THE OPÉRA GARNIER DE PARIS
ECHOES OF THE CREATIVE MUSES
ON THE MUSICAL GATHERING OF ECHOES OF THE VOICE WALTER
BENJAMIN ON
OPERA & THE TRAUERSPIEL BY ELI FRIEDLANDER
OPERA & THE TRAUERSPIEL BY ELI FRIEDLANDER
OPERA BETWEEN TRAGEDY AND TRAUERSPIEL
What little Walter Benjamin wrote on music possesses an
undoubtedly enigmatic character. I will attempt here to draw out of his
pronouncements the outline of a view of music and language bearing on the
understanding of opera. I wish to emphasize at the outset, however, that I am
concerned not with the interpretation of opera as such nor with the analysis of
music, but rather with how both are conceived and echoed in Benjamin’s
writings. I will focus my interpretation on Benjamin’s The Origin of German
Trauerspiel. This text not only opposes tragedy to the Trauerspiel (“mourning
play”) but also constitutes Benjamin’s confrontation with Nietzsche’s The Birth
of Tragedy and its purported Wagnerism.¹ Just as for Nietzsche the question of
tragedy is inextricably bound with the birth of his own thinking, the issues
raised by Benjamin’s investigation of the seemingly restricted literary genre
of the German Baroque Trauerspiel open onto his own historical practice and
metaphysical outlook. And because Wagner represents for Nietzsche, at the time
of The Birth of Tragedy, the very possibility of seeing the modern world as a
revival of the musical spirit of tragedy, Benjamin’s critique of the mythical
elements inherent in Nietzsche’s Wagnerism also bear on his preoccupation with
the problematic face of modernity.²
I will start by laying out certain themes of Benjamin’s
confrontation with Nietzsche that will be important later in my discussion of
opera. First, the very title of Benjamin’s book, The Origin of German
Trauerspiel, hints at a contrast with the themes of birth and rebirth prevalent
in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. The Nietzschean figure of birth (Geburt )
is a figure of ecstatic renewal. In particular, music is for Nietzsche a “womb”
of phenomena: “ Music can give birth to myth (the most significant example) and
particularly to tragic myth: the myth which expresses Dionysian knowledge in
symbols. ”³ Benjamin’s notion of origin (Ursprung ), on the other hand, is
emphatically a “historical category” set in opposition to mythic genesis
(Entstehung). The investigation of the origin of a phenomenon (be it an
artistic genre, a work of art, or a historical event) is not identified with
its moment of birth but is rather revealed by bringing together the traces it
has left in the course of its history.⁴ If the existence of works of art in the
world in which they are created can be called their life, then Benjamin’s
presentation of origin depends on making manifest the afterlife of such works,
after their world has died out.⁵
Second, against Nietzsche’s ecstatic affirmation of the
healing power of art in the balance it establishes between Dionysian
intoxication and Apollonian dream, Benjamin posits a more sober, critical (he
would call it “Socratic”) understanding of the relation of beauty and truth.
The process of criticism to which the work of art is subjected destroys the
illusory dimension (Schein) inherent in it, but at the same time—insofar as it
is only by working internally, through the work of art, that the hidden truth
that sustained it in existence can be revealed—criticism also vindicates beauty
or does justice to it. Such truth is then beyond beauty, but there is no access
to it apart from beauty. Benjamin’s understanding of the relation of beauty and
truth is implicitly a critique of Nietzsche’s aestheticization of existence:
Nietzsche takes “art, and not morality, to be the truly metaphysical activity
of man.”⁶ Benjamin traces Nietzsche’s conviction to the latter’s early
infatuation with Wagner, claiming that “the Schopenhauerian and Wagnerian
metaphysics necessarily vitiated the best aspects of Nietzsche’s work . . . the
nihilism lodged in the depths of the artistic philosophy of Bayreuth nullified
the hard, historical actuality of Greek tragedy.”⁷
Third, the contrast between tragedy and Trauerspiel opposes
two diverging schemes for transcending or redeeming the contingency of
empirical events. Tragedy, in Benjamin’s understanding, provides the
possibility for individual fulfillment of the contingencies of history; the
tragic hero is said to “die of immortality.”⁸ Truth emerges for the tragic hero
often in moments of silence and inaction. Such silence would not signal a lack
but rather fulfillment, a state to which nothing can be added. Silence is correlative
with the absorptive individuation of the tragic hero who has made fate his
“inner, self-discovered possession.”⁹ In the Trauerspiel, by contrast, there is
no preeminent voice. “The subject of fate cannot be determined.”¹⁰ There is a
fundamental sharing of fate, its plurivocality exemplified by the multiplicity
of characters in the princely court of the Baroque Trauerspiel. “The
Trauerspiel therefore has no individual hero, only constellations of heroes,”
Benjamin concludes.¹¹ One might also say that the Trauerspiel is immersed in
historical time and renounces any mythical notion of redemption. There is
nevertheless an element of fulfillment to it that “is never identical with the
idea of individual time.”¹² It will indeed be part of this essay’s aim to
characterize such fulfillment in relation to music.
Even such a cursory sketch of the contrast between Benjamin
and Nietzsche raises a question about the way in which Nietzsche’s
understanding of opera is addressed by Benjamin. One must recall that in The
Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche sets Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk against the invention
of opera and its development in the Baroque.¹³ It is not wholly surprising,
then, that in a book devoted to the Baroque and engaging Nietzsche, one finds a
few condensed pages on the relation of opera, as well as music as such, to the
Trauerspiel. The Birth of Tragedy, which aimed “to make a proper distinction
between Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk and the frivolous opera, which had its
preparatory stage in the baroque . . .” is invoked in this same context with a
long quote from Nietzsche, in which he expresses his distaste for Baroque opera:
‘’ The inventors of the recitative] could abandon themselves
to the dream of having descended once more into the paradisiacal beginnings of
mankind, where music also must have had that unsurpassed purity, power and
innocence of which the poets, in their pastoral plays, could give such touching
accounts. . . . The recitative was regarded as the rediscovered language of
this primitive man; opera as the rediscovered country of this idyllically or
heroically good creature, who simultaneously with every action follows a
natural artistic impulse, who accomplishes his speech with a little singing in
order that he may immediately break forth into full song at the slightest
emotional excitement. . . . The man incapable of art creates for himself a kind
of art precisely because he is the inartistic man as such. Because he does not
sense the Dionysian depth of music, he changes his musical taste into an appreciation
of the understandable word-and-tone-rhetoric of the passions in the stilo
rappresentativo and into the voluptuousness of the arts of song. Because he is
unable to behold a vision he forces the machinist and the decorative artist in
his service. Because he cannot comprehend the true nature of the artist he
conjures up the “artistic primitive man” to suit his taste, that is, the man
who sings and recites verses under the influence of passion. ‘’¹⁴
This passage brings together many of Nietzsche’s points of
criticism against the “Socratic” culture of opera: First, he rejects a
sentimental understanding of the lyricism of nature (which he would identify
not only in the Baroque but also later in Rousseau). To the image of the
“idyllic Shepherd” he opposes a throng of satyrs forming the protochorus of
tragedy.¹⁵ Second, Nietzsche is weary of a conception of music as emotional
accompaniment to an independently understood text or drama, as in the stilo
rappresentativo. Or, more precisely, he objects to a simplistic distinction of
music and meaning in which the musical turns into a merely sensual tonality
accompanying half-understood words. Third, even if we assume a certain
primordial unity of music and meaning in the idyllic language of primitive man,
Nietzsche objects to a psychological understanding of that unity. That is,
while he does not want to dismiss the idea, itself developed in The Birth of
Tragedy, that new meaning can emerge out of music, he dismisses the
psychologization of that insight, that is, the argument that music gives
expression to natural emotional states.
Initially, it seems that Benjamin reiterates Nietzsche’s
condemnation of opera. Benjamin conceives of the latter as a form that is
constituted by the decline of the Trauerspiel, as though the genre by some
internal dynamic had disintegrated into opera. He singles out the pastoral
elements of the drama (which ultimately generated the oratorical chorus and the
musical overture, as well as the choreographic interludes) as what “brought about
the dissolution of the Trauerspiel into opera.”¹⁶ He further seems to imply
that, compared with the Trauerspiel, opera appears deficient: “Just as every
comparison with tragedy—not to mention musical tragedy—is of no value for the
understanding of opera, so it is that from the point of view of literature, and
especially the Trauerspiel, opera must seem unmistakably to be a product of
decadence.”¹⁷ And yet, note that this way of putting things also positions
Benjamin against Nietzsche, for it severs the link Nietzsche establishes
between tragedy and Wagnerian opera and leaves open the possibility that opera
along with Trauerspiel might be understood within a broader dimension of
language. The criteria for judging opera are not in any way derived from the literary
principles laid out in the Trauerspiel, yet the two genres manifest a
different, deeper form of kinship that I will explore in what follows.
