The premiere at the Quebec Opera Festival of “Yourcenar. Une île de passions” by Éric Champagne, to a libretto by Hélène Dorion and Marie-Claire Blais, encourages us to reflect on these artists who have inspired the world of opera. Overview.
Van Gogh, Grünewald, Palestrina, Mozart and Salieri, Gesualdo, Benvenuto Cellini, Caravaggio: the creators who have fueled the operatic repertoire are rare, and one cannot say that a work is essential, even if Mathis the painter, by Paul Hindemith, deserves a better fate.
How to make an artist’s life and work an edifying subject? How to avoid getting into the artistic process and thus generating a form of stasis from which opera would have difficulty recovering? In our discussion with Hélène Dorion and Éric Champagne, one thing is clearly claimed by the co-author of the libretto: “ Yourcenar. An island of passions is not a biopic nor a biography”. “Everything is true, but everything is made up. Marie-Claire Blais and I are novelists and wanted to do a work of fiction; take Marguerite Yourcenar, but not tell her life story. »
The composer by proxy
It was therefore for the two librettists to “take this avant-garde artist and universalize the subject”, in order to “present to the opera a woman artist committed to the act of creating, a woman with a singularity, a woman of passions, an adventurer, eager for universal cultures”.
The actual character was neither caricatured nor imitated. Her biography has been studied to invent scenes: “We took great moments from her life and built a dramatic arc to make this life an opera,” sums up Hélène Dorion.
The process is more or less similar in the two “model” operas that immediately come to mind when one thinks of lyrical works featuring artists: Mathis the painter, by Paul Hindemith and Palestine, by Hans Pfitzner.
From this point of view, Palestrina (1917) is the oldest example in the XXe century. The action takes place at the time of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) and presents, roughly speaking, the composer Palestrina as the “savior of music”, who, with respect for the old masters, preserves polyphony against the current advocating a return to Gregorian chant by composing a perfect work (the famous Mass of Pope Marcel).
There are many projections in this work: the composer Pfitzner, rooted in tradition, saw in Palestrina a mirror of his own aspirations in a musical world in turmoil (Schoenberg, Stravinsky). And in fact, until then, when composers referred to other artists, they did so by proxy, addressing the themes of creation in adversity or incomprehension.
This theme applies perfectly to the two 19th century models.e century: Berlioz through the sculptor Benvenuto Celliniin a plot that is more passionate than historical, and Wagner who, as usual, always talks about him, this time in The mmaster singers of Nürnberg (1868), where he does not summon artists, but citizens who will practice art through a competition.
After Palestrinahistory and art will meet in Hindemith’s grand opera Mathis the painter (1934-1935). There too, Matthias Grünewald (1475/80-1528), painter and engineer of the Renaissance, author of the famous altarpiece of Isenheim in Alsace, placed in the middle of the adventures of the Peasants’ War in Germany (1524-1526), brings Hindemith , persecuted by the Nazis (his opera, banned, will be created in 1938 in Switzerland), to wonder about the place of the artist in a tormented world and a totalitarian power.
The artist, universal model
Yourcenar. An island of passions is both the story of an artist, but also, through her, a universal subject. “It is a work that is in emotion, relational complexity, freedom and passion, intimacy and public life, elements of Yourcenar, but also elements of human life. Someone who does not know Yourcenar can appreciate this opera, recognize themselves as human beings in their intimacies, their complexities, their inner tensions, their heartbreaks and their paradoxes”, sums up Hélène Dorion.
This is why, even if the opera takes us from the 1930s to the 1980s, Éric Champagne has not tinged his music with echoes of these various periods. “The idea is to present the universalism of the subject. As it is not a biopic, and we are interested in the psychological journey, it seemed to me more relevant that the music follow the logic of supporting a reflection in this direction. »
In the same way, “we won’t be at Petite Plaisance, with Marguerite and Grace in the kitchen. We enter a space of evocation rather than illustration: it goes from the writing of the libretto to the staging, and I would even say to the costumes. The evocation is much more in tune with the bias of emotion, relational complexities and psychological elements. It’s creative consistency,” adds Hélène Dorion.
When Éric Champagne arrived in the project, Marie-Claire Blais (who died on November 30) and Hélène Dorion had written almost everything. However, the composer “operated” certain scenes: “I put my grain of salt a little, by giving ideas in relation to musical forms, for example working on a trio in the 2e deed. It wasn’t originally planned, but it fit very well into the plot. »
Quebec Opera Festival
The subject colors the music
Just like Hindemith in mathis the painterthe Finn Einojuhani Rautavaara found in his opera vincent, on Vincent Van Gogh, the opportunity to link the scenes with orchestral interludes. The type of writing of the libretto Yourcenar. An island of passions opened this opportunity to Éric Champagne. The composer thinks of a possible orchestral variation, but only after a specific work: “I plan to make a series of instrumental episodes, either present in the opera, or cut during the preparatory work, a material which could have a second life. “In the current form, things seem impossible to him:” It is so well integrated into the dramatic fabric that the interlude exists, but it is melted into the sequence of sung scenes. »
Rautavaara found in Van Gogh’s paintings the pretext for sound evocations, a play on textures, which he also declined in his 6e Symphony, “Vincentiana”. In this case, the subject really rubs off on the music, and we would really like to hear, in this regard, what Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro inspired German composer’s opera Nikolaus Schapfl for, on the other hand, Schnittke’s Gesualdo is not devoid of dramatic interest, but it is above all the manipulative and murderous human being, more than the artist, who interests librettist and composer. As for Mozart and Salieriby Rimsky-Korsakov, it follows the legend invented by Pouchkine according to which Salieri, jealous, would have poisoned Mozart, because he wrote too beautiful music.
While Rimsky-Korsakov cites Mozart’s music extensively in Mozart and Salieri, sometimes re-orchestrating it awkwardly, “there is no quotation from Yourcenar in the opera. The three texts read are written by me. They are written without imitating Yourcenar, they are not pastiches, they are texts written in resonance with a Yourcenar tone,” Hélène Dorion tells us.
The difficulty for Hélène Dorion and Marie-Claire Blais was to make a choice. “We started six years ago. There have been many versions. Gradually, the libretto was built like a painting, with regrets. “At the beginning, there was a prologue and an epilogue with a character that evoked Marie-Claire Blais. She had met Yourcenar and symbolized “generational and artistic transmission”. Its deletion affected Éric Champagne. “I got attached to it,” he comments. “It is certain that with lives like that, we could do three times three hours. Choices were made with more or less difficulty. But the work has its coherence and functions on the narrative and dramatic levels”, analyzes Hélène Dorion.
Yourcenar. An island of passions will ultimately be a two-hour opera on a subject that is both rare and universal.