The Limoges Opera revisits Mozart’s Grande Messe in C minor with a contemporary staging that pays homage to the earth

At the helm of this new version of Mozart’s work, the visual artist Olivier de Sagazan and the director Roland Auzet. Entitled “We are from the earth”, this hybrid show where clay plays a main role can be discovered on stage from April 4 to 5, 2024.

It is a major work in the repertoire of sacred music, Mozart’s Grande Messe in C minor inspired the visual artist Olivier de Sagazan and the director Roland Auzet. Their version titled We are from the earth, will be performed for the first time on the stage of the Limoges opera on April 4 and 5, 2024.

Un astonishing spectacle, between music and visual arts which combines video, clay and voices and carries an ecological message. Although unfinished, the spiritual and musical scope from this Mozart mass remains colossal. “It was composed and arranged over the years, so in the end we just follow the course of history, we put ourselves face to face with absolute visibility with this music and this genius and we rotate it to put him face to face with history”explains director Roland Auzet.

“It was composed and arranged over the years, so in the end we just follow the course of history, we put ourselves face to face with absolute visibility with this music and this genius and we rotate it to put him face to face with history”explains director Roland Auzet.

On the stage of the Limoges opera, the artists coat themselves with clay, while singing Mozart’s score, an original bet for these artists more accustomed to classic makeup and costumes. They did not hesitate to break away from conventions to question the viewer. “It’s a unique performance that requires extraordinary adaptability to be able to sing with all these things on your face, plus the clay slows down your heart rate a little,” says the singer Marine Boustie.

Ecological Opera

Creating a total art is the ambition of the visual artist and performer Olivier de Sagazan, We are from the earth proposes to reconcile music and matter, soul and body. Once again, he plays and kneads clay, one of his favorite materials. It also brings an eminently committed and militant message for the planet.

“The Christ character says while lifting earth: this is my body. This is not a sentence that came out of nowhere. In the current atmosphere where our planet is in decline due to a capitalistic vision where we thinks that the earth can be exploited and violated at will, there we say: Be careful, this is my body”, he confides.

“We are from the earth” at the Limoges opera, Thursday April 4 and Friday April 5, 2024.