THE POLARITY OF SOUND AND MEANING IN THE TRAUERSPIEL
In order to grasp Benjamin’s response to Nietzsche’s criticism
of Baroque opera, one must first consider that Benjamin thinks of the human
voice not merely through its association with the emotional outburst of
subjectivity, but rather by way of man’s capacity to give meaningful expression
to nature as a whole. In other words, the sounding of voice is an expression of
continuity between the language of nature and the language of man. This view is
evident, according to Benjamin, in the prevalence of Baroque onomatopoeic
theories of meaning, in which the linguistic expression referring to a being is
continuous with that being’s essence: “As for the complete assimilation of all
oral manifestations to a primeval linguistic state, this sometimes took a
spiritualist, sometimes a naturalist direction . . . the creaturely language
was naturalistically described as an onomatopoeic structure.”¹⁸
Benjamin’s early essay, “On Language as Such and on the
Language of Man” (1917), provides the grounding for this onomatopoeic structure
with a broader linguistic or philosophical foundation.¹⁹ The essay opens with
the claim that “there is no event or thing in either animate or inanimate
nature that does not in some way partake of language, for it is in the nature
of each one to communicate its mental contents.”²⁰ Essence (or, as Benjamin
calls it, “mental being” [geistige Wesen]) strives to communicate itself; it
has an inner tendency or striving toward expression. If the realization of this
potential is essence’s full expression, we might say that the telos of essences
is meaning or intelligibility. But that end cannot be achieved without the
involvement of man. Bringing together the language of essences and the language
of man positions man as the one who can, through his language, fulfill or
realize the potential for expression in natural things. One might also say then
that man has no essence of his own. Rather, his task consists of bringing
essences to be heard in his language. Man is, so to speak, the center of the
world, yet he occupies that position not by taking over nature but by giving it
expression. A subject becomes manifest in naming the world. For Benjamin, the
power of man to name nature, that is, to provide it with an articulated meaning
in language, allows the fulfillment of the creaturely voice’s tendency to expression.
But we must also consider the fact that Benjamin
characterizes man’s attempt to voice nature as a failure. He reads the Fall as
fundamentally disrupting the relation of man to language. Failing in the Adamic
task to name creation, the language of man turns primarily to the communication
of propositional contents— that is, to judgment. The propositional articulation
of meaning—rather than giving expression to natural essences—itself becomes the
blockage of that creaturely striving. If naming is the linguistic form that
brings together creaturely voice and meaning, then the failure of the task of
naming, the Fall of language into judgment, turns voice and meaning into
dialectical opposites.
This general philosophical perspective is reflected for
Benjamin in the very structure of the Trauerspiel. The sadness or mourning that
earns the Trauerspiel its name can initially be understood in terms of the
relation between two prototypical figures, the martyr and the intriguer. I call
them prototypical precisely because they stand for the problem pertaining to
language as such. The following passage makes the analogy clear: “The
conversion of the pure sound of creaturely language into the richly significant
irony which re-echoes from the mouth of the intriguer, is highly indicative of
the relationship of this character to language. The intriguer is the master of
meanings. In the harmless effusion of an onomatopoeic natural language they are
the obstacle, and so the origin of mourning for which the intriguer is responsible
along with them.”²¹
The blockage of the creaturely voice produces what Benjamin
calls the “lament.” “Lament . . . is the most undifferentiated, impotent
expression of language. It contains scarcely more than the sensuous breath.”²²
A primordial form of the conflict of voice and meaning, lament does not
originate from the loss of a certain object or person but from the betrayal of
the voice of nature by language. It is coexistent with the Fall of language
itself, expressing the blockage of natural expression through propositional
articulations of meaning: ²³ “the spoken word is only afflicted by meaning, so
to speak, as if by an inescapable disease; it breaks off in the middle of the
process of resounding, and the damming up of the feeling, which was ready to
pour forth, provokes mourning. Here meaning is encountered and will continue to
be encountered as the reason for mournfulness.”²⁴
While this might begin to explain both Benjamin’s vision of
the relation of nature and language, and how voice can be placed relative to
language, it poses a further problem in our attempt to position Trauerspiel
vis-à-vis opera. Indeed, it would seem more firmly to demonstrate that opera is
deficient in relation to the Trauerspiel. For this way of explaining the
musical force of the lament, a form that occurs centrally in Baroque opera,
depends precisely on conceiving lament as a sensuous voicing lacking in
meaning. It is all that remains audible from the creaturely voice. Seen in this
light, opera gives up the polarity of voice and meaning characteristic of the
plays in favor of the remnants of voice in sound. As Benjamin puts it: “the
self-indulgent delight in sheer sound played its part in the decline of the
Trauerspiel. . . . The obstacle of meaning and intrigue loses its weight, and
both operatic plot and operatic language follow their course without
encountering any resistance, issuing finally into banality.”²⁵
In order to reveal the scope of the difficulty in relating
opera and Trauerspiel, consider further that Benjamin considers allegory to be
the fundamental linguistic phenomenon of the Trauerspiel. Discussions of
aesthetics, according to Benjamin, have been governed by an idealization of the
self-enclosed symbol that allows the paradoxical embodiment of the transcendent
in the material. Tragedy, to take an example that is central to our discussion,
is one such symbolic form insofar as, through his actions, the individual
tragic hero internalizes transcendent fate in his own person. For those who
grant primacy to symbolic expression in art, allegory is merely an illustration
of concepts, “a conventional relationship between an illustrative image and its
abstract meaning.”²⁶ Allegory is, to put it shortly, primarily image writing :
the spoken word reduced to a caption of the image. The allegorical sensibility
is reflected in the poetry of the Baroque Trauerspiel, which “was in fact
incapable of releasing in inspired song the profound meaning which was . . .
confined to the verbal image. Its language was heavy with material display.
Never has poetry been less winged.”²⁷ But allegory is also a challenge for the
singing voice, whose expressive power depends on continuous modulation, which
one would think of as irreconcilable with the arbitrary rigidity of image
writing.²⁸
While acknowledging perhaps insuperable difficulties in
relating the singing voice immediately to allegory, we might still ask if music
can encompass the expressive qualities of both voice and allegory. The problem
must be approached with some care. For with this move, one of course runs the
risk of making music merely an illustrative accompaniment of words.²⁹ The
object of the second part of Benjamin’s Origin of German Trauerspiel is the
rethinking of allegory not just as “playful illustrative techniques, but as a
form of expression, just as speech is expression and, indeed, just as writing
is.”³⁰ Allegory thus understood allows a reformulation of the relation of
voice, music, and language. Such a relation was never explicitly apparent to
the authors of the Baroque and only barely comes to the fore later in
Romanticism. Yet, as Benjamin claims, “music—by virtue of its own essence
rather than the favor of the authors—is something with which allegorical drama
is intimately familiar.”³¹
VOICE, WRITING, MUSIC
The vindication of opera and the understanding of its deeper
relation to the Trauerspiel emerge from Benjamin’s consideration of the
relation of word, script, and music.³² To begin relating these elements,
consider again Benjamin’s sense that the lament is itself the expression of a
blocking of the creaturely voice by the propositional articulation of meaning.
The blockage of sound by an obstacle results in the production of echoes.
Allegories, to follow the figure, would be the echoes of the dispersal of the creaturely
voice throughout language. In allegory, “Written language and sound confront
each other in tense polarity.”³³ But the rigidity of allegory is not opposed
simply to the fluid and indeterminate lamenting voice—rather, the appearance of
that opposition allows for dialectical overcoming. Allegory cannot consist
merely of dispersed fragments, for then its connection to voice would
disappear. Rather those fragments retain something of their initial unity,
raising the question of how these echoes would be ordered. To bring out the
nature of the unity of such refracted multiplicity, Benjamin quotes a passage
by “the brilliant Johann Wilhelm Ritter . . . in the course of a letter on
Chladni’s figures”:³⁴
‘’ “It would be beautiful,” [Ritter] remarks, about those
lines which form different patterns on a glass plate strewn with sand at the
touch of the different notes, “if what became externally clear here were also
exactly what the sound pattern is for us inwardly: a light pattern,
fire-writing. . . . Every sound would then have its own letter directly to
hand. . . . That inward connection of word and script—so powerful that we write
when we speak . . . has long interested me. Tell me: how do we transform the
thought, the idea, into the word; and do we ever have a thought or an idea
without its hieroglyph, its letter, its script? Truly, it is so: But we do not
usually think of it. But once, when human nature was more powerful, it really
was more extensively thought about; and this is proved by the existence of word
and script. Their original, and absolute, simultaneity was rooted in the fact
that the organ of speech itself writes in order to speak. The letter alone
speaks, or rather: words and script are, at source one, and neither is possible
without the other. . . . Every sound pattern is an electric pattern, and every
electric pattern is a sound pattern. . . . My aim . . . was therefore to
re-discover, or else to find the primeval or natural script by means of
electricity. . . . In reality the whole of creation is language, and so is
literally created by the word, the created and creating word itself. . . . But
the letter is inextricably bound up with this word both in general and in
particular.”³⁵
To bring out what Benjamin finds so important about this
passage, and given the prevalent confrontation with Nietzsche on practically
every issue in The Origin of German Trauerspiel, it is worth comparing
Benjamin’s quotation of the passage above with Nietzsche’s use of Chladni’s
figures in his early essay, “On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense”:
‘’ One can imagine a man who is totally deaf and has never
had a sensation of sound and music. Perhaps such a person will gaze with
astonishment at Chladni’s sound figures; perhaps he will discover their causes
in the vibrations of the string and will now swear that he must know what men
mean by “sound.” It is this way with all of us concerning language: we believe
that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees,
colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for
things—metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities. ‘’ ³⁶
Nietzsche invokes Chladni’s figures to explain the
essentially metaphorical nature of language, the fact that in language there is
a constant taking over of meaning by metaphorical reinterpretation. In terms of
the question of the relation of music and meaning in The Birth of Tragedy, one
could say that, according to Nietzsche, such displacement explains how
Apollonian images emerge out of what is utterly nonimagistic, Dionysian music.
Myth is the primal metaphor to which music gives birth. This, then, points to a
contrast between the interest Chladni’s figures hold for Benjamin and
Nietzsche. For Benjamin, the figures are precisely not the effects of an
original transformation but are invoked so as to characterize the gathering of
allegorical echoes by way of patternlike writing.
Intuitively, in the relation between the speaking
voice and writing, speech is posited as primary and writing as derivative, the
latter established through a correspondence of alphabetic signs with phonetic
elements. Writing has, so to speak, no life of its own, but is dependent on the
speaking voice.³⁷ In Benjamin’s reconception, however, an extended notion of
writing emerges that is not built on the basis of a fixed alphabet. Further, it
is not a repetition of what can be expressed by the voice. Rather, it is a
pattern of meaning that is recovered from the echoed dispersion of the voice:
“there is nothing subordinate about written script; it is not cast away in
reading like dross. It is absorbed along with what is read, as its ‘pattern.’’
