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        Forum contents

  Perović, Introduction
  Mounier-Vehier, Creating Opera for the Web: Au web ce soir – Ursule 1.1 and Actéon
  “Transposing the Necessity of the Present,” Benjamin Lazar interviewed by Mounier-Vehier
        Romeo Castellucci in conversation with Perović
  Simon Hatab in conversation with Perović
    Julia Bullock in conversation with Perović
        Footnotes
        


    
     
		
	

    FORUM
    
		Web Opera and Opera on the Web
	
        

    edited by Sofija Perović
    


    Sound Stage Screen, Vol. 2, Issue 2 (Fall 2022), pp. 85–136, ISSN 2784-8949. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. © 2022 Sofija Perović. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54103/sss19972.


        
		
         
    As an aspiring opera stage director with experience in music and theater, I
    started my research on opera stage direction more than a decade ago. At
    that point, I had not fully realized the potential and the importance of
    the Internet as a tool in contemporary opera productions, and yet all my
    work was somewhat conditioned and certainly influenced by it. My first
    experience with opera was, of course, in person. Nevertheless, around the
    same time I also started watching the VHS tapes of operas lent by my music
teachers. I still vividly remember Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s production of    Rigoletto and Ingmar Bergman’s The Magic Flute. Those VHS
    tapes were soon replaced by DVDs and followed by live streaming in cinemas,
    on television, and finally on the Internet. Since I was living in Belgrade,
    Serbia, it was thanks to those privileges of modern technology that I had
    the opportunity to keep up to date with what was going on in the opera
    world.



    To me personally, the Internet represents a window to the world. It brought
    me to La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House, the Opéra de
    Paris, and many other places, but it also gave me access to learning and
    research, and it allowed me to be in touch with colleagues all over the
    world, to connect with professionals with whom, otherwise, I would not have
    had the opportunity to get in touch and work with. Now, I use the Internet
    in my professional engagements as opera stage director every day—be it to
    do the research, to connect with collaborators, or as a tool in the process
    of making a new opera. For all the productions I worked with, most of the
    marketing and publicity was made over the web, on social media, and online
    magazines. It was partly a strategic decision, but it also came naturally
    since everyone involved in the process used social media on a daily basis.



    Besides the use of the Internet as a tool of communication and promotion,
    the most exciting experience I had with it was when I staged Francis
    Poulenc’s opera La Voix humaine at the Bitef theater in Belgrade
    in 2016. In this production, I made use of the web camera with a specific
    aim—I wanted to bring closer the story of Elle to a contemporary audience
    who could no longer relate to the troubles of the first telephones and
interruptions made by party lines.    [1] By
    showing their proper reflection on the stage, I wanted the people in the
    audience to get involved in the story, but also to raise awareness on the
    privacy issues related to online communications and the sharing of personal
    data over the Internet—and that is why I opted for a web camera.



    This is just one of many examples of taking advantage of the Internet and
    its products and services on the operatic stage. As we keep using it more
    and more in our daily lives, its use is expanding and becoming a standard
    in opera as well. However, even though its presence is constantly
    challenged and reexamined, after its COVID-19-related explosion in
    relevance new tendencies (such as web operas) are now seen in a different
    light.



    The year 2020 has changed the world as we know it. The global pandemic has
    affected artistic and cultural scenes more than any obstacle over the past
    century, including wars and socio-economic crises. In a recent article,
    Anna Schürmer identifies social distancing as “a central (un)word of the
pandemic year 2020”     [2] and
    examines the transformations the opera world went through during the COVID
    crisis by identifying this historical moment as one of the main reasons for
    the “acceleration of digitisation and the appearance of non-human presences
on virtual stages.”     [3] The
    global impact of the pandemic to the (mostly performing) arts scene reminds
    us of its interrelation with the general health of our planet, giving
    another tragic topicality to a relatively new operatic genre called
    “eco-opera.” This worldwide emergency has also highlighted the role of
    technology not only in our daily lives, but also as an essential part and
    tool for the performing arts and opera.



    This journey began with the first live broadcasts of opera on television
    and in cinemas, soon followed by online streaming. It was in 2006 that the
    New York Metropolitan Opera started its successful series of live
    streamings “Met Live in HD.” Other important venues, such as The National
    Theatre in London, followed the Met’s example and started providing live
    streamings of its productions, first in movie theaters all around the
    world, but soon increasingly online as well.



    Even though no one was prepared for such a drastic change in people’s
    habits and artistic creation, the (not so) recent liaisons that opera
    entertained with technology and media came as practical, to say the least,
    during this period. The new subgenres such as web opera, however, came into
    being long before the coronavirus. Modern technologies were used on
    operatic stages on a regular basis—e.g., the common use of videos in opera
    stagings that even resulted in the creation of new software. Some of the
    most representative examples of such practices can be found already at the
    end of the twentieth and the first two decades of the twenty-first century,
    and they include works by composer and innovator Tod Machover, namely his
    interactive Brain Opera from 1996 which “invites the audience to
collaborate live and online,” and the “robotic” opera    Death and the Powers from 2010 which tells the story of the
    inventor Simon Powers conducting his final experiment and trying to project
himself into the future.    [4] A
couple of years earlier, for the revival of his staging of Berlioz’s    La Damnation de Faust at the Met in 2008, director Robert Lepage
    and his artistic team “Ex Machina” recreated the video projections using an
    infrared camera that detects movement to make the projection interactive,
    which at the time was a novelty in the practice of video art for opera. The
    interactive images responded to the movements of the performers on stage,
    but they were also modified by the singers’ voices. The audience had the
    opportunity to see something close to the experience of hallucinating. The
    specificity of this type of video projections lies in its sharing the same
    quality of live performances, as each performance is different.



    Experimentations in the field of video art for the opera stage have been
    replaced by developments in the field of broadcasting and filming. The
    absence of the audience in theaters opened new possibilities for the
    filming of the shows. For instance, it was possible to install the cameras
    directly on stage, which would be problematic during a live performance
    (except for when cameras on stage are used for specific purposes—e.g., in
many productions by Frank Castorf or, amongst others, in the staging of    No Exit by Andy Vores at the Florida Grand Opera in 2013). Since
    its early era, postdramatic theater has always made use of video on stage,
    highlighting the poetic dimension of a production more than its content, as
    it can be seen in the works of Jan Fabre, Romeo Castellucci, or Robert
    Lepage. Castellucci and Lepage have used their experience with technology
    and media in spoken theater and have transposed it to the opera.



