CARMEN

Carmen’s challenge: Spain interpreted by a French-singing choir from Naples; it’s beautiful, because this contradiction is a part of my whole world: I work in a fifty-strong theatre company, originating from 18 countries, where speaking different languages opens us to unusual horizons, because nobody speaks right but we all understand each-other. There are topics rich with doubts, for example violence on women: already blocking the road, already hindering someone from going in the direction of their choice, even if this seems unfair and evil, but each one of us has the right to undertake certain choices. In Carmen it was necessary to find a way to express all this without falling into stereotypes. So the light, the splendour of the gates to Seville, this light that creates areas of brightness and areas of shade allows us to highlight this minimal specularity that we have: areas of night and areas of day, we are radiant and magnificent in our want for freedom, and at times we act tragically in trampling on others’ souls without even noticing.

CALENDAR

We have tried to create this Carmen with a mirror-floor which would make it possible for us to continuously overturn the up and the down, and which would also make each character more complex. The interpretation of our Carmen means to put to light the fragility of each character in order to avoid that each of them would become either winners or losers. When Julie, Maria, Hugo, Geneviève, Alexis and I met together with the entire creative team, we tried to focus on images that, superimposed on each other, would create an enchantment.
The language of truism, on stage, may at times make everything more false. To create a mirror, a surreal world where directing the choir and singers to move creates images that may be truer than reality itself: we tried to unearth this extraordinary score, looking for the more hidden aspects.
This direction has also been thought under a pictorial perspective, light is defined – also – by brush strokes, using four dominant colours: yellow in the first act, white in the second, followed by black and red. With Giovanna we have again tried to build a chromaticity, with Hugo a scenography to make lights and costumes share one direction, where the brush strokes would highlight moods in a pictorial fashion: we want it to be Spain, but we don’t necessarily have to represent it under all aspects. So yes, there are those doors that remind us of Seville, there are the sonorities, and all of a sudden the costumes which belong to a place but get mixed up, a dimension that reminds us of the language of dreams. We have tried to get certain images from the unconscious to resurface, and all of a sudden we recognise each other, because their interpretation is not totally straightforward or truist; they come to light and they disappear all the time, like fish underwater, that you can’t see, but you perceive their presence and their movements.

Daniele Finzi Pasca