³⁸
How is such a pattern revealed? It is not dependent on a
preexisting form that is then applied to the material, nor is it given by a
general rule or law. It is rather something that arises uniquely out of the
recognition of the disjoint allegorical material of meaning as a totality. In
Benjamin’s understanding, it is music that allows such recognition, since it
encompasses the totality of echoing sound, thus manifesting the unity of all
echoes. The initial polarity between voice and writing is overcome at a higher
level in the pattern of the whole, revealed by the mediation of music: “oral
and written language [would be brought] together, by whatever means possible,
which can only mean identifying them dialectically as thesis and synthesis;
[thus] to secure for music, the antithetical mediating link, and the last
remaining universal language since the tower of Babel, its rightful central
position as antithesis . . . written language grows out of music and not
directly from the sounds of the spoken word.”³⁹
MUSIC AND THE SPACE OF PURE FEELING
Benjamin characterizes the language of tragedy in terms of
its “inflexibility”: “every speech in tragedy is tragically decisive.”⁴⁰ The
“pure word” of tragedy is “ the pure bearer of its meaning” and “the
indissoluble law of inescapable orders.” This is not to say that the tragic
hero is aware of the implication of his speech. Indeed the greater force of his
words lies in the manifestation of their inescapable consequences beyond his
conscious engagement, beyond intention. Tragedy is the manifestation of uncanny
precision in what is an excess of meaning over intention. In it we encounter
“the over-precision that obtains in the tragic relationship between the
languages of human speakers. ” ⁴¹ This extreme precision of meaning that
obtains in tragedy allows it temporal closure. It is the tragic hero’s
incorporation of fate in his own person which makes visible the complete scope
and precise meaning of the action as a whole. By his sacrifice, the hero
transforms the unformulated field of fate into a new explicit order for the
community.
In the unpublished fragment, “Trauerspiel and Tragedy,”
Benjamin sets apart the closure inherent in tragedy from the unresolved time of
the Trauerspiel : “Tragedy . . . remains formally unified. Its temporal
character is exhaustively shaped in the form of drama. The Trauerspiel, on the
other hand, is inherently non-unified drama, and the idea of its resolution no
longer dwells within the realm of drama itself.”⁴² The Trauerspiel’s
“non-unified” character is manifest in its excessively allegorical language, which,
as I explained above, can be conceived as a dispersion of meaning, a refracted
echo of the voice. What is nevertheless most striking is that for Benjamin
there is still a sense of resolution or totalization inherent in the
Trauerspiel ’s lack of unity.
Just as Benjamin finds an analogy for the blockage of voice
and lament in the relation between intriguer and martyr, so he describes the
problem of the unification of echoes into a recognizable pattern by reference
to the very logic of dispersion and gathering characteristic of the princely
court depicted in the Trauerspiel. The Trauerspiel encompasses all echoes,
“concentrat[ing] in itself the infinite resonance of its sound.”⁴³Significantly
for our purposes, Benjamin proposes a musical figure for that concentration:
“In the Trauerspiel, sounds are laid out symphonically, and this constitutes
the musical principle of its language and the dramatic principle of its
breaking up and splitting into characters.”⁴⁴
The fulfillment of meaning in the Trauerspiel is made
possible by music: “And here, on the question of form, is the point where the
crucial distinction between tragedy and Trauerspiel emerges decisively. The
remains of the Trauerspielen are called music. Perhaps there is a parallel
here: just as tragedy marks the transition from historical time to dramatic
time, the Trauerspiel represents the transition from dramatic time to musical
time.”⁴⁵ If the essential contingency of historical time is resolved in the
transition to tragic time (through the agency of the individual tragic hero),
so dramatic time in the Trauerspiel resolves itself “no longer in the realm of
the drama itself,” but in “musical time.”
As opposed to the inflexibility of the word in tragedy,
“language in the process of change is the linguistic principle of the
Trauerspiel.”⁴⁶ That process of change is further conceived by Benjamin as
purification (which must be distinguished from the purging of emotion often
associated with the Aristotelian understanding of tragedy): “The Trauerspiel is
nature that enters the purgatory of language only for the sake of the purity of
its feelings.”⁴⁷ The Trauerspiel ’s purifying transformation is not a
development of meaning but is rather an “emotional life cycle” whose various
stages consist of natural sound, lament, and music: “Words have a purely
emotional life cycle in which they purify themselves by developing from the
natural sound to the pure sound of feeling. For such words, language is merely
a transitional phase within the entire life cycle, and in them the Trauerspiel
finds its voice. It describes the path from natural sound via lament to
music.”⁴⁸ Thus, whereas the redeeming closure of tragedy is constituted in the
pure word, the musical fulfillment of the Trauerspiel is constituted in pure
feeling. My earlier discussion provides clues for understanding this process of
purification.
If the voice of nature is blocked by meaning—which in the
Trauerspiel is then dispersed through a plurality of antagonistic characters,
the sovereign, martyr, and intriguer—then the redemption of the natural voice
is the recognition of those characters’ shared nature. In the last pages of The
Origin of German Trauerspiel, Benjamin provides a religious or metaphysical
interpretation of the revelation of shared nature as a return to, or an
acceptance of, the creaturely condition. Since Benjamin interprets the Fall as
the fate of language, the return to a condition of creation would manifest
itself also as a revelation of the unity of language. Music would be the
affective recognition of a shared linguistic ground, where in the drama itself
there is only discontinuity and antagonism for the various characters of the
play: “for the mourning play the redemptive mystery is music—the rebirth of the
feelings in a supra-sensuous nature.”⁴⁹
By appealing to the purity of feelings in music, or to the
antagonism of passions reborn in music’s suprasensuous nature, Benjamin does
not merely contrast feeling that is evoked by events in the world with “the
same” feeling that emerges from music (for instance, in the comparison of an
experience that is sorrowful with music that provokes sorrow). This would be
too simplistic or analogical an understanding and would feed into the criticism
that Nietzsche directs at the stilo rappresentativo. Moreover, one should not
make the mistake of interpreting Benjamin to indicate that there is one feeling
or mood capable of illustrating all worldly events via music. For what is at
stake with feeling, just as much as with meaning, is the recognition of an inner
relationship between things that are diverse and disparate.
To clarify, let us return once more to the case of the
lament. We have seen that when Benjamin speaks of the sorrowfulness or
mournfulness of nature, this ontological sorrow cannot be expressed simply
through a portrayal of the feelings of a human being in a certain situation in
the world. The sorrowfulness of nature is rather a feeling pertaining to the
failed communication of nature, to our relation with language itself.
Similarly, in the Trauerspiel, one must distinguish the lament or mournfulness
characteristic of the play as a whole from specific passions or emotions that
arise for characters throughout the play itself. Indeed, insofar as sadness as
an individual affect is concerned, it is only part of a whole range of
feelings: “sorrow is nothing more than a single tone on the scale of feelings,
and so we may say that there is no Trauerspiel pure and simple, since the
diverse feelings of the comic, the terrible, the horrifying, and many others
each take their turn on the floor.”⁵⁰ This diversity of feelings corresponds to
the plurality of characters and complications of the intrigue. There might, for
instance, be a character associated with innocence betrayed; within the
diversity of feelings exemplified by different characters, his is the voice
that suffers a sad fate. But such a character in himself would in no way embody
the pure feeling of sadness.
Take as a concrete example of this point a play that
Benjamin considers an ideal of the genre, though not a German Trauerspiel,
namely Hamlet. If one compares the sadness expressed by Ophelia with Hamlet’s
melancholy, Ophelia’s grief is a disintegration of the mind, manifesting itself
in distracted song. It is a lament severed from the realm of meaning. But
Hamlet’s melancholy can be said to encompass all other feelings: devotion,
betrayal, horror, cruelty, irony, detachment, and cunning. His is the pure
sadness that emerges as a recognition encompassing all events in the play.
One might further clarify this point by taking the example
of the intriguer, the character who can manipulate the passions of all
individuals. He introduces a form of unity through this manipulation, or, as
one might say, orchestration of events. He is, as Benjamin puts it, the
choreographer of a ballet: “In contrast to the spasmodic chronological
progression of tragedy, the Trauerspiel takes place in a spatial continuum,
which one might describe as choreographic. The organizer of the plot, the
precursor of the choreographer, is the intriguer.”⁵¹ Yet, despite this
characterization of the intriguer as choreographer, one would not necessarily
see in the structure of the intrigue the basis for a musical redemption of such
plays. One must instead separate the metaphor of orchestrator/choreographer (he
who moves both plot and characters by controlling the passions) from the
emergence of music as redemptive. It is intrigue itself that must be redeemed
by that musical world.⁵²
A full range of emotions must be related through the mournfulness
of the Trauerspiel. This emotional whole is “the most profoundly heard lament,”
since it appears at the interconnection of all the passions: “ultimately
everything depends on the ear for lament, for only the most profoundly heard
lament can become music.”⁵³ This is a striking statement, especially given the
connection that Benjamin makes earlier in his text between the lament and the
voice. But it points precisely to what is at stake in the purification of
feeling: lament’s manifestation throughout language makes it a matter for the
ear rather than for the voice. Such a dispersion cannot be sung. Redemption in
feeling is the sensing of the relationship of the dispersed. This is why, for
Benjamin, pure feeling is a matter of hearing rather than of the voice. (It is
a matter of sensing the attunement between different voices, rather than the
peaks of passion in the voice of the individual.)⁵⁴ It is because relationships
are grasped between all parts of language that one is aware of lament
permeating language as a whole. In the heard lament, the unity of echoes is the
sense that all those elements belong together despite their utter separation,
in terms of emotional tonality. Pure feeling, then, emerges in the recognition
of these relationships. That is, the fundamental distinction between passion
and pure feeling is this: while the former governs the individual affected by
the world and driven by his desires, the latter arises from a recognition of
the relatedness of different manifestations of nature. One might, to put it
somewhat figuratively, say that there are no tears in the pure lament as it
dissolves itself into music.⁵⁵
Thus, for Benjamin, the question of the nature of music must
be understood via its essential relation to the realm of feeling, but not
feeling divorced from language.56 Rather it is feeling that endows language
with internal accord: “The Trauerspiel is built not on the foundation of actual
language but on the consciousness of the unity that language achieves through
feeling, a unity that unfolds in words. In this process, errant feeling gives
voice to its sorrow. But this lament must dissolve itself; on the basis of that
presupposed unity, it enters into the language of pure feeling—in other words,
music.” Music does not, on the one hand, stand on its own, absolute, nor does
it, on the other, appear dependent, merely an illustration of emotional states.