    A new operatic genre has recently emerged from this marriage between opera
    and new technologies and from the desire to make opera more accessible to
    young audiences—web operas, in fact, broadcast only on the Internet and not
    in front of a live audience. The question that has emerged since is whether
    the very essence of opera as a genre has changed in the age of the Internet
    or is it only our view of opera (and more generally of art) that has been
    altered?



    Operas for television have been around since the 1950s; yet, with new
    digital technologies the expectations of global audiences have started to
    change. Audiences, too, have changed. Today, with Internet at the opera
    becoming everyday reality, who are the spectators who go to the opera house
    and those who prefer to stay home and watch it as a TV/computer/mobile
    phone broadcast? Opera stage director Dmitri Tcherniakov sums the issue up:
    “The opera on video, at the movies, on Youtube? I don’t pay much attention
    to it, it seems quite natural to me, like mobile phones, computers, and
foreign languages.”     [5]
    From a different perspective, Romeo Castellucci finds opera on screen to be
    “an inherent contradiction” as “one has the impression of what it might
    look like in reality, but it is not ‘the thing.’ The thing is an encounter,
the thing is an act of presence, which is increasingly rare today.”     [6] In
    her book Opera as Hypermedium, Tereza Havelková notices how
liveness today “maintains a high degree of cultural prestige.”     [7] New
    generations of opera creators are, however, less interested in keeping that
    allure of cultural prestige and are aiming more and more to bring opera to
    wider audiences (be it in more approachable public venues or virtual
    spaces).



    The connection and interdependence between opera and media began already in
    the nineteenth century with the first broadcasts of opera through
    telephones. There have even been examples of inventors who thought of opera
    for their creations. We already know that the tendency and desire to
    broadcast opera to remote audiences was already in place during the
    nineteenth century, and that the idea of making opera accessible to a
    wider audience isn’t a recent phenomenon. Thomas Edison was somewhat
    prophetic in providing for this, now customary, practice—i.e., watching
    operas on screen performed by singers who are no longer with us—when he
    collaborated on the creation of William Dickson’s kinetograph: “I believe
    that in coming years … grand opera can be given at the Metropolitan Opera
    House at New York without any material change from the original, and with
artists and musicians long since dead.” [8]



    Given the abundance of scholarly literature on the phenomenon, with
    writings appearing already in the 1980s, video and new technologies, as
    well as new filming techniques, have remained closely linked to opera since
    then. During this period of the pandemic, the bond between opera and the
    Internet grew stronger. We have already mentioned the new genre of web
    opera and the examples dating from the last few years before the COVID-19
    pandemic, but during this period without live performance activities,
    another new genre (or subgenre) has emerged: Zoom operas (i.e., operas
    created exclusively for being broadcast over online peer-to-peer software
    platforms for video communications such as, among others, Zoom). It will be
    interesting to observe the future of this phenomenon, as Zoom is a digital
    platform which invites users to actively participate (with the likes, the
    applauses, and other possible“reactions”); this would create an atmosphere
    quite different from asynchronous performances one can experience on
    YouTube or Vimeo, for example, where the audience is invisible and have no
    direct relationship with the artists (of course, people can leave comments,
    likes, or dislikes, but this is not available to the artists in real time).
    How will this relationship between new technologies and opera develop in
    the future remains to be seen.



    Yet, the subjects developed in the libretti for web operas are quite
    diverse and not necessarily focused on contemporary world issues. For
    example, the first web opera created in France, Ursule 1.1,
    directed by Benjamin Lazar for the Théâtre de Cornouailles in 2010,
    recounts the story of Saint Ursula, Princess of Brittany, who allegedly
    succumbed to the arrows of the Huns on her pilgrimage route to Rome, along
    with 11000 other virgins. As part of the research initiative “Opera and the
    Media of the Future—OMF,” the Center for Research in Opera and Music
    Theater (CROMT) commissioned two “mini operas for the web” to be hosted on
    their website and presented at a two-day forum held in October 2014. The
    first of the two winning projects was presented at Glyndebourne as
    candidates were invited to reimagine opera on the web and ask themselves
    the following questions: “What does opera ‘mean’ on this scale and through
    this medium? How can the composer/media artist engage an operatic audience?
What is the work’s relation to the ‘live’?”     [9] Of
the seventeen submitted proposals, the jury nominated two winners:    You Are Here (Jaakko Nousiainen, director; Miika Hyytiäinen,
    composer) and RUR-Rossums Universal Replicants (Martin
    Rieser, digital, visual, electronic, and interactive artist; Andrew Hugill,
    composer). The concept of You Are Here is based on the idea of
    connecting interior spaces of Glyndebourne Opera to exterior spaces of
    three opera houses in Berlin (Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper, and Komische
    Oper). You Are Here is organized around six short visual artworks,
    each containing a QR code that can be activated with a smartphone camera.
    The codes connect to short opera videos, forming, as described by its
makers, “a virtual peephole between Glyndebourne and Berlin.”     [10]
    Nousiainen and Hyytiäinen have previously collaborated on a similar
    innovative project called Omnivore, originally conceived as an
opera “for mobile delivery.”     [11]
    The idea for this project was born in 2007 when the devices weren’t up to
    the creator’s idea, so it was filmed only a few years later in 2011, and in
    2012 it got its online incarnation. This opera is considered to be the
    first opera written to be distributed as a mobile application and its
    making took effort and much enthusiasm and creativity from a large group of
    musicians, technicians, mobile media experts, video makers, and interface
    designers, among others. The work is also in the “mini format” since it
    lasts about twenty minutes, and another curiosity and specificity is the
    fact that there are several variations of the opera, as the system randomly
    chooses certain parts and the order of presentation. When compared to live
    performance, always different (even with the same cast) and unrepeatable,
    this could be considered as a digital match to the “uncertainty” which
    accompanies every live event.



    As explained in the online proposal, the RUR “mini-web opera
    provides an explosive encounter between new technologies and the
long-established tradition of opera.”     [12]
By asking the audiences to actively participate through social media, “    RUR transforms the way in which operatic works are produced and
    consumed” by making the online experience intermedial and immersive.



    Two years later, in 2016, during the eighteen months when major renovations
prevented access to the building, the Opéra Comique in Paris presented    The Mystery of the Blue Squirrel, an opera designed exclusively
    for the Internet, conceived as “a veritable operatic thriller, [which
    compiles] veiled references to the Opéra Comique and allusions to the
    trades and places of the theater. There [are] investigations and thrills
but in a zany vein accessible to children aged 8 and up.”     [13]
    This opera in seven scenes (Marc-Olivier Dupin, composer; Ivan Grinberg,
    librettist and stage director) was born out of the need for the artistic
    direction at the Opéra Comique to find new places to present its
    productions during the reconstruction of the Salle Favart. The opera’s
    director for the live broadcast was François Roussillon, already well-known
    in operatic and dance circles for his recordings, documentaries, and live
    filming. This full length web opera was advertised to be watched “on the
    web and with the family.” On the Facebook event “Webopéra à partir de 8
    ans” (Web opera for those aged eight and older) it was advertised as: “Take
    note of the event for the family to attend the live creation.” Another
    advertising slogan was: “The room will be virtual; it will be accessed free
of charge from the comfort of your personal computer at home.”     [14]
    We can see that the Opéra Comique proposed this work as a family event and
    insisted on the collective and shared experience, to be consumed in the
    comfort of your sofa, while also insisting on the (clearly attractive)
    gratuity of the event. The Opéra Comique published the results and figures
    regarding the number of spectators for the Facebook event: 2,800 unique
    visitors for the live broadcast, then 4,226 the days after. On the last
    evening, the platform recorded 7,362 requests. On social networks, the web
    opera was a success. Live tweeting amounted to 496 tweets by 112
    participants, with 362,654 people being reached globally. On Facebook,
45,292 people were reached, with 725 likes.    [15]
    In any case, these numbers reveal the presence of a strong community,
    albeit virtual. Through likes and comments on social networks, automatic
    sharing with friends or followers, the Internet community publicized this
    web opera created and produced by the Opéra Comique. All in all, a good
    marketing result, especially as the goal was not only the creation of a new
    work and genre, but also the presentation and promotion of an opera house
    which had been closed to the audience for a year and a half. The popularity
    of the Internet was used also for the educational mission that the
    management of the Opéra Comique had set for themselves.





    Fig. 1. Nico Muhly, Two Boys, Metropolitan Opera. Photo credit:
    Richard Hubert Smith.



    The link and interdependence between opera and the Internet was already
    noted in the early 2000s. In February 2007, Opera Europa organized a
    conference in Paris during which the question of how to rekindle the
    interest of younger generations in opera emerged. The conference (“European
    Opera Days”) focused on the possibility of using the Internet for opera as
    a genre, either for its promotion or for the creation of new types. In his
    opening speech, Jacques Attali spoke of “the web revolution” and its
    potential for the realm of opera. According to Attali, the Web 2.0 and
    initiatives like MySpace and YouTube could succeed in transforming
spectators into active protagonists.    [16]
    During the conference, the example of the English National Opera (ENO) and
    its “Inside Out” project was brought up, which aimed to attract young
    audiences by using the Internet as well as a familiar language. The ENO
    website offered the opportunity to attend rehearsals in real time and
    comment on the latest performances on blogs.



    Internet as the main subject of an opera was introduced for the first time
    ten years ago in Nico Muhly’s opera Two Boys (figure 1), jointly
    commissioned the by Metropolitan Opera House and ENO, and based on a true
    story from the early 2000s—a tragic tale of two boys who met in one of the
    early chatrooms and ended their online “friendship” with one stabbing and
    fatally wounding the other. Although this is a traditional operatic form,
    the libretto written by Craig Lucas depicts in an almost naturalistic
    manner the Internet language, practices, and most importantly problems and
    perils of the Internet realm which are, unfortunately, still very relevant
    in today’s society. The core topic of the opera is cyberbullying and its
    consequences, and the same subject also inspires a three-episode web opera
composed by Michael Roth on a libretto by Kate Gale, calledThe Web Opera (figure 2).    [17]
    Another similarity with Nico Muhly’s production is the fact that this web
    opera (or web opera series) is also based on true events. This work in
    progress (there are five episodes planned in total) aims to raise awareness
    over cyber abuse through the operatic medium.



    The website Operavision.eu is one of the newest and brightest examples of
    Internet use for bringing opera to its younger audiences, but also for
    bringing together its creators or students from around the world without
    forcing them to change location. “OperaVision is an invitation to travel
    online to discover the diversity of musical theatre from wherever you want,
    whenever you want… Convinced that opera can be accessible to everyone,
    OperaVision also believes in its role as a digital stage for emerging
    artists… OperaVision seeks to celebrate the positive impact and value of
opera to society…”     [18]
    With such practices, the Internet community is offered a new space for
    exchange, learning, and creation, which is essentially a new experience in
    operatic practice.





    Fig. 2. Michael Roth, The Web Opera, still photo from episode
    2.



    As Michael Earley noticed: “The laptop is the new keyboard, sound maker,
    orchestra, canvas and film studio—often in the hands of and under the
direct musical-authorial-directorial control of a single artist.” [19]    Upload, an opera created by Michel van der Aa (composer and
    multimedia artist) for the 2021 Bregenz Festival (with its film version
    being screened by medici.tv and streamed by the Dutch National Opera),
    demonstrates this in the most obvious way. As a talking head reminds the
    audience during the play, “the human mind is the last analog device in the
digital world.”     [20]
    Social dementia combined with the desire to live forever are questioned in
    this innovative work. Our “analog devices” seem to have insufficient memory
    to keep alive memories of our ancestors, and Michel van der Aa examines
    other options we may have. This opera explores the possibility of
    “uploading” thoughts and memories in order to achieve an eternal digital
    consciousness after death. Aside from the libretto’s original topic, the
    opera is innovative in its technical aspects, too. The video projections
    used on stage are diverse: one screen shows to the audience the practical
    side and the process of “uploading,” while the other live motion-captured
    projection represents the digital avatar of the character who “uploaded”
    his thoughts and memories. Mixed reality was also used by van der Aa in his
    VR installation Eight. Even though Eight is more of a
    unique mixture of musical theater, visual art, and virtual reality than
    strictly opera, nevertheless it deserves to be mentioned here since such
    experiments putting together operatic style of music with new technologies
    paved the way for their usage on the opera stages. Today, even the term
    “opera” is constantly reexamined, sometimes denied, and reappropriated by
    artists for other purposes.



    In 2015, the Opéra national de Paris developed a third, virtual/digital
    stage in addition to its two existing ones at the Palais Garnier and the
    Opéra Bastille. This free platform, called 3e Scène, was launched with the
    idea of attracting new audiences, especially young people, and getting
    them interested in opera and ballet.



    Internet is a public place, a collective meeting place, a place for
    expression and creation. … In this new space, the Paris Opera intends to
    continue its dialogue with the public and also to make new friends. 3e
    Scène opens wide its doors to visual artists, filmmakers, composers,
    photographers, choreographers, writers, and invites them to come and create
    original works relating to the Paris Opera. The relationship between the
    Opera and the works created may be forthright, robust, subliminal,
    drawn-out, extended or even distended. But above all we want the artists to
    make the Opera their own, to draw on its resources, roam within its walls
    and meet its talents in order to reveal places, colours, history, questions
    and people through creation. This 3e Scène has neither equal nor model.
    Open to the world, it invents a space where tradition, creation and new
technology unite as symbols of modernity.[21]



    Although the works presented were not full operas and could not be defined
    as web operas, 3e Scène represented a new interpretation of opera on the
    Internet. In 2017, 3e Scène organized its first festival at the Gaîté
Lyrique,    [22]
    and for the 2019–2020 season the famous French YouTuber Jhon Rachid was
    invited to perform on the digital platform Yet, not every story has a happy
    ending: as of 2022, the website for 3e Scène has vanished from the Opéra de
    Paris online presence and has since been replaced by a far more traditional
    pay-on-demand platform called “L’Opéra chez soi.”



    The interest in attracting new audiences to opera (and who hopefully will
    keep coming back to it), and the desire to find and create new forms within
    the operatic genre have given rise to many novelties by changing our
    perception of opera and by making it closer to modern, “digital”
    sensibilities. Perhaps one of the greatest achievements in connecting the
    Internet and opera has been the foundation of web opera as a new genre with
    a great potential, even though it remains to be seen which direction it
    will take and how it will evolve. Time will show whether the creation of
    web operas was simply a marketing strategy to attract new audiences or
    whether it will give birth to artworks that will change the operatic genre
    and its stakes for generations to come.



    As Vlado Kotnik affirms, “the production of opera has never been about
    performing a musical work on stage only, but also about performing a highly
contested social arena.”     [23]
    The social arena has drastically changed during the last decade, especially
    during and after the pandemic, and has been mostly transferred to the realm
    of social media. How did this shift influence the operatic world? What are
    the advantages and disadvantages of social media? and, Can they be treated
    as tools on the operatic stage? I talked about this and many other topics
    with American soprano Julia Bullock, whose voice is being heard and spread
    actively on social media; with one of the greatest stage directors of our
    time Romeo Castellucci, whose views on Internet and the relocation of live
    shows to the digital screen are much less optimistic or positive; and with
    the French dramaturg Simon Hatab, who collaborated to the very special
production of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opéra-ballet    Les Indes galantes directed by Clément Cogitore at the Opéra de
    Paris in 2019.


        



    Creating Opera for the Web: Au web ce soir – Ursule 1.1 and Actéon


        
    Caroline Mounier-Vehier *




    “Half play, half musical performance,”     [24]
“cyber-theater,”     [25]
“cyber-show for web-spectators,”     [26]
“webcam show … mini-opera,”     [27]
or simply “opera for the Internet.”     [28]
The expressions used by journalists to describe Au web ce soir – Ursule 1.1, a show conceived and staged by Benjamin Lazar in
    collaboration with composer Morgan Jourdain and musical director Geoffroy
    Jourdain, are varied. The stage director speaks of “live theater on the
Internet”     [29]
and evokes “a new theatrical object, which will be a kind of small opera.”     [30]
    Performed only once on April 29, 2010, at 9pm live on the website of the
    Théâtre de Cornouaille (www.theatre-cornouaille.fr), Ursule 1.1
    was an early example of a performance created for an online audience. Ten
    years later, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Lazar and Jourdain
    joined forces with director Corentin Leconte for a new video project, at
    the crossroads of theater, music, and cinema: Charpentier’s Actéon
, this time more soberly described as a “film in sequence shot,”     [31]
“film,”     [32]
or “filmopera.”     [33]
    Filmed on December 6, 2020, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the film
    was broadcasted on Arte.tv from the 16th of February, 2021.



    As film-spectacles, conceived for online broadcasting, rather than filmed
    spectacles, Ursule 1.1 and Actéon possess several common
    points which tend to make them similar and at the same time invite to try
    to define a new spectacular genre of which they would be the first
    examples. Their respective characteristics will be studied here in this
    sense. In a broader sense, both these works demonstrate Benjamin Lazar’s
    reflections on the reciprocal relations and influences between stage and
    video mediums. Whether it be performances that include video art,
recordings of performances, filmed shows, or video shows such as    Ursule 1.1. and Actéon, the stage director questions the
    possible interactions between film and live performance. He explores, with
    his collaborators, the capacity of video to appropriate the intensity of
the stage and its relationship to the present.    [34]
    It will thus also be a question of asking to what extent these two
    performances studied are representative of this approach and can contribute
    to a redefinition of the contemporary scene by means of the media available
    on Internet.



    In 2010, for his arrival as associate artist at the Théâtre de Cornouaille,
    Lazar proposed a show conceived for the web: Ursule 1.1, performed
    live on the Internet by a soprano, Claire Lefilliâtre, a bass-baritone,
    Lisandro Abadie, a pianist, Aurélien Richard, and a women’s choir, mixing
    professional choristers from the Opus 104 choir, and amateur choristers
    from the Pôle Voix choir of the Maison pour tous Ergué-Armel. We meet
    Ursula, a young Breton woman of our time, who takes advantage of the
    communication space offered by the Internet to tell us her story. Dismayed
    by the mockery of her name, Ursula takes refuge in a library, where she
    discovers by chance the story of another Ursula, more precisely Saint
    Ursula, in the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine. This is the
    beginning of the show as a mise en abyme, the story of Saint
    Ursula: the departure from Cornouailles and the pilgrimage to Rome, in
    company of eleven thousand virgins, the confrontation with the Huns on the
    way back, the refusal to renounce the Catholic faith, and the death as a
    martyr. Ursula’s project is to gather around her as many young girls as her
    patron saint: the Internet could thus become the equivalent of Saint
    Ursula’s cloak, a magical garment under which her companions could shelter
    and protect themselves. Three narratives are thus interwoven: first, a
    presentation of Ursula the narrator and of her own project; then, the story
    of Ursula the character (as told by Ursula the narrator); finally, the
    story of Saint Ursula (recounted, or dreamt of, by Ursula the character).
    The three stories together conclude at the end of the show: while Saint
    Ursula falls under the arrows of the king of the Huns, Ursula (character,
    but also narrator) herself faints and technicians appear in the camera
    field to help her. After a blackout, Ursula (narrator), alone on stage,
    gets up and walks towards the camera to introduce the credits.



