The axis and silence

The new project of the Lyon Opera “Jeanne at the stake” in the production of Romeo Castelcucci might have seemed in our context by foreign experts - an unknown composer, a provincial opera house, no Russian performers - if not for two circumstances. The first is cooperation with the Perm Opera Theater, which is indicated as a participant in co -production, which means that there is a chance to see this performance in Perm once. And there, you look, and somewhere else. And the second is Romeo Castelpelli, which is known in Russia, although mostly as a dramatic director. Meanwhile, Castelpucci has a significant opera profile, including the most famous opera houses and texts of Stravinsky, Wagner, Gluck, Bach, Schlenberg, Feldman. And, it seems, he is experiencing a serious interest in opera aesthetics and the structure of the opera performance, which establishes the cruel restrictions for a person from the drama theater - first of all, temporary - and thereby provokes.

There is another fact that makes Jeanne d'Arc not a stranger to us. The score of Artyur Onegger and the field of Claudel was created by order of the most famous musical philanthropist (the dash of the most talented amateur artist) from Russia-Ida Rubinstein, who participated in the creation, among other things, Ravel, Scheherazada Fokin and one of the most replicated portraits of Serov. Ida Lvovna’s repertoire consisted almost exclusively of beneficial female roles, and such a character as Jeanne d'Arc, especially in France, where Ida Rubinstein spent most of her life, could not pass by her attention. In 1938, the premiere of Jeanne d'Arc at the stake was extremely successfully held in Basel.

The cooperation of Onegger with Claudel when creating the "Jeanne" seems quite logical, given the passion for both by the work of Arthur Rimbo, as well as a devoted, but exclusively reflective attitude of Catholicism. The authors designated the genre as a "dramatic oratoria." The main theme was the passions of Jeanne d'Arc at the stake. Her story unfolds through eleven episodes built as a series of dying flashbacks in the reverse order - up to childhood. The main parties, Jeanne and the brother of Dominic, are performed by dramatic actors (Audrey Bonnet and Denis Podalides in the Lyon production).

Arthur Onegger is one of the famous “six” of French composers (who declared the influence of Jean Cocte and Eric Sati and from which today Francis Pulenk and Darius Miyio resonate). He represented its conservative wing rather and provided a connection with tradition - including with the tradition of German Wagnerian romanticism, which was the main object of revision at the beginning of the 20th century. However, Oneggger’s conservatism is quite conditional and does not cancel sensitivity to the most diverse forms of musical search. In Jeanne, he uses atonality elements; Almost a sacred attitude to the rhythm shows that he was occupied by the same topics as Stravinsky; And the courage with which he crosses the Gothic verticals of chorals and vaudeville gallivee may seem radical today. And the orchestra, under the leadership of the Cazushi, in the Lyon production allows you to hear everything that has become a material for the musical composition.

But “Jeanne at the stake” of Castelpucci (the director deprived his character of the birth name) begins before the sound of music - in the school class hyperrealist decorations a few minutes before the end of the lesson, during which the teacher unsuccessfully tries to attract the attention of students, demanding silence. A series of attempts ends with a call, breaking this conventionality of the school lesson. A subtile cleaner comes to the empty class. In the process of unhurried work, he threshes all furniture with a roar, tears a board from the wall, reveals a linoleum, pulls out a moat in which he finds a sword, and turns into Jeanne - naked and beautiful. The actress The whole performance is left alone on the stage. Brother Dominic and the school administration appear in a bamber of a school corridor, behind a barricaded jean for a class of class. The performers of the vocal parties remain invisible to the viewer, literally turning into the voices that Jeanne hears. Their singing is broadcast into the hall through speakers. Margarita, Katerina, but also Jeanne’s judges represent us in the form of perfumes or souls, whose voices are not like human, are devoid of flesh, spread from everywhere.

Silence is an important theme and a structural element of the performance of Castelcucci. Only in it can you hear voices. The school as a metaphor for society does not allow silence and therefore - the phenomena of God and in general the phenomenon of anything. Only completely turning the class, literally - having cleared the field, Jeanne gets the opportunity to introduce and communication with God - which turns out to be the same.

The same destructive gesture of Castelpucci rakes from under the layers of interpretations, images and assignments the personality of Jeanne-House. Which has long belonged not to itself, but to everyone else - right and left, children and adults, nationalists and internationalists, feminists and sexists, mass and high culture. Everyone makes something of his own out of Jeanne, demonstrating his power over her and at the same time legitimizing this power. Actually, Castelcucci, who is not noticed in the special humanism, makes an act of returning to a person, pulling his heroine from under the humanistic rubble and praise. Castelpelli naits our attention to this lonely figure on the stage, literally fixes the axis - the axis of the world connecting God, man and the Earth. The vertical absolutely dominates the geometry of the performance.

Castelpelli makes a literal statement, direct, even primitive. This primitiveness allows him to avoid the trap of another representation of Jeanne. Undressing, Jeanne's hopping on the stage are so ingenuous (especially on contrasting with a super -string decoration in soundless overture, which literally appeals to be identified in time and space), that the character becomes almost indistinguishable from the actress. Castelpellchi and displays the name of the actress (and not Jeanne) in the Gothic schedule on a stelled white curtain.

In this archaeological work, Castelcucci is very helped by the cinematographic technique of the Flashbacks Claude (which was ideally suited during the film adaptation of Roberto Rossellini with Ingrid Bergman). The memory works in the opposite direction, backing back to the moment of the phenomenon, returning to Jeanne life, knowledge and faith.

The radicality of the gesture of the director becomes a new fidelity of tradition and reliability. Taking advantage of the blessed position of the theater, Castelcucci does not offer a new truth about Jeanne. He offers the opportunity to look at what is behind her, the national heroine, as well as the heroes of wars, migrants, victims of the Holocaust, miners and all other images that we juggle for our purposes. These are all the people standing at the intersection of the world and God, and they have a connection with both of them and another, perhaps, more hidden than ours.