It is rather identified with the revelation of a unity of meaning in feeling.
The voice of nature and its splitting into characters is essential to the
recognition of the purity of feeling in music, as though, to return at the end
to opera, the fate of the operatic voices were to become music as such.
You may reach whole
reference list to click above link by
Oxford Academic for Opera
Quarterly, Volume 21, Issue 4, Autumn 2005, Pages 631–646,….
1. Benjamin’s Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels has
been translated into English as The Origin of German Tragic Drama.
Insofar as the point of the first part of the book is precisely to
distinguish Trauerspiel from tragedy, this translation is
misleading. Thus I will retain the German term throughout to characterize those
plays.
2. Among Benjamin’s “heroes” of modernity one prominently
finds Baudelaire, who himself was taken with Wagner. Benjamin ends the section
on Baudelaire, in his summary in The Arcades Project (“Paris,
the Capital of the Nineteenth Century”), with Wagner: “Nonconformists rebel
against consigning art to the marketplace. They rally round the banner of l’art
pour l’art. From this watchword derives the conception of the ‘total work
of art’—the Gesamtkunstwerk—which would seal art off from the
developments of technology. The solemn rite with which it is celebrated is the
pendant to the distraction that transfigures the commodity. Both abstract from
the social existence of human beings. Baudelaire succumbs to the rage for
Wagner.” (Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 3, ed. Howard Eiland
and Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002], p.
41; “Paris, die Hauptstadt des XIX. Jahrhunderts,” in Benjamin, Gesammelte
Schriften, Band 5, herausgegeben von Rolf Tiedemann [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1982]). It would seem that the antidote to Wagner is the allegorical nature of
Baudelaire’s poetry: “The antithesis between allegory and myth has to be
clearly developed. It was owing to the genius of allegory that Baudelaire did
not succumb to the abyss of myth that gaped beneath his feet at every step.”
(Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin
McLaughlin [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999], p. 268; “Das
Passagen-Werk,” Gesammelte Schriften, Band 5). The significance of
the opposition of allegory to myth and its bearing on opera is elaborated in
what follows.
3. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy,
trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 103; Nietzsche, Sämtliche
Werke, herausgegeben von Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari (Munich:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999).
4. “The term origin is not intended to describe the process
by which the existent came into being, but rather to describe that which
emerges from the process of becoming and disappearance. Origin is an eddy in
the stream of becoming, and in its current it swallows the material involved in
the process of genesis.” Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama,
trans. John Osborne (London: NLB, 1977), p. 45; Benjamin, “Ursprung des
deutschen Trauerspiels,” Gesammelte Schriften, Band 1.
5. For Benjamin’s use of the notion of “afterlife,” see “The
Task of the Translator” in Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 1, ed.
Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1996), p. 254; “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,” Gesammelte
Schriften, Band 4.
6. Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, p. 22.
7. Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.
102. Adorno takes up Benjamin’s notion of Schein as the basis
for a critique of opera and, indeed, as the basis for his views on Wagner:
“Opera is governed by the element of appearance [Schein] in the sense of
Benjamin’s aesthetics, which has positioned it in contrast to the element of
play [Spiel].” (See Theodor W. Adorno, “Bourgeois Opera,” in Opera
through Other Eyes, ed. David J. Levin [Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1993], p. 27). Though I cannot engage Adorno’s essay here, I
would like nevertheless to point out that “play” is also a central element of
the Trauerspiel, as should be clear from the name. Play is moreover
connected to the question of opera in what follows, through its association
with the echo, “the true domain of the free play of sound” (Benjamin, Origin
of German Tragic Drama, p. 210).
8. “Trauerspiel and Tragedy,” in Benjamin, Selected
Writings, vol. 1, p. 56. “Trauerspiel und Tragödie,” Gesammelte
Schriften, Band 2.
9. Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.
132.
10. Ibid.
11. For Nietzsche, Socrates brings about the death of
tragedy. Socrates is neither in his life nor even in his own death a tragic
hero. He engages in dialogue with his disciples until his last breath, making
him in Benjamin’s eyes a precursor of the Trauerspiel sensibility.
12. Benjamin, “Trauerspiel and Tragedy,” p. 56.
13. Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, p. 114.
14. Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, p. 115, quoted
in Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, p. 212.
15. If one can speak of original nature in Nietzsche, it
finds expression in the figure of the satyr, a “symbol of the sexual
omnipotence of nature which the Greeks used to contemplate with reverent
wonder” (Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, p. 61). See also in
Nietzsche: “The satyr, like the idyllic shepherd of more recent times, is the
offspring of a longing for the primitive and the natural; but how firmly and
fearlessly the Greek embraced the man of the woods, and how timorously and
mawkishly modern man dallied with the flattering image of a sentimental,
flute-playing tender shepherd!” (Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, p.
61). Benjamin too aims to distinguish the Baroque conception of nature from
Rousseau’s: “The nature of creation which absorbs history back into itself is
quite different from the nature of Rousseau” (Benjamin, Origin of
German Tragic Drama, p. 91). On the relation of song to the origin of
language in Rousseau, see Eli Friedlander, J. J. Rousseau: An Afterlife
of Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).
16. Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.
211.
17. Ibid., p. 212.
18. Ibid., p. 204.
19. Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 1, pp.
62–74; “Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen,” Gesammelte
Schriften, Band 2.
20. “The Role of Language in Trauerspiel and
Tragedy,” in Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 1, p. 62; “Die
Bedeutung der Sprache in Trauerspiel und Tragödie,” Gesammelte
Schriften, Band 2.
21. Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.
210.
22. “On Language as Such,” in Benjamin, Selected
Writings, vol. 1, p. 73.
23. Benjamin clearly distinguishes the overtone of lament
from the affect characteristic of the tragic chorus: “Really the chorus of
tragedy does not lament. It remains detached in the presence of profound
suffering. . . . Far from dissolving the tragic action into lamentation, the
constant presence of the members of the chorus . . . actually sets a limit on
the emotional outburst even in the dialogue. The conception of the chorus as
a Trauerklage [lamentation] in which ‘the original pain of
creation resounds’ is a genuinely baroque reinterpretation of its essence.” (Origin
of German Tragic Drama, p. 121).
24. Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.
209. For a related understanding of the theological significance of figures of
lament and echoing, see Michal Grover-Friedlander’s article, “Echoed Above,” in
this issue of The Opera Quarterly.
25. Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.
212.
26. Ibid., p. 162.
27. Ibid., p. 200. Note the contrast between Benjamin’s
formulation here and the way Nietzsche combines the Apollonian image with
Dionysian music: the former is far from being conceived of as writing. What is
stressed is precisely the luminous, dreamy plasticity of the form of the image.
It is as far as one can get from the hieroglyphic rigidity of allegory.
28. Nietzsche himself raises the question of the problematic
nature of the lyric poet. What troubles him is that the emotional dissolution
of language subjectivizes aesthetic experience: “we know the subjective artist
only as the poor artist, and throughout the entire range of art we demand first
of all the conquest of the subjective, redemption from the ‘ego,’ and the
silencing of the individual will and desire. . . . Hence our aesthetics must
first solve the problem of how the ‘lyrist’ is possible as an artist—who,
according to the experience of all ages, is continually saying ‘I’ and running
through the entire chromatic scale of his passions and desires” (Birth of
Tragedy, p. 48). For another type of problem with the possibility of lyric
poetry in the modern world, consider the opening of Benjamin’s essay “On Some
Motifs in Baudelaire” in Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, ed.
Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2003), p. 313; Benjamin, “Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire,” Gesammelte
Schriften, Band 1.
29. See Manfred Bukofzer’s “Allegory in Baroque Music”: “The
important point about baroque allegory is its non-expressive, non-psychological
character. . . . Baroque music is not, like modern music, a language of
feeling, which expresses its objects directly, but a sort of iconology of
sound. For this reason it lacks all psychology in the modern sense.” (Journal
of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 3 1939–40, pp. 20–21).
30. Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.
162.
31. Ibid., p. 213.
32. Allegory, when understood to involve voice, image, and
writing, points to an affinity between the Baroque sensibility and the idea of
the “total work of art,” albeit one that is different from Wagner’s conception
of the Gesamtkunstwerk: “In speaking of the Gesamtkunstwerk as
the summit of the aesthetic hierarchy of the age and the ideal of the Trauerspiel itself,
the baroque critic provides a new confirmation of this spirit of weightiness.
As an experienced allegorist, [Georg Philipp] Harsdörfer is, among many
theoreticians, the one who spoke out most radically for the synthesis of all
the arts. For this is precisely what is required by the allegorical way of
looking at things. [Johann Joachim] Winckelmann makes the connection abundantly
clear when, with polemical overstatement, he remarks: ‘Vain . . . is the hope
of those who believe that allegory should be taken so far that one might even
be able to paint an ode’” (Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama,
p. 181). For a different idea of the unity of the arts under “the idea of art,”
see Benjamin’s essay, “The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism”: “In
terms of method, the entire romantic theory of art rests on the definition of
the medium of absolute reflection as art—more precisely, as the idea of art.