    At the beginning of the video of Ursule 1.1, five slides follow
    one another to introduce the show and present the rules of a game that the
    director and his team have adopted. These rules contribute in defining the
    characteristics of the new spectacular object proposed: they indicate the
    chosen media, its specifications, and the constraints imposed to adapt to
    it. Broadcasted only on the Internet and filmed with a fixed camera, the
    performance takes the form of an amateur video filmed by Ursula with her
    webcam. The form coincides with the content, it corresponds to the
    announced situation: Ursula is an Internet user addressing other Internet
    users. The choice of the fixed camera is also thought to be in reference to
    the films by Georges Méliès and to the early days of cinema, as Benjamin
    Lazar points out: “The difference with another online performance, such as
    may be practiced for opera or theater, is that the stage frame will also be
    the camera frame, according to a device that may evoke Méliès’s camera,
namely a fixed frame without zoom, posed as a spectator’s eye.” [35]



    The camera frame functions as a stage frame. The point of view is not
    constructed thanks to the movement of the camera around the filmed object,
    but rather it is necessary to bring in or out of the camera field what
    should or should not be filmed. Entering the camera field becomes the
    equivalent of entering the stage, while the off-screen becomes the
    equivalent of the backstage. The camera itself occupies a place as static
    as that of a spectator sitting in a theater. For the director, this
    characteristic makes it possible to distinguish Ursule 1.1 from
    other forms of online performances. Indeed, in the case of a re-run on the
    Internet, on television, or at a movie theater of a show conceived for and
    represented in an opera house, the spectators are offered the broadcast of
    a show performed in another place, in the presence of other spectators.
    Even if these initiatives tend to give them the impression that they are
    attending the performance, they are only external witnesses. What they see
    is not the performance itself, but a trace of the performance, which also
carries a point of view—that which is imposed by the camera. In the case of    Ursule 1.1, the performance is available exclusively online. All
    the spectators of Ursule 1.1 see and hear the same thing, at the
    same time, no matter where they are.



    Moreover, the choice of a fixed camera offers a point of view which
    corresponds to the so-called “eye of the prince,” the place in a typical
    Italian opera house from which the optical effect of the decor in
    perspective is best appreciated. The modernity of the use of the Internet
    is thus part of a tradition—i.e., that of the characteristic conception of
the stage as a “tableau.”     [36]
    As with Italian theaters before the introduction of darkening the
auditorium,    [37]
    the question of the attention of the spectators nevertheless arises—another
    constraint associated with performances on Internet is indeed the ease by
    which spectators can be distracted, or even abandon the proposed
    experience. It contributes in justifying the choice of a short format
    (forty-eight minutes)—i.e., between “the web format” (videos of a few
    minutes) and “the theater format” (performances of about an hour and a half
    to two hours), in order to be “in a good in-between time to invite an
    Internet user to follow the proposal from one end to the other,” explains
Lazar.    [38]
    But the work must also be interesting, even fascinating, as the show
    humorously suggests during a hypnosis scene: Ursula presents the camera
    with a spiral printed in black on a white wheel, which rotates while she
    waves her hands in the direction of the spectators, in order to hypnotize
    them and keep them on the web at her side, as she introduces the story of
    Saint Ursula. Music can be an asset in this process. Thus, the composer
    Morgan Jourdain wished to contribute, with the music, to awaken and keep
    the attention of the audience: “It is necessary to find … in my music …
    something which allows the spectator, the listener, to capture the
    attention, so we will be closer to a music one could say charming,
charmer.”     [39]
    We find here a founding principle of opera: the enchantment of music is
    associated with the wonder of images. Jourdain adds: “We will try to use
    the singing in its simplest relationship, in its Orpheus way, … to tell a
    story and attract the spectators and the spectator’s attention during the
time of the performance.”     [40]
    This reference to Orpheus is interesting for two reasons. On the one hand,
    Orpheus is a poet capable, through his musical talent, of obtaining from
    the God of the Underworld the resurrection of his beloved Eurydice. On the
    other hand, he is an emblematic character for opera since the beginning of
    the genre, at the dawn of the seventeenth century. This reference thus
    contributes to the inscription of web opera into the tradition of Western
    opera. However, in the case of an Internet performance, the music must
    enchant through the mediation of the screen and despite the physical
    absence of the performers. Jourdain has therefore composed a music that
    mixes elements of scholarly and popular music, with particular tunes
    reminiscent of nursery rhymes, which are at the same time catchy, playful,
    and easy to memorize. The music creates a link with the spectators, beyond
    the screen.



    Like Ursule 1.1, Actéon is a short opera, lasting about
    forty minutes, with solo and choral parts performed by the singers of Les
    Cris de Paris, directed by Geoffroy Jourdain. The notable difference is
    that this is not a contemporary creation composed for the project, but
    rather an old work: a pastoral by Marc-Antoine Charpentier which premiered
    in 1684. The story is inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses: the hunter
    Actaeon sees Diana bathing with her nymphs, but the goddess discovers him
    and, irritated, turns him into a stag, so that her own dogs chase and kill
    him. For this new filmed work, the rules of the game are no longer the same
    as for Ursule 1.1. This time, the film is not broadcast live, but
    deferred after post-production work. However, the director did not give up
    the idea of finding, within the framework of the shooting, a form of
    urgency specific to live performance. After several work sessions hosted by
    different festivals, a few days of rehearsals took place at the Théâtre du
    Châtelet, where the film was shot in one day. Another complementary process
    is the use of the sequence shot. The film is in fact composed of two long
    sequence shots, between which the passage is constituted by Actaeon’s gaze:
    the camera embodies a gaze—form and content, once again, coincide. The
    sequence shot consists of a single shot covering several locations in the
    same place, in this case the Théâtre du Châtelet. It implies a precise
    preparation and a strong concentration on behalf of the performers; any
    error can lead to having to start the whole shot again. Indeed, if it is
    possible to work on sound in post-production, the images will not be able
    to give rise to the same editing work as a scene filmed in several
    sequences. Filming in sequence thus makes it possible to create a tension
    that reminds the performers of a public, live performance.


