opera at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July 2023 and which returns to the Salle Favart as part of the Autumn Festival, with the only change being the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra in the ditch.

A single act which begins in a precious silence not preceded by the usual fanfare arrival of the conductor, who in this case is none other than the composer himself, who as usual conducts his works, including included in concert versions, such as Written on skin at the Philarmonie in 2000, which had been performed at the Opéra-Comique at its creation.

Long welcome minutes to familiarize yourself with a dark decor lined with shimmering surfaces and a slightly inclined plane, before the instruments of the Orchestra begin to move without “breathing” until the denouement which will leave everyone the choice of the epilogue to the drama of this mother to whom the worst happened.

Marianne Crebassa sings her pain and personifies the maternal torment faced with the death of her child. She is pain. In the most demanding passages of the score, the French mezzo-soprano manages to redouble the intensity and volume at the end of phrases, easily crossing the pit and piercing the hearts of the spectators.

She does not descend into Hell like Orfey. Even if it looks like it. She does not sign a Pact with the Devil like Faust. The Demon is internal. She, “the woman” designates in the first scene of “The Page”, “the women”. The three Fates perhaps… She confronts the undead, draping herself in a display of happiness, when they are just lonely souls in pain. This is the case with the craftsman, powerfully played by the baritone John Brancy, also a very good actor, including in the chilling role of the collector. The young soprano Beate Mordal and countertenor Cameron Shahbazi form two perfect duos with equally illusory freshness. So many models of a perfect personal development anti-manual simply teaching that miracles like happiness do not exist!

It remains to highlight the very rich and impressively fluid scenographic and staging work of Daniel Jeanneteau and Marie-Christine Soma who ideally anchor the work in a dreamlike and phantasmagorical universe, obviously with the fabulous video work of the visual artist Hicham Berrada growing aquatic plants in an evolving and constantly moving process accompanying the Zabelle scene (with the moving Anna Prohaska), but also in the seemingly simpler paintings, such as the artisan's glass cage, which appears to be awaiting execution.

After the page of the old grimoire of the introduction and the apparently heavenly garden of the conclusion vanish like lures, we can see in the sparkling button obtained from Zabelle, this mirror-mother, clutched in the palm of “the woman », the symbol of our little inner lights, the only tools active in the necessary stages of the path of mourning. This powerful woman will only be able to count on herself in her reconstruction and only she knows the way. Yes, “Imagine a day like this”…

© S. Brion

Picture a day like this

Composition : George Benjamin

Text: Martin Crimp

Musical direction: George Benjamin

Direction, scenography, dramaturgy, lighting: Daniel Jeanneteau and Marie-Christine Soma

Costumes : Marie La Rocca

Video: Hicham Berrada
Assistant musical director: Marc Hajjar

Assistant director: Sérine Mahfoud

Scenography assistant: Théo Jouffroy
Costume Assistant: Peggy Sturm

Lighting assistant: Laurent Irsuti
Lead singer: Bretton Brown

With singers: Marianne Crebassa, Anna Prohaska, Beate Mordal, Cameron Shahbazi, John Brancy

And the actors: Matthieu Baquey, Lisa Grandmottet, Eulalie Rambaud

And the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra

Until October 31, 2024, at 8 p.m.

In English, surtitled in French

Duration: 1h05 (without intermission)

Opera-Comic

1 Pl. Boieldieu,

75002 Paris

Reservations: www.opera-comique.com