Since the organ of artistic reflection is form, the idea of art is defined as
the medium of reflection of forms. In this medium all the presentational forms
hang constantly together, interpenetrate one another and merge into the unity
of the absolute art form, which is identical with the idea of art” (“The
Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism,” Selected Writings,
vol. 1, p. 165; “Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik,” Gesammelte
Schriften, Band 1).
33. Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.
201.
34. Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776–1810), a German chemist and
physicist, discovered the ultraviolet end of the spectrum and made the first
dry-cell battery in 1802. Ritter was the first to establish an explicit
connection between galvanism and chemical reactivity. Ernst Chladni (1756–1827)
was a German physicist known as the father of acoustics. He set plates covered
with a thin layer of sand and observed the lines and patterns produced by the
different vibrations of sounds.
35. Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.
213.
36. Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy and Truth:
Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870s, ed. Daniel
Breazeale (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979), p. 84.
37. To clearly elaborate this difference it is necessary to
distinguish refraction, the transition from one medium to another, from
metaphoric transfer; Benjamin’s essay “The Task of the Translator” is the
central place to look for such a differentiation. In this essay Benjamin also
qualifies the distinction between artist and translator as similar to the
difference between voice and echo: “The task of the translator consists in
finding the particular intention toward the target language which produces in
that language the echo of the original. . . . Unlike a work of literature,
translation finds itself not in the center of the language forest but on the
outside facing the wooded ridge; it calls into it without entering, aiming at a
single spot where the echo is able to give, in its own language, the
reverberation of the work in the alien one” (“The Task of the
Translator,” Selected Writings, vol. 1, p. 258).
38. Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.
215.
39. Ibid., p. 214. I have modified the translation from
“thesis and antithesis” to “thesis and synthesis.” The universality attributed
to music is not to be understood in simplistic terms as a language understood
by all, making music into an emotional Esperanto. Rather it is because music is
related to language as a whole that it can be understood as universal. That is,
“all supra-historical kinship between languages consists in this: in every one
of them as a whole, one and the same thing is meant” (“The Task of the
Translator,” p. 257).
40. Benjamin, “The Role of Language in Trauerspiel and
Tragedy,” p. 61.
41. Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” p. 73.
42. Benjamin, “The Role of Language in Trauerspiel and
Tragedy,” p. 57.
43. Ibid., p. 61.
44. Ibid., p. 60.
45. Ibid., p. 57.
46. Ibid., p. 60.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., p. 61.
50. Ibid.
51. Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.
95.
52. The choreographic nature of plot comes up again in
Benjamin’s discussion of the degeneration of the Trauerspiel into
opera. Choreographic intrigue over time becomes merely a string of
choreographic interludes: “Nor do the choreographical interludes and the—in a
deeper sense—choreographical style of the intrigue run counter to this
development which, at the end of the century, brought about the dissolution of
the Trauerspiel into opera” (Origin of German Tragic Drama, p.
211). On the relation of lament and echo, as well as a broadening of the idea
of manipulation, see Carolyn Abbate’s penetrating interpretation of
Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, “Orpheus: One Last Performance,”
in In Search of Opera (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 2001), pp. 1–54.
53. Benjamin, “The Role of Language in Trauerspiel and
Tragedy,” p. 61.
54. In his essay on Goethe’s Elective Affinities,
Benjamin distinguishes types of conciliation and redemption according to
whether characters inhabit a world in which music plays a part. For the main
characters, such conciliation is not complete: “If music encloses genuine
mysteries, this world of course remains a mute world, from which music will
never ring out. Yet to what is it dedicated if not redemption, to which it
promises more than conciliation?” (“Goethe’s Elective Affinities,” in
Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 1, p. 355; “Goethes
Wahlwandtschaften,” Gesammelte Schriften, Band 1). The possibility
of redemption depends on achieving a purity of feeling that is no more one of
emotion, passion, or even affection: “Sounder than passion yet not more
helpful, affection likewise only brings about the ruin of those who renounce
passion. But it does not drive the lonely ones to ruin like them. It
tenaciously escorts the lovers in their descent: they reach the end
conciliated. On this final path they turn to a beauty that is no longer
arrested by semblance and they stand in the domain of music. . . . Music, of
course, knows conciliation in love” (“Goethe’s Elective Affinities,” p. 348).
55. For more on the relation of music, tears, and the
lament, see Benjamin’s “Goethe’s Elective Affinities”: “beauty cannot appear in
an aura of transparent clarity. Its most exact opposite is emotion. Neither
guilt nor innocence, neither nature nor the beyond can be strictly
differentiated for beauty. . . . For the tears of emotion, in which the gaze
grows veiled, are at the same time the most authentic veil of beauty itself.
But emotion is only the semblance of reconciliation. And that deceptive harmony
in the lover’s flute playing—how unsteady and moving it is! Their world is
wholly deserted by music. Thus it is that semblance, which is linked to
emotion, can become so powerful only in those who, like Goethe, are not from
the beginning moved in their innermost being by music and are proof against the
power of living beauty” (“Goethe’s Elective Affinities,” p. 349).
56. Compare this with Kant’s formulation of the relation of
feeling and language in the aesthetic judgment. See my essay, “On Examples,
Representatives, Measures, Standards, and the Ideal,” in Reading Cavell,
ed. Alice Crary and Sanford Shieh (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 204–17.
The Most Played Work at The Paris Opera '' The Marriage of Figaro '' Holds a Special
Place in the Exhibition '' Mozart, a French Passion ''. August 16, 2017
MOZART,
WOLFGANG AMADEUS ( 1756 – 1791 )
AUTOGRAPH
MUSIC MAUSCRIPT
THE OPERA GARNIER RESTAURANT DESIGN BY ODILE DECQ
THE OPERA GARNIER RESTAURANT DESIGN BY ODILE DECQ
From the architect. Like a « phantom », silent and insidious, the soft protean curves of the mezzanine level float above the dinner guests, covering the space with a surface that bends and undulates.
Creating a new space in the Opera Garnier meant following strict guidelines concerning the historical character of the monument: in order to ensure the possibility of completely removing the project without damage to the existing structure, we were not allowed to touch any of the walls, the pillars, or the ceiling.
The facade of the restaurant is a veil of undulating glass, sliding between each pillar. With no visible structure, the glass is held in place by a single strip of bent steel running along the arched curve of the ceiling. This steel strip is fixed to the upper cornices of the columns 6 meters above the ground with stainless steel connecting rods. The glass is therefore held in place as if « by magic ».
The façade therefore allows for clear views and a minimum impact.
The façade therefore allows for clear views and a minimum impact.
Providing enough floor space to seat 90 people was another requirement for this limited space. The mezzanine was therefore created as a continuous surface. Narrow columns extend upwards towards the molded plaster hull, which curves to form the edges of the handrail. This vessel, which has been slipped under the cupola, is a cloud formation floating between the existing elements of the room without touching them. It’s an allusion to the changing form of the phantom, whose white veil glides surreptitiously in space.
Quietly, almost insidiously, the soft protean curves of the mezzanine cover the space with a volume that arches, undulates, and floats above the guests. The space is open and turned outward.
The keystone of the existing dome remains visible from the ground floor, while suddenly becoming very close to the diners on the upper level. Sitting close to the stone arches of the ceiling, the symmetry of the cupola is no longer apparent, the reference points change, and sense perception of the space is altered. In the curve of the hull above, immersed in warm red tones, the upper level becomes an intimate and private space.
The red carpeting flows down the steps of the main staircase dramatically, spreading out into the center of the black floor below, and running under the tables until it arrives at the edge of the facade.
At the back of the room, in the area closest to the entrance to the Opera, the space becomes more protected and private, contrasting with the whiteness of the rest of the room. Long red booths line this space, creating the « lounge » area for the restaurant. At the outside edge of the lounge, a long black bar snakes around a nearby column.
The design for this project is based around creating a space that will highlight the restaurant inside the Opera Garnier, without mimicking the existing monument, but respecting it while affirming its truly contemporary character.
Quoted by Archdaily ...
EMBLEMS OF MIND: THE
INNER LIFE OF MUSIC & MATHEMATICS BY EDWARD ROTHSTEIN I TIMES - RANDORN
The composer
Igor Stravinsky once remarked that in mathematics a musician should find a
study "as useful to him as the learning of an- other language is to a
poet." What Rothstein, chief music critic of the New York Times, attempts
to explain is why. Few dispute the strong connections between music and
mathematics. Even at its most improvisational, music follows structural rules
of meter and tempo. Similarly, even the most abstract mathematical equations
are built from known axioms in an elegant pattern not unlike the movements of a
sonata. But Rothstein wants to delve deeper into the two disciplines, to
discover whether their inner workings yield insights into the act of creation
itself. The journey he undertakes-through the higher reaches of philosophy, musical
composition, and mathematical theory is so satisfying that the elusiveness of
its destination finally becomes irrelevant. Along the way, the lay reader
learns to appreciate how mathematicians derive such principles as Fermat
numbers, the Fibonacci Series, and Godel's incompleteness theorem. One of
Rothstein's more intriguing observations is that the process driving
mathematics is "no more dominated by compulsion or mechanism than musical
composition is by the 'need' to follow one type of chord with another."
Rather, mathematicians extrapolate proofs through surprisingly playful
experimentation with the relations between numbers. The numbers represent an
unmapped universe; if the mathematicians' work is successful, they uncover an
internal relationship between the elements. Rothstein suggests that listeners
arrive at a sense of a composer's work in a similar way: "Mappings are
made within music- from one phrase to another, from one section to another. . .
