Cabaret lunaire

An intellectual and subversive review, which handles satire and black humor in a grating and poetic atmosphere inspired by the Berlin cabaret of pre-war.
An authentic cabaret of today, the result of a collective work guided by Pierre Meunier, the show’s leader, from the proposals of the five musicians, the conductor, the singer and an aerial dancer.

When he wrote the cycle that was to change the course of twentieth-century music, Arnold Schönberg wanted the 21 melodramas based on Albert Giraud’s famous cycle to be “spoken and sung” in the language of the country where they were performed, in keeping with the very young tradition of Berlin cabaret. The poet’s verses were set to music by the composer in a very free German translation by Otto Erich Hartleben, stripped of their rhymes and the original metre. Thanks to his translation, which is as faithful to Schönberg’s prosody as it is to Hartleben’s version, Guillaume Bourgogne gives the French text the expressiveness and rhythm of the emphatic style of the cabarets and theaters of 1900.
Incorporated into a show with numbers, the cycle takes on its function of entertainment, where Pierre Meunier’s elucidations meet Michaux’s hallucinations, Satchie Noro’s aerial dance counterpoises Jessica Martin-Maresco’s punk voice, and Thierry de Mey and Guilhem Meier’s scores respond to the illustrious Viennese. Each musician of the Op.Cit ensemble, repainted for the occasion as a cabaret artist, lends himself with virtuosity to this poetic and absurd review.

Musical direction : Guillaume Bourgogne, Stage direction : Pierre Meunier, French adaptation : Guillaume Bourgogne

with : Pierre Meunier : actor, Satchie Noro : dancer, Jessica Martin-Maresco : voice, Sabine Tavenard : flute, Alexis Ciesla : clarinet, Claudine Simon : piano, Albane Genat : violin & viola, Noémi Boutin : cello

Lighting design : Hervé Frichet, Sound design : Frédéric Finand, Costumes : Emily Cauwet

Music : Pierrot Lunaire / Arnold Schönberg, La Chute / Guilhem Meier, Silence must be / Thierry de Mey, Densité 21,5 / Edgar Varese, Pisse / Guilhem Meier

/by

Once upon a time

Once upon a time is an instrumental theater show where the music, through its dramatic dimension and its gestures, takes on a humorous, critical, parodic or esoteric character…
On the menu: Living-room music for percussion and “discussion quartet” which, like Satie’s furniture music, suspends time and can be tasted like a snapshot; then a composition inspired by Murnau’s silent film Nosferatu featuring the fierce and tragic struggle of a pianist with a metronome, whose beat is permanently disrupted and, as the icing on the cake, the manifestation of an “incarnate nail” who joins in the game…

So many action scenes with a strange, amusing, fantastic, fascinating or ridiculous character that also have the characteristic of questioning the notion of musical work.

with : Jean-philippe Grometto : flute, Violaine Launay : double bass, Jean-michel pirollet : saxophone, claudine Simon : piano, Joël Schatzman : light creation, Omid Hashemi : video

/by