The event in Aix this summer is youth.
And first of all this woman: at 31, Elsa Dreisig is about to sing her first Salomé there, in a new production by Andrea Breth.
The director, moreover, is full of praise for the young soprano she met when she staged Cherubini's
Medea
at the Staatsoper in Berlin in 2018.
“She is not only a very, very good singer, she's a very good actress, and I need singers who know how to play as well
,” she concedes.
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Above all, if she is perhaps no longer the 16 year old that Richard Strauss recommended for the role of Salomé, the Franco-Danish singer has managed to keep this freshness of timbre and tone which makes her, for Breth,
"the young singer of the moment…”
And should help her carry the vision she wishes to instill in this Salomé 2022: more of a teenager discovering her desire than a femme fatale.
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Still, this role-taking is also a risk-taking for Elsa Dreisig.
She admits it, moreover: "
Without unconsciousness, I would not have done much so far
."
While insisting on his long-standing fascination with this opera:
“The first time I heard it ten years ago, I immediately thought I would have to sing it.
I got the conductor and all possible recordings.
From my first album, I wanted to record the final scene
,” she confided to us a few weeks ago.
The Academy as a chrysalis
Risk-taking that is part of the festival's DNA.
From Sabine Devieilhe to Julie Fuchs, via Lea Desandre, the event will more than once have played its role of chrysalis, allowing young talents - most of whom have passed through its academy - to spread their wings to impose themselves in the lyrical landscape as unavoidable.
This 2022 edition more than ever is focusing on the young generation of French singers or those making a career in France.
If Marianne Crebassa (guest of Esa-Pekka Salonen for Mahler's
Resurrection
), Sabine Devieilhe and Michael Spyres (under the accomplice baton of Raphaël Pichon in
Idomeneo
), or even Jeanine De Bique and Pene Pati (among the headliners of
Moses and Pharaoh
by Rossini), have already inscribed their names in the pantheon of great voices of the beginning of the 21st century, we will particularly watch, in the supporting roles, the blossoming of Aix of a whole new generation recently discovered on the benches of the 'Academy.
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This is the case of the mezzo of Irish origin Fleur Barron, whose deep and bewitching timbre should allow her to easily inhabit the role of Ottavia in
The Coronation of Poppea
directed by Leonardo Garcia Alarcon.
The same goes for the Ottone by countertenor Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian, whose
innate musicality we were able to appreciate recently, in
Giulio Cesare at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.
Or for Marianne Croux, whose very young career we had been able to follow within the Academy of the Paris Opera before she joined the singing residence of the Festival d'Aix last year, and that the we will find alongside Karine Deshayes or Michael Spyres in
Norma
in concert version that will be conducted by Riccardo Minasi.