[and] to our varied experience as listeners." Depending on that
experience, the connections may become more refined. It may be possible, for
example, for a given listener to recognize the style of the music-baroque or
classical or romantic or to identify a piece as a fugue or a waltz, but even
the uninitiated will recognize that there is order behind the notes. Rothstein
deftly reveals the beauty and elegance of certain mathematical principles, but
his argument tends to reduce music to a consideration of form and function-at
least until the visionary final pages of the book, where he describes the poet
William Wordsworth's encounter with a spectacular view emerging from morning
mist. "The mist, the moon, the sky, and the ocean are each distinct
objects," writes Rothstein, "each seemingly subject to its own law,
possessing its own character. But they are also tied together, exercising
powers and influences on one another." As the poet seeks to apprehend the
influences and make sense of the whole scene, so composers struggle to make
music out of silence and mathematicians to show connections where none appear
to exist. Yet something about the two arts of music and math so similar in
their "inner and outer life," in their reliance on "metaphors
and analogies, proportions and mappings “ -hovers always just out of
reach. They remain mysteries, "too close to Truth to be merely human, too
close to invention to be divine."
L’ORFEO, SV 318, ACT 2: ‘’ POSSENTE SPIRTO ‘’ BY PHILIPPE JAROUSSKY
TRISTAN & ISOLDE BY JAMES BORT
YOU MAY WATCH '' TREE OF CODES '', COLLABORATION WITH
CHOREOGRAPHER WAYNE McGREGOR .....
THE AUDITORIUM
In the tradition of Italian theatre, the horseshoe-shaped
"French" auditorium, so-called for the way the seats are arranged
according to their category, was designed for the audience to see and to be
seen. Its metallic structure, hidden by marble, stucco, velvet and gilding,
supports the weight of the 8-ton bronze and crystal chandelier with its 340
lights. The house curtain was created by theatrical painters Auguste Rube
(1817-1899) and Philippe Chaperon (1823-1906), following Charles Garnier's
instructions. The curtain was replaced by an identical one in both 1951 and
1996. The ceiling painted by Marc Chagall and commissioned by the Minister of
Culture André Malraux was inaugurated on September 23, 1964.
THE OPÉRA GARNIER DE PARIS
ECHOES OF THE CREATIVE MUSES
THE OPERA DE PARIS HISTORY
1661
Founding of the Académie royale de Danse (Royal Academy of Dance) by Louis XIV with the purpose of training dancers and formalising choreographic art.
Founding of the Académie royale de Danse (Royal Academy of Dance) by Louis XIV with the purpose of training dancers and formalising choreographic art.
1669
Founding of the Académie royale de Musique (Royal Academy of Music), also known as Académie d'Opéra or Opéra, at the instigation of Colbert. Under the aegis of the crown, this institution brought together a group of singers, the first professional orchestra in France and the Ballet Company of the Académie royale de Danse in order to promote French opera in Paris and in the more important cities in the kingdom. The Académie was not subsidised but funded itself. It wasn't until after the French Revolution that its director received financial help from the state and then only if he accepted certain conditions in exchange. The King granted him one privilege: a monopoly on the performance of musical theatre. From 1672 to 1687, the Académie was directed by Lully who wrote operas for it, including Cadmus and Hermione (1673), considered to be the first French opera in the history of music, Armide (1674) and Alceste (1686). A milestone in the history of French opera, the founding of the Académie royale de Musique was also an important event in the history of Ballet: until then, dance had been considered merely as a courtly entertainment; now it had the public stage at its disposal and dance interludes were incorporated into operas. Little by little, the Ballet became more and more independent until, in the 19th century, the era of the great romantic ballets, it had its own repertoire.
Founding of the Académie royale de Musique (Royal Academy of Music), also known as Académie d'Opéra or Opéra, at the instigation of Colbert. Under the aegis of the crown, this institution brought together a group of singers, the first professional orchestra in France and the Ballet Company of the Académie royale de Danse in order to promote French opera in Paris and in the more important cities in the kingdom. The Académie was not subsidised but funded itself. It wasn't until after the French Revolution that its director received financial help from the state and then only if he accepted certain conditions in exchange. The King granted him one privilege: a monopoly on the performance of musical theatre. From 1672 to 1687, the Académie was directed by Lully who wrote operas for it, including Cadmus and Hermione (1673), considered to be the first French opera in the history of music, Armide (1674) and Alceste (1686). A milestone in the history of French opera, the founding of the Académie royale de Musique was also an important event in the history of Ballet: until then, dance had been considered merely as a courtly entertainment; now it had the public stage at its disposal and dance interludes were incorporated into operas. Little by little, the Ballet became more and more independent until, in the 19th century, the era of the great romantic ballets, it had its own repertoire.
During the two centuries that followed its creation, the Opéra changed its
venue eleven times: it resided at la Bouteille (1670-1672), the Jeu de Paume
(1672-1673), the Palais-Royal (1673-1763), the Salle des Machines (1764-1770),
the second hall of the Palais-Royal (1770-1781), the Menus-Plaisirs (1781), the
Porte Saint-Martin (1781-1794), the Salle de la Rue de Richelieu (1794-1820),
the Théâtre Louvois (1820), the Salles Favart (1820-1821) and Le Peletier
(1821-1873).
1681 ….
The Ballet of the Opéra opened its doors to women dancers for the first time.
The Ballet of the Opéra opened its doors to women dancers for the first time.
1733
At the age of fifty, Jean-Philippe Rameau made his debut at the Académie royale de Musique with a tragic opera, Hippolyte et Aricie, based on the play Phèdre by Racine. It was a triumphant success. Among the spectators, the composer, André Campra, now an old man, remarked that there were enough notes in Rameau's music for ten operas. It was after this memorable performance that Rameau, whose output until that point amounted to only a few works, was to become the musical genius that we know today. During the twenty years that followed, he composed a dozen works for the Académie including Les Indes galantes (1735) and Les Paladins (1757). In reference to the performance of Platée in 1745, the Encyclopédie by Diderot and Alembert, first published in 1751, was to comment on its extraordinary structure, unprecedented in French music, combining grandiose images, humorous tableaux and the most noble, the most powerful music.
At the age of fifty, Jean-Philippe Rameau made his debut at the Académie royale de Musique with a tragic opera, Hippolyte et Aricie, based on the play Phèdre by Racine. It was a triumphant success. Among the spectators, the composer, André Campra, now an old man, remarked that there were enough notes in Rameau's music for ten operas. It was after this memorable performance that Rameau, whose output until that point amounted to only a few works, was to become the musical genius that we know today. During the twenty years that followed, he composed a dozen works for the Académie including Les Indes galantes (1735) and Les Paladins (1757). In reference to the performance of Platée in 1745, the Encyclopédie by Diderot and Alembert, first published in 1751, was to comment on its extraordinary structure, unprecedented in French music, combining grandiose images, humorous tableaux and the most noble, the most powerful music.
1774
En Europe, l’opéra est entré dans une phase de profonds changements qui marqueront à jamais son histoire. Alors que Mozart s’apprête à quitter son Salzbourg natal pour prendre son envol, après Vienne, Christoph Willibald Gluck arrive à Paris dans le but d’appliquer sa réforme à l’opéra français. Ses œuvres, parmi lesquelles Iphigénie en Aulide (1774), Orphée et Eurydice (1774 pour la version française) et Iphigénie en Tauride (1779), toutes créées et représentées à l’Académie royale de Musique, deviennent le fer de lance d’un art lyrique nouveau en quête de naturel et de vérité dramatique.
En Europe, l’opéra est entré dans une phase de profonds changements qui marqueront à jamais son histoire. Alors que Mozart s’apprête à quitter son Salzbourg natal pour prendre son envol, après Vienne, Christoph Willibald Gluck arrive à Paris dans le but d’appliquer sa réforme à l’opéra français. Ses œuvres, parmi lesquelles Iphigénie en Aulide (1774), Orphée et Eurydice (1774 pour la version française) et Iphigénie en Tauride (1779), toutes créées et représentées à l’Académie royale de Musique, deviennent le fer de lance d’un art lyrique nouveau en quête de naturel et de vérité dramatique.
1776
In Europe, opera was undergoing a period of profound change, which was to leave its mark on musical history: Mozart was on the point of spreading his wings beyond his native Salzburg and Christophe Willibald Gluck left Vienna for Paris in order to apply his musical reforms to French opera. His works, which included Iphigénie en Aulide (1774) Orphée et Eurydice (1774 for the French version) and Iphigénie en Tauride (1779), were all performed at the Académie royale de Musique and became the spear head of a new operatic art in quest of natural forms of expression and dramatic verisimilitude.
In Europe, opera was undergoing a period of profound change, which was to leave its mark on musical history: Mozart was on the point of spreading his wings beyond his native Salzburg and Christophe Willibald Gluck left Vienna for Paris in order to apply his musical reforms to French opera. His works, which included Iphigénie en Aulide (1774) Orphée et Eurydice (1774 for the French version) and Iphigénie en Tauride (1779), were all performed at the Académie royale de Musique and became the spear head of a new operatic art in quest of natural forms of expression and dramatic verisimilitude.
1782
Luigi Cherubini compose avec Anacréon ou l'Amour fugitif son premier opéra pour l’Académie royale de Musique. SuivrontFaniska (1806), Pygmalion (1809), Crescendo (1810), Abencérages ou l'Étendard de Grenade (1813) et Ali-Baba et les Quarante Voleurs (1833).
Luigi Cherubini compose avec Anacréon ou l'Amour fugitif son premier opéra pour l’Académie royale de Musique. SuivrontFaniska (1806), Pygmalion (1809), Crescendo (1810), Abencérages ou l'Étendard de Grenade (1813) et Ali-Baba et les Quarante Voleurs (1833).