		


    Fig. 3. Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Actéon, directed by Benjamin
    Lazar, still photo. © Camera Lucida productions.



    One of the challenges of the work carried out on both Ursule 1.1
    and Actéon is to rediscover certain characteristics of the live
    performance through the filmed object; in particular, a relationship to the
    present that gives the interpretation a different intensity from that of a
    film shoot. It is not a question of trying to reproduce through film a
    situation and effects identical to those of a theatrical or operatic
    performance, but of taking into account the specificities of each mode of
    representation, whether staged or cinematographic, in order to propose a
    work of transposition—what Benjamin Lazar calls “transpos[ing] the
necessity of the present, which is specific to live performance.”     [41]
    The stage director and his team thought about how to arouse a different
    quality of emotion in the performers than in the movies, one that could
    evoke that of the stage performance and touch, even surprise, the audience.
    The shooting conditions are particularly important from this point of view.
    Shooting live or in conditions close to live due to time constraints or
    technical challenges, favors awareness of the present and intense
    concentration, as the director explains:



    The technical challenge of the sequence shot is also close to the live
    performance: it is now or never, as much for the performers as for the
    technicians. The balance is perilous, the concentration must be at its
highest. It’s a challenge that federates a great deal of common energy.[42]



    The goal is to put together working conditions that allow performers to
    bring out a kind of energy close to the one implicit in a stage
    performance.



    However, in contrast to a live performance, the film-spectacle does not
    bring practitioners and spectators to the same place at the same time. Even
    in the case of a live broadcast, as with Ursule 1.1, the latter
    are brought together by being online and sharing the same experience which
    may or may not be simultaneous, but which allows them to be together
    virtually. There is therefore no more interaction between them during the
    performance than in the case of a digital rerun. Paradoxically, the same
    digital screen that should bring artists and audiences together creates a
    medial screen and, in so doing, separates them. The question of the
    relationship between practitioners and spectators is crucial to understand
    the experience of those who perform and those who attend the performance.
    In fact, in order to find conditions of play close to that of a live
performance, Lazar has reflected on how to integrate spectators. For    Ursule 1.1, different possibilities were considered before the
    performance to find, through the Internet, a substitute for physical
interaction, whether it was a button to applaud by “accumulating claps,”     [43]
    a forum-like platform for written comments, or an online chat. As none of
    these possibilities could replace the presence of spectators in the
    theater, a compromise solution was chosen, with a few spectators physically
    present in the theater, on the shooting site.


		


    Fig. 4. Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Actéon, directed by Benjamin
    Lazar, still photo. © Camera Lucida productions.



    But if performers benefit from the gaze and presence of spectators, only a
    few of the latter are allowed near the stage. Certainly, the digital
    broadcast, live or deferred, allows to reach a number of spectators much
    more significant than the number possible during a live performance. For
    example, the Théâtre de Cornouaille, where Ursule 1.1 was filmed,
    can accommodate 697 spectators in its main auditorium and 145 in the
    Atelier. With 5,773 live spectators, Ursule 1.1 has gathered in
    one go the equivalent of more than eight performances at full capacity.
    Such an approach also allows for a wider distribution of the show, which
    can be accessed worldwide, regardless of location (as long as its
    inhabitants have Internet access) and sanitary restrictions, particularly
    during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, for most of the attendees, the
    distance imposed by the screen is irreducible. Interpretation undoubtedly
    benefits from the presence of the audience closer to the performers, but
    audiences who discover the performance on a screen have a very different
    experience from that of a live performance. Their absence from the
    auditorium does not only result in their physical separation from the
    practitioners—their place within a community of spectators becomes virtual,
    too. Attending a performance is a social activity and the interaction
    specific to the performance includes the interaction between different
    spectators of the same performance. Is knowing or assuming that other
    spectators are attending the same performance at the same time, but in
    other places, enough to give the feeling of being part of a community of
    spectators? Does it allow for the sharing that is part of the common
    experience that a live performance represents? In other words, is attending
    a performance on a screen, via Internet, still a collective experience?



    Here again, suggestions were made for Ursule 1.1—e.g., the
    possibility of sitting together in the foyer of the theater or recreating a
small community of spectators at home by inviting friends and relatives.    [44]
    An alternative solution was proposed for Actéon, shot and
    broadcast during a period of restricted contacts and many cancelled
performances due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Like Ursule 1.1,    Actéon was shot in a theater. However, the
    theater, in this case the Théâtre du Châtelet, was featured in the film
    itself, and a member of the audience in the theater was played by the
    actress Judith Chemla. The mise en abyme of the filmed performance
    favors identification in those attending remotely, who are invited to
    recognize the elements of an opera performance in the object offered to
    them. We also find in the two films the technique of direct address to the
    camera, but in two different ways: whereas Ursula (narrator, then
    character) addresses the viewers to invite them to discover her story, like
    an Internet user calling out other Internet users within the same
    community, the spectator embodied by Judith Chemla initially addresses
    Actaeon himself. The film viewers are thus invited to a particular empathy
    towards a character to whom they can relate by the look. At the same time,
    they can recognize themselves in the character of the spectator, who is a
    figure of spectator within the work itself: her listening, her attention,
    her reactions are all clues that guide the listening, the attention, and
    the reactions of the audience behind the screen. Failing to recreate
    through the screen a community and, more broadly, an encounter in the
    present between artists and spectators, the film plays with the codes of
    live performance to accompany the audience in its discovery of the work and
    invite it to join the (virtual) space of the performance.



Despite their numerous points in common, Ursule 1.1 and    Actéon do not correspond to one and the same proposition of a new
    genre, be it web opera or filmopera. Their peculiar modes of
    transmission—the first live, the second pre-recorded—change the conditions
    of reception and thus contribute to their differentiation. They are also
different from other proposals that have emerged in recent years, such as    Le Mystère de l’écureuil bleu, a comic opera by
    Marc-Olivier Dupin and Ivan Grinberg created for the web in 2016 at the
    initiative of the Opéra Comique, which was at the time under renovation.
Albeit initially conceived as a “web-opéra,”    Le Mystère de l’écureuil bleu was eventually staged at the Salle
Favart in February 2018.[45]    Ursule 1.1 and Actéon, on the other hand, are not meant
    to be performed on stage. These two film-spectacles remain hybrid objects,
    experiments that use the Internet to think differently about the
    relationship between video and live performance. Without denying the
    fundamental difference between a work created and presented at a distance,
    on a screen, and a performance that implies a simultaneous presence of the
    performers and the audience, these works nevertheless attempt to transpose
    into film a relationship with the present that only a stage performance
    allows. In doing so, they invite us to rethink video art practices and
    perhaps even to renew them.



