It’s a dive into the hells of opera, in every sense of the word. World creation Don Giovanni in Hell by the Danish Simon Steen-Andersen, both composer, director, visual artist and video artist, revisits four centuries of operatic art alongside a visual journey into the bowels of an opera house, that of Strasbourg, in eastern France.
It is The Orfeo by Monteverdi, the first opera in Western history, like you’ve never seen or heard it. “ I like the idea of creating a surreal space in which we leave the stage and enter another world, perhaps a dream. » This dream comes from the imagination of Danish composer Simon Steen-Andersen, the jack of all trades: staging, sets, videos and lights. His speciality ? Dissect a work and create an upside-down world.
“ The show features “Don Giovanni” by Mozart, but we only see the last scene. And, I try to imagine what could happen after his fall into hell where all these condemned and diabolical characters from the lyrical repertoire wander. At the same time, he is a singer who plays the role of Don Giovanni, he hits his head while going down the stage trapdoor and has a crazy dream, a nightmare about his career and this schizophrenia of passing from a character to another. The opera house itself becomes a character in its own right as video projections are shown of every corner of the basement: a dead rat, very old dust that makes the walls look like they are becoming hairy and swell as if becoming alive or strangely organic. »
An artistic challenge
In his odyssey through the underbelly of the Opéra du Rhin, this Don Giovanni is in the company of an evil character played with malice and skill by the Australian Damien Pass: “ I play the role of Polystophéles. All the devils of all times, of all styles, from Rameau to Gounod to Massenet. There’s even some Tchaikovsky in it. I sing in French, Russian, German. The biggest challenge is changing from one devil to another, for example two notes of Boito in Italian and suddenly the “Tales of Hoffmann”. I have to sing at least 20 devils. »
The result is devilishly delightful and the passage of the singers between filmed underground scenes and sudden appearances on the set is sometimes infernal virtuosity for the Lebanese-Polish conductor Bassem Akiki: “ There are around forty operas which are like a patchwork and which create a dramaturgy to see the history of opera in another way, since there is electronic music in it. There is a scene from the “Carmen” by Bizet transformed into disco, we are in a nightclub. And I believe that those who know opera well will have many points of reference, and those who do not know opera will have points of reference in their electronic, popular music. And maybe one day they will come back to see a Wagner, a Mozart or Monteverdi. »
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