1784
The king endowed the Opéra with a Ballet School, previously the existing École de l'Académie.
The king endowed the Opéra with a Ballet School, previously the existing École de l'Académie.
1826
Gioacchino Rossini composed his last operas for the Académie: Le Siège de Corinthe (1826), Moïse et Pharaon ou le Passage de la Mer Rouge (1827), Le Comte Ory (1828) and his monumental work, Guillaume Tell (1829).
Gioacchino Rossini composed his last operas for the Académie: Le Siège de Corinthe (1826), Moïse et Pharaon ou le Passage de la Mer Rouge (1827), Le Comte Ory (1828) and his monumental work, Guillaume Tell (1829).
1828
First performance of Muette de Portici, composed for the Opéra by Daniel-Françoise-Esprit Auber with a libretto by Eugène Scribe. Although it has now been largely forgotten, this opera was a huge success at the time and played an important role in the emergence of French Grand Opera. Auber and Scribe collaborated on half a dozen more works, including Le Philtre (1831), the libretto of which was also used by Gaetano Donizetti for his Elisir d'Amore. Paris would later commemorate the partnership of these two artistic geniuses, Auber and Scribe, by naming the two streets that lead to the Palais Garnier after them.
First performance of Muette de Portici, composed for the Opéra by Daniel-Françoise-Esprit Auber with a libretto by Eugène Scribe. Although it has now been largely forgotten, this opera was a huge success at the time and played an important role in the emergence of French Grand Opera. Auber and Scribe collaborated on half a dozen more works, including Le Philtre (1831), the libretto of which was also used by Gaetano Donizetti for his Elisir d'Amore. Paris would later commemorate the partnership of these two artistic geniuses, Auber and Scribe, by naming the two streets that lead to the Palais Garnier after them.
1831
First performance at the Opéra of Robert le Diable; this opera marks the beginning of the collaboration between Scribe and Giacomo Meyerbeer, another composer of the period. Although Gustav Kobbé considered the scenario of this opera to be grotesque (the son of the devil falls in love with a princess), Meyerbeer's music transcends the libretto and the opera was such a success that the Opéra, according to legend, made a fortune from the takings. Robert le Diable marks the beginning of a long and faithful collaboration between Meyerbeer, his librettist and the Opéra, a partnership which produced Les Huguenots (1836), Le Prophète (1849) and L'Africaine, completed in 1865 after Meyerbeer's death. With their combination of Italianate melody, Germanic harmony and the rhythms and declamatory style of the French tradition, the works of Meyerbeer, together with those of Rossini and Halévy, laid the foundations of French Grand Opera. Wagner imitated them before developing his own style and Verdi never missed a premier at the Paris Opera. Paris was now the hub of the operatic world and all the great composers eagerly sought to have their works performed there.
First performance at the Opéra of Robert le Diable; this opera marks the beginning of the collaboration between Scribe and Giacomo Meyerbeer, another composer of the period. Although Gustav Kobbé considered the scenario of this opera to be grotesque (the son of the devil falls in love with a princess), Meyerbeer's music transcends the libretto and the opera was such a success that the Opéra, according to legend, made a fortune from the takings. Robert le Diable marks the beginning of a long and faithful collaboration between Meyerbeer, his librettist and the Opéra, a partnership which produced Les Huguenots (1836), Le Prophète (1849) and L'Africaine, completed in 1865 after Meyerbeer's death. With their combination of Italianate melody, Germanic harmony and the rhythms and declamatory style of the French tradition, the works of Meyerbeer, together with those of Rossini and Halévy, laid the foundations of French Grand Opera. Wagner imitated them before developing his own style and Verdi never missed a premier at the Paris Opera. Paris was now the hub of the operatic world and all the great composers eagerly sought to have their works performed there.
1832
La Sylphide, created for the Opéra by Philippe Taglioni, was the first ballet to be danced in white tutus.
La Sylphide, created for the Opéra by Philippe Taglioni, was the first ballet to be danced in white tutus.
1840
With more than sixty operas to his name, the Italian composer, Gaetano Donizetti, produced La Favorite, his first work for the Paris Opéra. Dom Sébastien, Roi de Portugal was soon to follow in 1843.
With more than sixty operas to his name, the Italian composer, Gaetano Donizetti, produced La Favorite, his first work for the Paris Opéra. Dom Sébastien, Roi de Portugal was soon to follow in 1843.
1841
The ballet, Giselle, by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, marked the apogee of romantic Ballet. Théophile Gautier, the author of the libretto, drew on German mythology for the legend of the deceased lovers who lure foolish travellers away from their road, compelling them to dance all the way to the gates of the Kingdom of Shadows.
The ballet, Giselle, by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, marked the apogee of romantic Ballet. Théophile Gautier, the author of the libretto, drew on German mythology for the legend of the deceased lovers who lure foolish travellers away from their road, compelling them to dance all the way to the gates of the Kingdom of Shadows.
1845
Jacques Fromental Halévy's La Juive, his most celebrated work, was performed at the Paris Opera. This masterpiece in five acts including ballet established French Grand Opera as one of the major operatic genres of the 19th century. La Reine de Chypre was to follow in 1841. Like Gluck, Auber and Scribe, Halévy was honoured by having one of the four streets adjacent to the Opéra named after him.
Jacques Fromental Halévy's La Juive, his most celebrated work, was performed at the Paris Opera. This masterpiece in five acts including ballet established French Grand Opera as one of the major operatic genres of the 19th century. La Reine de Chypre was to follow in 1841. Like Gluck, Auber and Scribe, Halévy was honoured by having one of the four streets adjacent to the Opéra named after him.
1847 …
Giuseppe Verdi composed his first grand opera, Jérusalem,
for the Académie Royale de Musique. Its rather mitigated success, attributed at
the time to the mediocrity of the performers, would not prevent Verdi from
accepting commissions for Les Vêpres Siciliennes (1855)
and Don Carlos (1867). Verdi always had an ambiguous
relationship with the Paris Opéra: he never refused the honour of having a work
commissioned but he constantly complained about the demands exacted by what he
referred to as "la grande Boutique".
1851 …
Charles Gounod composed his first opera, Sapho,
for what was now known as the Académie Impériale de Musique. Among the works
that followed, Polyeucte (1878) and Le Tribut de
Samora (1881) are worthy of note.
14th january 1858 ….
As Napoléon III was arriving at the Opéra in his carriage,
Italian anarchists employed by Felice Orsini threw bombs into the crowd. The
Emperor and his wife escaped by a miracle but eight people were killed and
almost five hundred injured in the explosion. The following day, the Emperor
made the decision to build a new opera house.
1860 ….
Organisation of an international competition for the
building of the new Académie Impériale de Musique et de Danse. 171 architects
participated including the thirty-five-year-old and as yet unknown Charles
Garnier. His proposed design attempted to remedy what he considered to be the
crucial problem for artists of the period: the impossibility of accommodating
large audiences. He was proclaimed the winner on May 30th 1861.
1861 ….
Richard Wagner made his entrance at the Opéra amid
considerable fracas and financial losses: the first performance ofTannhäuser sparked
off a new battle of Hernani amongst the audience. Management gave in to public
pressure, cancelling the other performances; the composer hurriedly left Paris.
So what! declared Baudelaire, taking up Wagner's defence: a new idea had been
launched and a breach had been made in the old edifice: that was the important
thing.
1862 ….
The painter and art critic, Émile Perrin, took up the
directorship of the Paris Opéra, a post he was to occupy until 1871.
28th - 29th october 1873 ….
The Salle Le Peletier was burnt down in a fire, which raged
for more than twenty-four hours, the causes of which remain unknown to this
day. The Opéra was obliged to move to the Salle Ventadour until the new Opéra
Garnier had been completed.
5th january 1875 ….
Inauguration of the new opera house. Charles Garnier's
Palais became the centrepiece of Paris, recently rebuilt by Georges Eugène
Haussmann. Napoleon III, who had died two years previously, never saw the
magnificent palace he had commissioned. No trees were planted on the avenue
leading to the main entrance: passers-by enjoyed an uninterrupted view of the
facade, intended as a glittering symbol of imperial power.
1914 ….
As France entered the First World War, Jacques Rouché became
director of the Paris Opera, a post he held for over thirty years.
1929 ….
George Balanchine, former dancer with the Ballets russes
under Diaghilev, was invited to create a new choreography for the Opéra to
Beethoven's Les Créatures de ballet. He fell ill and was unable to
complete the commission before he died. He recommended Serge Lifar, also from
the Ballets russes, to replace him. The following year, Lifar became ballet
master, taking over the company to which he devoted more than thirty years of his
life. He created a class for adage or pas de deux giving
increased importance to male dancers, no longer there merely as a foil for the
ballerinas. His neoclassical style greatly influenced Roland Petit and Maurice
Béjart.
1933 ….
At the age of nine, Roland Petit was accepted at the Opéra's
Ballet School. He danced with the Ballet Company until the age of twenty when
he resigned in order to devote his time to choreography. He created a number of
ballets for the Paris Opéra including Notre Dame de Paris, Adages et
Variations (1965), Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (1980)
and Clavigo (1999). He died in 2011.
1936 ….
World premier of Georges Enescu's only opera, the
masterpiece Œdipe at the Paris Opéra. In his memoires, the
Romanian composer tells how he was inspired to write the work after a dazzling
performance of Sophocles' Œdipus Rex in French.
1939 …..
The French government decided to merge the Opéra Comique,
now in financial difficulties, with the Théâtre National de l'Opéra to form the
Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Nationaux (Union of National Operatic Theatres).
The Opéra Comique did not regain its independence until 1990.
1945 ….
Just after the Second World War, the composer, conductor and
music critic, Reynaldo Hahn, was appointed director of the Paris Opéra.
1957 ….