    (translated by Sofija Perović)






    “Transposing the Necessity of the Present.”



    An interview with Benjamin Lazar, conducted by Caroline Mounier-Vehier
        on September 23, 2022.

       



    After discovering baroque declamation and gestures with Eugène Green, in
    addition to training at the École Claude Mathieu, French actor and director
    Benjamin Lazar became known to the public with the resounding success of
    his staging of Le Bourgeois gentilhomme by Molière and
    Jean-Baptiste Lully (which has been on tour from 2004 to 2012). A
    sought-after performer for the baroque stage, he is also interested in a
    variety of repertoires, from Stefano Landi to Karlheinz Stockhausen, and
has collaborated to a variety of contemporary creations (Oscar Strasnoy’s    Cachafaz, 2010; Ma Mère musicienne with
    Vincent Manac’h in 2012, among others). In 2010, he joined forces with
    composer Morgan Jourdain and conductor Geoffroy Jourdain for an original
    production: Au web ce soir – Ursule 1.1, a web opera filmed and
    broadcast live from the Théâtre de Cornouaille. Ten years later, during the
    Covid-19 pandemic, Lazar and Jourdain planned another show for the web:
    Charpentier’s Actéon, a film-opera recorded on December 6, 2020,
    at the Théâtre du Châtelet and broadcast on Arte Concert in 2021 (see the
    previous section of this Forum).The interview presented here is based on
    this new spectacular object to reflect more broadly on the relationship
    between video and live performance in the work of Benjamin Lazar.



    Caroline Mounier-Vehier:
    
        For several years now, you have been working with video: video
        recordings or films of shows, but also videos that become material for
        the stage work or even videos that are themselves performances. What is
        the difference between preparing a recording of a performance, the
        transmission of a work, and conceiving a video that is the work itself?
    



    Benjamin Lazar: The filming of Le Bourgeois gentilhomme was
directed by Martin Fraudreau,    [46]
who also made a beautiful “behind the scenes” documentary.    [47]
I then began a collaboration over several years with Corentin Leconte for Pantagruel, [48] Pelléas et Mélisande, [49] Phaëton,    [50]
    among others. The progress of the cameras and the care of the director
Sylvain Séchet allowed us to capture L’Autre Monde ou Les États et Empires de la Lune,    [51]
    a show entirely by candlelight, without any electrical reinforcement. We
    wanted to go further and make the recording of a second work. We had the
time and the means for Traviata – Vous méritez un avenir meilleur.    [52]
    The show premiered at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in 2016. We wanted to
    impart the feeling of intimacy offered by the configuration of the Bouffes
    du Nord: the absence of the orchestra seats allows the actors to come
    forward and enter the great cauldron of the hall, to be with the
    spectators. In this intimacy, the spectators create their own film, they
    are their own camera, they choose details, move from one to another and
    write their own show. In order to create this feeling of intimacy in the
    film, Corentin Leconte felt that it was necessary to transpose it and
    impart a personal gesture on the work. In this case, we chose a completely
    scripted sequence shot, with a few technical interruptions, while leaving
    the possibility for chance to create happy additions to the shot. This
    onboard camera also allowed us to give a documentary quality to the images,
    reinforcing the impression of recounting the story of La Traviata
    as well as the relationship that the singers and instrumentalists have with
    the music.



    We organized a performance with invited spectators who knew they were going
    to attend a shooting. Their presence was important because it contributed
    to the energy of a performance. We were thus in a kind of in-between world
    between the shooting and the performance, with a very particular
    atmosphere, which also creates a particular emotion. I think that the
    presence of the public contributed to the emotion that we feel in the
    actors to which the film testifies. We then completed the film with more
    traditional shots, again during a public performance. The cameras were
    unified, creating a slight instability on the fixed cameras that can be
    typical of a documentary in situ. This effect of reality also
    seemed interesting to us in relation to the history of this opera, which is
    the first to have been inspired by a recent news item, for six years
    separate the death of Marie Duplessis from Verdi’s opera.


CMV: 
    
        In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of many shows.
        It was at this time that you directed the film
    
    Actéon
    
        , which had the peculiarity of not being a classic recording, but
        rather a video object in its own right, this time dissociated from any
        public performance. Was the process similar to imagining a film for a
        show based on a live performance project?
    


BL: 
    A creation is always the result of a desire and circumstances. This time,
    the proposal came from Geoffroy Jourdain, who directs the ensemble Les Cris
de Paris. Geoffroy was the musical director of Au web ce soir – Ursule 1.1,    [53]
    the first video object created for the Internet that I had proposed when I
    first arrived as associate artist at the Théâtre de Cornouailles. We were
    eager to do it again for a long time, but it’s not easy to find the finance
    for this type of project that doesn’t fit into any box. In 2020, when all
    the theaters were closed because of the pandemic, Jean-Stéphane Michaud,
    producer at Camera Lucida Productions, received many requests for filming.
    He was looking for a different format and Geoffroy Jourdain told him about
    our desire to do a live filmed work again. We proposed to replace the
    cancelled performances of Les Cris de Paris with a film project associated
    with the Théâtre du Châtelet. We were able to work in different places,
    each time proposing a session open to the public, which allowed us to
    arrive with many working hypotheses at the Châtelet, where we rehearsed for
    a few days before filming the sequence shot in one day.


CMV: 
    In 2010, 
    Ursule 1.1
    
        was an original work, with music composed by Morgan Jourdain. In 2020,
        you filmed an old play:
    
    Actéon
    
        ,
        
            [54]
        
        a pastoral by Marc-Antoine Charpentier created in 1684. Why this choice?


BL: 
    It is a work that suited Les Cris de Paris very well, with both magnificent
    choral parts and the possibility for the choristers to become soloists at
    certain moments. It is also a short work, whose form corresponds well to
    the sequence shot since everything happens without interruption, from the
    arrival of the troop of hunters in the forest to the death of Actaeon. We
    have the impression of following a cinematic sequence with simultaneous
    events: the hunters who leave with Actaeon on one side, Diana at the bath
    on the other side, and then the two spaces that come together with the
    meeting between Diana and Actaeon. It was therefore ideal for this type of
shooting. The project evolved again afterwards. While for    Ursule 1.1 we had given a live online meeting, for Actéon
    we shot in sequence and did a post-production work before the broadcast on
    Arte.



