"Julie" parigina al teatro Athénée

So I was at the prima of "Julie" last Friday, January 8. I am still going soft about the beauty and charm of the tiny cutie Athénée theater. If you're in Paris for more than a weekend, that's definitely one of those improbable addresses where you can taste some of the genuine French, Parisian charm.

The show -as expected- suffered from comparison with the knockout production I posted about  the other day [also available on DVD]. It isn't as good because the cast is not up to par and because not enough financial resources have not been put in to set the stage up. It was nevertheless a good show.

Was a pleasure to see Philippe Boesmans (composer) to show up at the curtain call. As for the singers, Agnieszka Slawinska, a young Polish soprano, stands out. Her two costars were OK too.

Julie by Boesmans and Bondy: an opera for posterity

So what about Julie? I saw this DVD a year ago or so. Since we have another production of this opera in Paris starting on January 8, I decided to see it again, to brush up on it.

3 general informations about this opera would be: (1) it is short - only 74 minutes long; (2) it is a chamber opera somehow following a Britten-like line of creation - I bet he would've loved it; (3) it is close to the Wagnerian vein too, as it combines an extraordinary libretto with the music that weaves through the text only to accelerate your dive into the psyche of each of three characters. This should be as close as you can get to the Wagnerian concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, and I'm pretty sure Wagner would have loved it too.