First performance at the Palais Garnier of the French
version of Francis Poulenc's opera, Dialogues des Carmélites, the
Italian version of which had been performed a few months previously. The moving
story of the young novice who overcomes her fears and follows her Carmelite
sisters to the guillotine met with immediate success. Poulenc never put as much
time and energy into the creation of a musical work as he did for this
one.
1973 …..
After being artistic director of Radio Zurich, conductor of
the Norddeutscher Rundfunk Orchestra and director of the Hamburg Opera, the
Swiss composer, Rolf Liebermann, was appointed to the direction of the Réunion
des Théâtres Lyriques Nationaux.
1974 ….
Creation of the Opéra Studio, a training centre for opera
singers at the Salle Favart. It was to be replaced by the Atelier Lyrique
(Operatic Workshop) in 2005.
1978 ….
The Réunion des Opéras Lyriques Nationaux was disbanded to make
way for the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris of which Rolf Liebermann was
to be artistic director until 1980…..
1982 …..
Judging the scope of the Palais Garnier to be insufficient,
President François Mitterand decided to build a new, modern opera house in
Paris. A competition was organised for which 1700 architects entered a total of
756 projects
1983 …..
Founding of the state opera company, the Établissement
Publique Opéra-Bastille (EPOB). The thirty-seven-year-old Uruguayan architect,
Carlos Ott, won the contract to build the new opera house.
First performance of Messaien's Saint François d'Assise, Scènes Franciscaines, an opera in three acts and eight tableaux, at the Palais Garnier, conducted by Seiji Ozawa and directed by Sandro Sequi. Rolf Liebermann had commissioned the work in 1975 and it took Messiaen eight years to compose the libretto and the score.
After an exceptional international career as a dancer, Rudolf Nureyev became Director of Dance at the Paris Opéra. He left after six years but remained the company's principal choreographer. He was responsible for reviving and adapting the ballets of Marius Petipa, including Don Quichotte (1981), Raymonda (1983), Swan Lake (1984), The Nutcracker (1985) and La Bayadère(1992).
First performance of Messaien's Saint François d'Assise, Scènes Franciscaines, an opera in three acts and eight tableaux, at the Palais Garnier, conducted by Seiji Ozawa and directed by Sandro Sequi. Rolf Liebermann had commissioned the work in 1975 and it took Messiaen eight years to compose the libretto and the score.
After an exceptional international career as a dancer, Rudolf Nureyev became Director of Dance at the Paris Opéra. He left after six years but remained the company's principal choreographer. He was responsible for reviving and adapting the ballets of Marius Petipa, including Don Quichotte (1981), Raymonda (1983), Swan Lake (1984), The Nutcracker (1985) and La Bayadère(1992).
1984 ….
Work began on the new opera house.
1987 ….
The School of Dance moved to its current location in
Nanterre.
1988 ….
Pierre Bergé, the co-founder and president of the haute
couture company Yves Saint-Laurent, became head of the board of directors of
the Opéra. He was to organise the inauguration ceremony of the Opéra Bastille.
13th july 1989 ….
Inauguration of the Opéra Bastille as part of the
bicentenary celebrations of the French Revolution.
1990 …..
The Palais Garnier and the Opera Bastille merge to form the
Opéra de Paris. The first operatic performance in the new opera house took
place in March: Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz in a production
by Pier Luigi Pizzi, conducted by the musical director of the Paris Opéra,
Myung-Whun Chung. The first season of the Opéra-Bastille began in September of
that year.
1994 ….
The Paris Opéra became the Opéra National de Paris. The
change of name indicated its intention to extend its scope beyond the confines
of the capital.
1995 ….
Having been general secretary for the Réunion des Théâtres
Lyriques Nationaux, assistant to Rolf Liebermann at the Théâtre National de
L'Opéra and the director of Geneva's Grand Théâtre, Hugues R. Gall became
director of the Paris Opera.
The choreographer, teacher and former dancer at the Opera Ballet Company, Brigitte Lefèvre became Director of Dance at the Paris Opera. Before taking up this post, she had been principal inspector for dance at the Direction of Music and Dance at the Ministry of Culture and General Administrator, Assistant Director responsible for dance of the Opéra Garnier.
The choreographer, teacher and former dancer at the Opera Ballet Company, Brigitte Lefèvre became Director of Dance at the Paris Opera. Before taking up this post, she had been principal inspector for dance at the Direction of Music and Dance at the Ministry of Culture and General Administrator, Assistant Director responsible for dance of the Opéra Garnier.
2004 ….
Gerard Mortier, former director of the a Théâtre Royal de La
Monnaie in Brussels, of the Salzburg Festival and the Ruhrtriennial Festival,
was appointed to the head of the Paris Opera.
2009 ….
The international-known stage director, Nicolas Joel left
the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse to become director of the Paris Opera.
Philippe Jordan was appointed to his side as Musical Director.
2014 ….
After serving as Company Secretary at the Théâtre
d'Aubervilliers, co-director at the Centre Dramatique national de Nice and the
Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, director of the Théâtre du Châtelet, general
manager of the Orchestre de Paris, director of the Festival International
d'Aix-en-Provence and then general manager and artistic director of Milan's
Teatro alla Scala, Stéphane Lissner became
director of the Opéra national de Paris.
SALON DU GLACIER, FOYER
At the end of a long gallery is the Rotunde du Glacier, a
fresh and bright rotunda with a ceiling painted by Clairin (1843-1919) and
featuring dancing bacchantes and fauna, along with tapestries illustrating
different refreshments as well as fishing and hunting. Completed after the
opening of the Palais Garnier, this salon evokes the aesthetic of the Belle
Époque.
The vault of the Avant-Foyer is covered with mosaics of shimmering colours on a gold background. The view of the Grand Staircase is spectacular. The play of light between mirrors and windows in the Grand Foyer further accentuates the latter's vast dimensions. The ceiling painted by Paul Baudry (1828-1886) features themes from the history of music.
The lyre is the main element: it reigns over all the decorative vocabulary, be it on capitals, heating grids or doorknobs. A copy of Charles Garnier's bust by the sculptor Carpeaux (1827-1875) is located in the centre of the foyer, near a window looking down the Avenue de l'Opera towards the Louvre. The view can be enjoyed even more from the loggia. The Salons du Soleil et de la Lune offer a symbolic and poetic transition to the other areas.
The vault of the Avant-Foyer is covered with mosaics of shimmering colours on a gold background. The view of the Grand Staircase is spectacular. The play of light between mirrors and windows in the Grand Foyer further accentuates the latter's vast dimensions. The ceiling painted by Paul Baudry (1828-1886) features themes from the history of music.
The lyre is the main element: it reigns over all the decorative vocabulary, be it on capitals, heating grids or doorknobs. A copy of Charles Garnier's bust by the sculptor Carpeaux (1827-1875) is located in the centre of the foyer, near a window looking down the Avenue de l'Opera towards the Louvre. The view can be enjoyed even more from the loggia. The Salons du Soleil et de la Lune offer a symbolic and poetic transition to the other areas.
BASSIN DE LA PITHYE, GRAND ESCALIER
Beyond the Rotonde des Abonnés, the Bassin de la Pythia leads
to the Grand Escalier with its magnificent thirty-meter-high vault. Built of
marble of various colours, it is home to the double staircase leading to the
foyers and the various floors of the theatre. At the bottom of the stairs, a
true theatre within the theatre, two female allegories holding torches greet
spectators.
ODILE DECQ
Odile Decq set up her own office just after graduating from La Villette in 1978
while studying from Sciences Politiques Paris where she completed a postgraduate
diploma in Urban Planning in 1979. International renown came quickly; as early as 1990 she won her first major commission: the Banque Populaire de l’Ouest in Rennes recognized by numerous prizes and publications. She was awarded with a Golden Lion in Venice in 1996. Since then, Odile Decq has been faithful to her fighting attitude while diversifying and radicalizing her research.
She completed the MACRO (Museum for Contemporary Art in Rome) in 2010,
the Opera Garnier’s restaurant in Paris in 2011, the FRAC (Museum of
Contemporary Art in Rennes) in 2012 and just completed the GL Events
headquarters in Lyon.
But more than the realization of the Studio Odile Decq, more than a style, an attitude or a process of production, Odile Decq’s work is a complete universe, including urban planning, architecture, design products and art. A versatility that is awarded in 2013 with the title of Designer of the Year Maison&Objet.
Recently Odile Decq was awarded the Woman in Architecture prize “Prix Femme
Architecte”.
www.odiledecq.com
THE OPERA GARNIER RESTAURANT DESIGN BY ODILE DECQ
ROBERTA MAMELI '' APRI LE LUCI, '' E MIRA - VIVALDI
YOU MAY WATCH '' RUSALKA
'' FROM THE OPERA DE PARIS
OPERA GARNIER CEILING: MARC CHAGALL CONTROVERSIAL MASTERPIECE
BY MATHIAS AUCLAIR, PROVOYEUR -
RIZZOLI BOOK
GISELLE
The ultimate romantic ballet, Giselle
marked the apogee of a new aesthetic that saw diaphanous tutus, white gauze,
tulle and tarlatan take over the stage. The Willis bring the illusion of
immateriality to this ghostly transfiguration of a tragedy. First performed at the
Académie royale de Musique on June 28, 1841, the ballet travelled to Russia,
then temporarily disappeared from the repertoire before finally returning to
France in 1910. Today’s version by Patrice Bart and Eugene Polyakov – which
closely follows Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot’s original choreography –
continues to reaffirm the ballet’s early success. Bright, earthly scenes and
spectral, nocturnal visions: dance becomes the language of the soul and the
ballerina’s ethereal presence seems to defy gravity.
DIRECTOR OF THE OPÉRA DE PARIS STEPHANE LISSNER
THE OPÉRA GARNIER DE PARIS
ECHOES OF THE CREATIVE MUSES
