Petite balade aux enfers

opera for youth

Warning to those who believe classical mythology is carved in stone, when entering the dishevelled universe of Valerie Lesort (open to all rascals from ages 7 to 77): You who enter here, abandon all hope of not erupting into laugher during this incursion into the next world!

It’s been a long time since Orpheus embarked on his journey, since the days of Greco-Latin antiquity up to Offenbach by way of Monteverdi (without failing to mention, of course, Jean Cocteau). We might think he’d have made it by now. Well, we’d be wrong: neither he nor Eurydice would allow themselves to be buried off so quickly! Valerie Lesort, a stage director of wild inventiveness, breathes new life into him with the help of a jolly band of singers and puppeteers, who are masters when it comes to creating highly sympathetic hybrid beings. These puppets, whose tiny bodies support a live human head, have to be seen to be believed, and to see them is to open your heart to them, especially since they sing so marvellously well! The legend is well-known, but just in case, and especially for the young, Zeus in person honours us with an appearance to recite the prologues and remind us all of essential information. Musically, it’s hard not to be delighted. Since to adapt the opera by Gluck (premiered in 1762), Lesort calls on the talents of Marine Thoreau La Salle. Her transcription for piano follows step-by-step the tribulations of the valiant poet, who decides to save his beloved from the realm of the dead, with his lyre and the charm of his melodies as his only weapons. Will he, this time, manage to refrain from looking back upon his wife? Less than an hour to go. Suspense… The spectators in any case have a lot of difficulty turning their eyes from our hero. But how to avoid being seduced by these hilarious hellscapes, these multicoloured monsters, as agitated and inoffensive as characters from the Muppet Show?

Opéra Comique Production

Music composed after Christophe Willibald von Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice

Staging, text & scenography Valérie Lesort
Adaptation, direction & piano Marine Thoreau La Salle
Lights creation & scenography Pascal Laajili
Pupett creation Sami Adjali, Carole Allemand, Valérie Lesort

Orphée Marie Lenormand
Eurydice Judith Fa
Amour Violette Clapeyron 
Maîtrise Populaire de l’Opéra Comique
Puppets NN, NN, Florimond Plantier 
Chœur de l’Opéra de Dijon