"Et tâchons d'épuiser la mort dans un baiser"

A musical show around Claude Debussy’s correspondence mixing his melodies with fragments of his unfinished opera The Fall of the House of Usher. For a pianist, two singers and an actor.
 
E. A. Poe’s famous novel, The Fall of the House of Usher, has always fascinated Claude Debussy. In 1908, ten years before his death, he began composing an opera based on this fantastic tale, for which he wrote the libretto himself.
 
The composer’s correspondence testifies to the obsession that this work became for him, going so far as to disrupt his married life. When his illness was diagnosed in 1910, a strange process of Debussy’s identification with the character of Roderick Usher is revealed in his letters. Finishing this opera seems to become a matter of survival…
 
correspondance Claude Debussy
conception, mise en espace Marc Lainé
 
avec
Pauline Sikirdji ou Clémentine Bourgoin (reprise de rôle / novembre 2016) mezzo-soprano
Jean-Gabriel Saint-Martin ou Laurent Deleuil (reprise de rôle / novembre 2016) baryton
Nicolas Royez piano
Thomas Jubert comédien
 
lumières Kevin Briard
toile du décor (œuvre graphique originale) Stephan Zimmerli
 
Durée 1h05
 
Création le mardi 16 février 2016 au Théâtre Jean Dasté, Comédie de Saint-Etienne
 
production Académie du Festival d’Aix, La Boutique Obscure, la Comédie de Saint-Étienne – Centre dramatique national, le Centre dramatique national de Normandie – Rouen
avec le soutien de la Fondation La Poste et de La Pop (Paris)
 
diffusion La Boutique Obscure
 
And yet, like Roderick’s death in his sister’s arms, taking his terrible secret with him, the composer’s death before completing this essential work seems to be inevitable…