FANNY ARDANT

Fanny Ardant

PRESENTATION

CASSANDRE

« Cassandre’ is not really an opera, but a ‘monodrama’ based on a beautiful 1983 text by Christa Wolf, a writer from the former GDR whose fate is reminiscent of that of Shostakovich: independent of the Communist regime, and therefore closely watched by it, but who never wanted to leave her country.

The text is recited by Fanny Ardant, while the musical discourse of an instrumental ensemble combined with electronics encompasses, surrounds, supports and sometimes even masks the spoken voice. But this is no mere melodrama, for the central place of the text is fundamental: everything starts from it and revolves around it, so it occupies the whole of the work. So you need not a narrator but a real actress for such a performance. In Michael Jarrell’s eyes, it was essential that the text be carried by a spoken voice, whose delivery, variable according to the flow of the music, would preserve the fluid quality, the inner emotion, of a narrative that floated freely ‘in snatches, by leaps, by associations from one thought to another…’.

Thus was born ‘Cassandre’, a monodrama without vocals, a benchmark score for contemporary musical theatre ».

Ainsi est né « Cassandre », monodrame sans chant, partition de référence du théâtre musical contemporain.