La Guerre, Très Loin

War cantatas 

“Wherefore poets in destitute times?”

Formulated by Friedrich Hölderlin just before he withdrew from the world and from history, this question is essential to our troubled times. We set off to meet this poet in his exile, weary as he is from singing revolutions to come. We are guided by a young woman who still believes in them, despite everything.

Director Aleksi Barrière and conductor Clément Mao-​Takacs have woven a form between music and theatre: a set of cantatas composed in exile by Hanns Eisler, to texts by dissident Communist novelist Ignazio Silone, converse with Enfonçures, an “oratorio-​material” by playwright Didier-​Georges Gabily.

From the Europe of fascism to the Gulf Wars, between propaganda and attempts to return meaning to words, these forgotten masterpieces answer each other in the face-​to-​face performance of a tenor and an actress on a stage of exile. Fables and testimonies are intertwined in a performances that questions the ability of artists and their audiences to embrace the world, and their magnificent, derisory ambition to transform it.

“For in our country, everything is based on consensus.
But all it takes is for someone to say NO, and the spell dissipates,
order is in danger, revolt has begun… and must be suppressed.”

Ignazio Silone

Pictures

Presentations of the creators organized on the occasion of these performances:

• 17/​11: Hanns Eisler by the team at La Chambre aux échos
• 21/​11: Ignazio Silone by Rémi de Raphélis, literature professor and Italianist
• 23/​11: Didier-​Georges Gabily by Pascal Collin, dramaturge and translator

Notes by Aleksi Barrière: 

AUX MARGES [avec HÖLDERLIN, SILONE, EISLER & GABILY]