Avis de tempête

A miraculous piece of musical theatre

One of the high points of last season was the performance of Georges Aperghis’ 14 Récitations by the French soprano Donatienne Michel-Dansac during the Performatik 3 festival. Singing and acting, language and music, philosophy and humour: they all came together in this breathtakingly intense performance.

Aperghis is joining us again this season, and again with Avis de tempête, according to Les Inrockuptibles a ‘miraculous, hallucinatory’ piece of musical theatre, first performed by Ictus at the Opéra de Lille in 2004. It was directed by Aperghis himself.

Both on stage and in his score, Aperghis unleashes a storm that sweeps away everything in its path. In the script he mixes Melville’s Moby Dick with extracts from Kafka, Baudelaire, Shakespeare and Victor Hugo. But, just as in the 14 Récitations, the words are not set to music, the words are music. The words intensify the musical high. For the singers it is a tour de force in which they are assisted by ten musicians and the ingenious use of video and stage setting (created by the FilmFabriek).

In this opera, singing, acting, music, electronics, video, light and stage set are forged into a single whole. As Le Figaro put it: ‘C’est l’union parfaite de tous les moyens d’expression qui fait d’Avis de tempête une oeuvre d’art totale.’

Audio
Listen to an excerpt on http://www.kwadratuur.be/audio.php?id=612.