Diphtong

The indescribable terror

What can we do when death steals our loved ones from us, taking away our will to live? Worse still, what can we do with ourselves when they are carried off by fate with no trace?

Grief is not possible, the disappearance of a loved one, no body to cry over, we come face to face with a void, a never-ending abyss. The loved one : doesn’t exist, they never existed and our feeling of love has become a living dream weeping a cold grief impossible to alleviate.

Léonore’s tragic tale stands amongst the big names in tragedies of suspense. Staring into the distance, with the hope of return, the impossibility of having been abandoned, nights spent imagining that the person who no longer exists is still at our side. But there is a part of Léonore that is less reflective. Her loved one’s disappearance, the indescribable terror that makes time stand still and the soul more loyal to the living shadow, incites a mad desperation for Léonore. As if we have disappear to be loyal to ourselves.

Love’s fidelity becomes a person. An other Léonore emerges : Fidélio the liberator of imfamy. She who in this descent into hell, will have the power to bring back he who tyrannic forces had condemned to disappear. In an act that displays more than a poltiics, more than a historic fable, Fidélio reveals the human being as longing to trascend himself. Fidélio embodies the triumph of will and hope in the face of the world’s turning and the tragic destinies it presents : loving an other is the cure.

As with Fidélio, music seems to play a large role in transcendence.

It attempts to display the internal processes in Fidélio’s mind. There’s something limitless in the music, just as with Fidélio’s activities. ‘Neither night, or light can be heard. They are however at the heart of the music in Fidélio and beyond all representation.’
‘The night and the light are all powerful in Fidélio’s life. She represents wholeness, the human being, clarity in the darkness. The space where these movements are played out like a prison cell, a hiding place, walled, is represented by a set that makes darkness and light one. No representation, only the feelings of a place remain, the essential must emerge and Beethoven’s music brings to light the painful silence of Léonore’s hope.

Conductor : Sebastien LANG-LESSING

Director, set design : Hubert COLAS

With : Elisabeth MEYER-TOPSOE (Soprano), Patrick RAFTERY (Tenor), Olaf HAYE (Baritone), Armand ARAPLAN, Andrew GREENAN (Bass), Isabel MONAR (Soprano), Ruben AMORETTI (Tenor)

Projection : Marie Jo LAFONTAINE

Costumes : Cidalia DA COSTA

Lighting : Pascale BONGIOVANNNI and Hubert COLAS

Assistant director : Jean-Christophe MAST

Assistant set designer : Erwan GREFF

Video: Jean-Christophe AUBERT

Intern assistant to direction: Justin MORIN

Intern assistant to direction: Augustin BÉCARD

Director of Musical Studies : Henri FARGE
Choir of l'Opéra de Nancy and Lorraine

Conductor : Philip WHITE
Orchestre Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy