What if… what we thought was the end was, in reality, just the beginning! What if, for Don Giovanni, the adventure only began once the curtain fell? These are the two questions that the Danish composer Simon Steen-Andersen asked himself when writing his Don Giovanni aux enfers*, the world premiere of which takes place at the Strasbourg Opera on Saturday September 16, opening the 40th edition of the Musica festival.
From the first scene, the hero disappears behind the scenes. “What happens to him next? Is he really dead, and if so, is he going to hell? And considering the singer who slipped into the role: does he have nightmares remembering the demonic conductor and director who made him work in inhumane conditions? The question deserved to be asked,” laughs the 47-year-old artist who made himself known in the 2000s for his hair-raising electro-acoustic pieces.
If the composer has created numerous works with worldwide impact (including Run Time Error, presented at the last Venice Biennale), this is the first time he has confronted lyrical art in this way. He does it with the humility of a neophyte, “even if I can’t count the number of times I heard Don Giovanni in my mother’s sculpture studio,” he adds. Above all, the forty-year-old embraces his subject with the freshness of a musician who initially came from the rock scene. “I played Metal for a long time in the group Zircus in Copenhagen,” admits Simon Steen-Andersen, whose original creations systematically combine video and music.
His new opus may disconcert purists. But the Dane likes to surprise his audience. In his Piano Concerto (2014), didn’t he have fun dropping a bulky instrument from the hangers before bringing his out-of-tune keyboard into dialogue with an orchestra? The Méphistophélès that he invented to give the answer to Don Giovanni in the basement of the opera is so composite that he renamed him Polystophélès. “He actually built his character by borrowing from numerous demon characters, from the Pluto of Antiquity to the Lucifer of the Bible,” recognizes Alain Perroux, director of the Opéra national du Rhin.
Some particularly successful paintings amaze. Such as this passage where the astonishing tenor, François Rougier, takes flight to the music of Rubinstein’s Demon (1874) while, behind him, images taken by drone are projected where we discover the painted ceilings of the opera Strasbourg. The impeccable baritone Christophe Gay moves people when, all disheveled, he suggests that the performers are sometimes a little overwhelmed by the roles they must carry. We laugh when Simon Steen-Andersen appears on screen in the uniform of a maintenance worker working in the dusty basements hidden under the stage (Polystophélès is installed in an old, forgotten bunker where the German occupier left inscriptions on the walls).
“If this show is successful, it is because it gives a different understanding of pieces that we thought we knew but which here take on another meaning,” expresses, for his part, Stéphane Roth, director of Musica. A festival whose 2023 edition has many surprises in store for spectators. In particular, an entire night dedicated to the French composer Jean Catoire, precursor of minimalism who would have been 100 years old this year.
*Don Giovanni aux enfers by Simon Steen-Andersen at the Opéra national du Rhin until September 21. Co-production of the Strasbourg Opera, the Copenhagen Opera, the Musica festival, the Muse en circuit and the CNCM. Musical direction: Bassem Akiki, costumes: Thibaut Welchlin. With the Ictus group, the choir of the Opéra national du Rhin, the Strasbourg philharmonic orchestra. Cast: Sandrine Buendia, Julia Deit-Ferrand, Christophe Gay, François Rougier, Damien Pass and Geoffroy Buffière. Duration: 2 hours.