LE FIGARO.
- What does the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence represent in your career as a composer?
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Pascal DUSAPIN.
-
It came to me the other day like a flash that my
String Trio No. 1
had been created here in 1980. I was 24 years old, and I had no idea that I would do operas later.
Then, in 2005, when Stéphane Lissner, the director at the time, commissioned me to
Passion
, he wanted to associate me with the Festival Academy.
He also programmed me for the first symphony concert at the GTP.
Then there was the creation of
Passion
in 2009. In 2019, I came back, just before confinement, to lead the “Opera in creation” workshop.
In the meantime, Pierre Audi had ordered this new opus from me.
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Why did you choose
The Divine Comedy
?
At home, the subjects of operas are tiled.
This text by Dante is a madness that has obsessed me for a long time.
I had quoted it in
Faustus
or
Passion
, but I knew that approaching it could only be a long process.
You don't enter the
Divine Comedy
like that.
Finally, it was while working on my last opera,
Macbeth Underworld
, that the idea came to light.
I wanted a story with a happy ending.
(Laughs.)
Anyway, with Frédéric Boyer, my librettist, the question of travel imposed itself.
The Divine Comedy
is already a journey in itself.
Hence the idea of summoning several Dante, of taking him at different ages, to also show this inner journey.
Journey that resonated with current events…
The confinement only reinforced the particular, metaphysical and spiritual dimension of this trip.
Especially since we worked on an incalculable number of possibilities.
We really entered the dark forest during the writing, because the libretto itself was constituted as the composition progressed.
Same thing for the staging.
Claus Guth, with whom I had worked, agreed to walk with us and start the work when we only had three paintings ready.
It was the first time I saw the scenography before having finished the opera.
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What is special about Dante's language?
I had already written two operas in Italian,
Perela
and
Passion.
Dante is the one who invented the Tuscan vernacular.
So I knew that the musical treatment of the text had to be predominant.
Coincidentally, mezzo Christel Loetzsch, who was already on
Macbeth
and sings young Dante, happens to have a doctorate in Italian.
She is a specialist in Petrarch and Dante.
She helped me ensure that the music, the rhythm, the accents closely match Dante's language!
