In the staging of Thomas Ostermeier and with the actors of the Comédie-Française, Maxime Pascal, founder of the collective Le Balcon, who boldly revisits musical theater by mixing acoustic instruments and modern technology, is in charge. This musical comedy by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, created in Berlin in 1928, takes place in the London slums and with the red thread of gang warfare. The 37-year-old French chef looks back on the biases and the method adopted to give new life to this piece of repertoire.
LE FIGARO. – Kurt Weill has the reputation of a musician influenced by jazz and cabaret, but was he not above all a lyricist?
Maxim Pascal. – This is the great revelation I had while studying this work of which I actually only knew a few songs, and on which I had, like everyone else, a lot of prejudices and stereotypes.
This reputedly light music has in fact an expressiveness close to Gustav Mahler by its darkness, its weeping sounds, and which can be put in the European context of those 1920s when we only had a knowledge of jazz extremely limited. It was dreamy, fantasized jazz. On the other hand, Kurt Weill pursues the same quest as the Vienna school of Schönberg and Berg: that of a spoken-song whose declamation, scrupulously noted, creates a halo beyond the words, capable of proposing a solution to the crisis that opera was going through at that time.
To do justice to this spoken-song, you have opted for the French language instead of the original German, and you have resorted to a new translation.
The translator Alexandre Pateau has done an absolutely colossal job to make a translation that is not only literary, but musical. L’Arche, the historical publisher of Brecht’s theater in French, had precisely planned to entrust him with a new French translation, essential because the previous one had ended up becoming unrecognizable by dint of being transformed from one adaptation to another.
We originally planned to rely on this editorial work. But Alexandre’s role turned out to be much more than that of a simple translator: he served as playwright and musical collaborator on this production. We questioned every word and had many incredibly fruitful exchanges on poetic as well as prosodic aspects.
What place does working with actors, who are not professional singers, have in this process?
It all started with them, a year and a half ago. With Alphonse Cemin, the pianist and vocal coach of Le Balcon, we heard all the actors of the Comédie-Française to determine which were the most comfortable with spoken-song. We then produced with Alexandre Pateau a real model which they had in December, to facilitate their appropriation of the text and so that the declamation is integrated when working with the director Thomas Ostermeier.
We often insist on the political dimension of Brecht’s theatre. What about Kurt Weill’s music?
Weill brings a very strong spiritual dimension. He makes this musical a passion! In Mackie’s “Air of Judgment”, we hear a plainchant, in the tradition of Christian liturgical music, not without a Christic dimension. This is perhaps what gradually distanced Weill from Brecht, who felt that the fusion of sound and meaning provoked by music created a sound and expressive object that escaped him…
Théâtre de l’Archevêché on July 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 18, 20, 22 and 24, at 10 p.m.
