At the Théâtre de l’Athénée in Paris, the musician-director Samuel Achache and the orchestra “La Sourde” play music composed from anonymous testimonies, on the concept of miracle.
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Reading time: 2 min
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Do you still believe in miracles? This is the question posed by a cheerful band of classically trained musicians, who sometimes also come from the theatre, in The symphony fallen from the sky. The director and musician Samuel Achache imagined this unclassifiable show with Florent Hubert, Antonin Tri-Hoang, and Eve Risser and the orchestra “La sourde”.
They are 16 on stage, for a concert augmented by words, choreographed like an absurd and melancholic piece, far from the conventions of classical music. The show is a miracle in itself, it is this notion that they questioned by conducting interviews with anonymous people, their voice is on stage via retro speakers.
In Italy, Naples, or France, they carried their microphones and imagined the music that would accompany these testimonies: “Most miracles no longer have the place they once had, explains Samuel Achache. Especially with the advances in science which explain more and more things.” Florent Hubert noted major differences between the testimonies collected in France and in Italy: “The funny thing is that in Naples, people spontaneously answer that yes, of course, we believe it. ! They don’t have the same modesty at all about their beliefs.”
“Miracles no longer have the place they once had. But in the intimate, there is something that resists that.”
Samuel Achache, directorto franceinfo
Musically, it is a scholarly and profane journey, which evokes Gustav Mahler as much as popular fanfares or black and white cinema. A tragic and burlesque moment, a voice tells of an avalanche with a miraculous outcome. The voice heard on stage is that of a meticulous, breathless story, which Samuel Achache interrupts with a crazy explanation of what a wind plate is: “The narrator tells a suspenseful story, he delays its effects, describes the mountain, he sets the landscape and Florent composed the music which makes us see this landscape.”
Composing music based on the intonations of the voice, Monteverdi already did it, says Florent Hubert. Here, this playful exercise unites music and theater, a wonderful gateway for the public who would not dare to go towards these universes : “What I love is when Samuel listens to my music and immediately sees a staging idea, it speaks to people.”
The gentle and melancholic madness of Samuel Achache had already enchanted us in his previous shows, such as Fugue Or Without drumvery creative marriages of theater and music. Here the theater is less present, but the miracle still works.
The symphony fallen from the sky at the Athénée theater until September 28.
Thierry Fiorile’s report