Production for rent: Archipel(s)

Children choir : Maîtrise Populaire de l’Opéra-Comique: 85 children

Instrumentation
14 : 2-1-1-1 / 1.1.1.1 / 1.1.1.0 / 1perc 1 piano 

Volume of the production
Set and props: 1 container

Other info
Last performed: Opéra-Comique, 2024
Production: Opéra-Comique
 

A youth that embraces codes but evaporates; another that rejects assignment but hides. A society that promotes artificial happiness; another that flees laws, gazes. To grow or to refuse. To leave or to stay. Two worlds and the choice halfway, straddling borders.

Commissioned by the Opéra-Comique for its Maîtrise Populaire, this lyrical fiction benefits from a libretto inspired by novelist Adrien Borne through workshops with the members of the Maîtrise, and a score written by the greatest composer for children's voices, Isabelle Aboulker.

Mathieu Romano, James Bonas, and Ewan Jones coordinate the multiple talents of the Maîtrise – singing, theater, and dance – in the service of a utopia that will amuse as much as it will make the young audience reflect, along with adults eager to share their love of opera.
 

The main idea of the project was to involve the performers of the Maîtrise in the writing process: to write with them and not about them. Throughout the year 2022-2023, we led several workshops together, lasting two to three days each, alternating discussions, improvisations, and puppet making. Behind the concrete concerns of the young people – related to their schooling, vacations – emerged deeper themes and anxieties, such as the fear of war breaking out, for example. We invited them to focus on what they really wanted to say. Entrusting their emotions to the puppets facilitated speaking up in the group. As Adrien wrote the text, we reviewed it with the young people. This is a process called "plateau writing," common in theater but nearly absent in opera.

It's a tale insofar as the piece is narrative. It's also a poetic, symbolic, and metaphorical work. Above all, it's a dream, with the dreamlike way the images follow one another and the elements connect. Like Colette and Ravel's L'Enfant et les sortilèges, its audacity lies in its seriousness and gravity: the characters don't speak like children, but like people. The language our performers appropriate is truly ambitious, and the work should be as stimulating for adults as it is for the young audience. – James Bonas