The Past Cannot Be Changed in Music & Vision 12 luglio

The Past Cannot Be Changed
Oscar Strasnoy's 'Un Retour',
recommended by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

Un Retour by Oscar Strasnoy on a text by Alberto Manguel is the masterpiece that any festival of lyrical music would love to commission and to première. It is, no doubt, the best and most engrossing experience of the 2010 Aix-en-Provence Festival. It is a chamber opera requiring seven singers (in a dozen different roles), two pianists, two percussionists, and two brass players (a trumpet and a trombone). During a span of about an hour, its thirteen scenes move swiftly from an airplane, to an airport, from the busy streets of a large city (Buenos Aires) to a small out-of-the-way, but ghostly, village. This review is based on the 9 July 2010 performance.
Is Un Retour is too short to fill an evening? At the Aix Festival, it is performed in the courtyard of a mansion some ten kilometres from the city. Before the performance, the audience is divided into three groups for an artistic prelude: they move, in turn, to three different parts of the mansion's gardens for three artistic 'moments', each of fifteen minutes: a modern dance, madrigals sung by a mezzo with a turba accompaniment, and a reading from Virgil's poems on exile and the afterworld. Each group of spectators, of course, experiences all three parts of the prelude, although in a different order. In a traditionally designed theatre, Un Retour can be easily combined as a double bill with another chamber opera on a similar them (such as Le Malendendu by Matteo D'Amico, premièred in July 2009 at the Sferisterio Festival).

Scene 8 from Strasnoy's 'Un Retour' at Aix-en-Provence. Photo © 2010 Elisabeth Carecchio
Let's come to the crux of the matter. Oscar Strasnoy is a comparatively young composer: he has just turned forty years old. He was born in Argentina but his musical training was in France, Germany and Italy. Ten years ago, he had his first international success, Midea Dos, in Italy, where the opera was performed at the Caio Melisso Theatre in Spoleto and at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome. It was particularly appreciated by Luciano Berio. Now, Strasnoy resides in Germany. Among his works for the theatre, especially significant are Le Bal, after Irène Némirovksy's novel now in repertory at Hamburg Opera. Alberto Manuel is a prolific Argentine-born writer who has lived for several years abroad -- in Israel, Italy, Canada, Germany, Britain and Tahiti. He is now a Canadian citizen.

Scene 9 from Strasnoy's 'Un Retour' at Aix-en-Provence. Photo © 2010 Elisabeth Carecchio
Un Retour deals with Nestor Fabris, an Argentinian in his late forties or early fifties, returning home after thirty years in Europe. He was forced to escape from the country by his parents, because he was involved in a students' uprising, and a military dictatorship was in sight. In exile, he seems to have forgotten even his native language: he signs in French but interacts with all the other characters who sing in Spanish. His homecoming has a pretext: to attend the wedding of his godson, born by a woman who, thirty years earlier, was his girlfriend. He has not had any contact with her since then and hopes to see her again. Upon his arrival, many of his former friends, and even his much appreciated Professor, run into him, but either pretend not to recognize him or rush away from him. He left, but they lived and suffered through the dictatorship. As a matter of fact, we (the audience) do not know if these are actual encounters or just Nestor's imagination and daydreams. The verdict, however, is clear: 'The past cannot be changed'. Nestor must take the first flight back to exile.

Scene 13 from Strasnoy's 'Un Retour' at Aix-en-Provence. Photo © 2010 Elisabeth Carecchio
In the text, there is naturally quite a bit of Virgil: Aeneas' descent to hell. However, there are also remembrances of Albert Camus and Vintilia Horia (and their writing about exile). While Midea Dos has an exuberant score strongly anchored to high tonalities (King Creon is a countertenor) and requiring a comparatively large orchestra, with live electronics, the orchestral and vocal writing of Un Retour is simple, dark and somber, but engrossing. Firstly, the orchestra supports the text : every single word -- in French or Spanish -- is fully understood. It also creates the atmosphere: from Nestor's joy at his homecoming, to his sad and saddening coming to terms with his own life and with those of the others. The tonalities are low: the three protagonists (Nestor, his former girlfriend and his professor) are a baritone, a mezzo and a bass. In the group there are only a soprano and a tenor. The vocal score is based on declamato sliding into arioso, never into arias. The Ensemble Musicatreize of five of the seven singers also has vivid choral moments based on a madrigal structure -- a further reason for the Monteverdi and Strozzi madrigals in the prelude.
This is well worth Glyndebourne and a tour.
Copyright © 18 July 2010 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

AIX-EN-PROVENCE
ARGENTINA
FRANCE
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