    In both cases, it is not a question of an adapted stage project, but of an
    object designed specifically for the camera. For Actéon, Adeline
    Caron conceived a scenography that was not made to be seen by an audience,
    but to be filmed by the camera, which gave us the possibility to work in a
    more metonymic way. For example, the scene of the nymphs bathing with Diana
    is represented with three aquariums in which the singers plunge their
    hands. With Sylvain Séchet’s lights, the crane camera coming closer to the
    faces filmed behind the aquarium, the spectator is in the water, a process
    that joins the way the imagination works in the theater. It’s a place where
    you can make people dream with little: aquariums, a painting that travels,
    things that we don’t allow ourselves as much in the cinema where there is
    often a demand for reality.


CMV: 
    Even if your 
    Actéon
    
        is conceived as a video object, certain elements of your staging remind
        us that it is a work written for the stage, such as the presence of a
        spectator played by Judith Chemla.
    


BL: 
    During the open rehearsals, we realized that telling the story of this
    metamorphosis the first time would relieve the audience of the effort of
    recalling a myth that they would only vaguely know. The difficulty of
    seventeenth-century language and the spread of the story required a
    concentration that could have weakened the emotions. What is interesting is
    to see how the composer revisits a common place, but for that to happen,
    the place must first be common. In open rehearsals, I told the story
    beforehand. For the film, I wanted to write a prologue and we added a
    spectator, but a very involved spectator since she addresses the camera as
    if the spectator were Actaeon.



    The prologue has a preparatory narrative function and establishes a certain
    relationship with the camera from the beginning of the film. The idea is to
    create an equivalence between the hunter Actaeon, condemned to death for
    what he has seen, and the camera, also a hunter of images, showing that
    there can be a danger in wanting to look, both for Actaeon and for the
    viewer. I also wanted the film to end as it had begun, with a camera
    perspective. We can thus say that the spectator, played by Judith Chemla,
    has forcefully projected herself into the story, so much so that she has
    metamorphosed herself into a new Diana.


CMV: 
    
        The character of the spectator is even more interesting because she has
        a relay function for the spectators who watch the film: she accompanies
        them in the work and thus allows to reduce the distance that the screen
        implies.
    


BL: 
    That is why this address was important. Judith Chemla has such grace and
    emotional involvement that her character goes beyond the mere convention of
    the story. This is also what allows us to transpose the necessity of the
    present, which is specific to live performance.


CMV: 
    As in 
    Traviata – Vous méritez un avenir meilleur
    , would one of the important aspects of the film for you to be to find
        a form of intensity proper to the scenic, public representation?
    


BL: 
    The situation is not exactly that of a public performance, but it is not
    only a shooting either, due to the presence of an audience or a single
    spectator. The technical challenge of the sequence shot is also close to
    the live performance: it is now or never, as much for the performers as for
    the technicians. The balance is perilous, the concentration must be at its
    highest. It’s a challenge that federates a great deal of common energy.


CMV: 
    To what extent are 
    Ursule 1.1 and Actéon related?


BL: 
    Ursule 1.1
    is a bit like Actéon’s big sister. It is almost the same object,
but with different productions. We drew a certain number of ideas from    Ursule 1.1, which was already a work combining music and theater.
    We also find the same need for concentration. The big difference is that
    for Ursule 1.1 we chose a fixed camera, like Georges Méliès’s. The
    camera does not move, it is the objects that move relative to it, with
    rolling sets, scale effects, objects of different sizes. For example, to
    represent a sea voyage, a small boat was placed in the foreground, in front
    of the camera, and the actors in the background on rolling platforms pulled
    by technicians. For Actéon, on the other hand, we used two types
    of cameras. The first was an on-board camera with an operator who first
    followed the spectator, then became the eye of Actaeon, and then followed
    Actaeon transformed into a stag as he made his way around the stage of the
    Théâtre du Châtelet. The second camera was a telescopic crane operated by
    three technicians. It was like a Bunraku puppet, with the main cameraman,
    who focuses, and two assistants.



    At the moment, the term “in-between world” is dear to me because it is the
    title of a project I am working on—these films are proposals that float
    between several genres, between several worlds. It is always interesting
    when a work is not completely assignable to one genre or another.


CMV: 
    
        Have these experiences with video changed your stage work and more
        generally your relationship to the stage?
    


BL: 
    It’s quite different to think for the camera or for the stage. The image
    filmed on stage should not be a validation of reality. When it intervenes
    in a performance, it must be necessary. For Phaéton by Lully, for
    example, I worked with Yann Chapotel. We wanted to tell the power of the
    show and the show of power in Phaéton thanks to the video. To show
    how Phaeton’s race and the great chaconne of Act III testify to the
    characters’ desire to make a spectacle of their power, Yann produced a
    sequence of military parades that he set to the rhythm of Lully’s chaconne
    in such a way as to gradually create an abstract kaleidoscope. At the end
    of the show, Phaeton’s race was also associated with filmed images, but
    with reading keys: Phaeton was compared to a pyromaniac child, who plays
    with matches.



    Usually, when I feel the need, I introduce filmed images or video art into
    my shows, always remaining attentive to the ways in which the technology is
    used: what interests me is to find a form and a content that make this use
    necessary, so that it does not extinguish the subject. Perhaps the fact
    that I have shot recordings or filmed objects such as Ursule 1.1
    and Actéon makes me want to continue the experience. I have worked
    on several occasions with the filmmaker Joseph Paris, a true poet of the
    image and of editing, who manages to create an extremely strong dreamlike
    impression in his films. These images have a life of their own, you feel
    their materiality and their presence assert themselves at the same time as
    the things filmed—exactly as actors are, in the same presence, themselves
and the character. We recently created a new show,    La Chambre de Maldoror, at the Théâtre des 13 vents in
Montpellier.[55]


CMV: 
    
        When you stage filmed objects, a director accompanies you. Do you plan
        to make films yourself or is it the work in pairs that interests you
        the most?
    


BL: 
    Everything is open. I like collaborations, but maybe at some point I’ll
    move on to co-directing or directing. When I work with directors, they make
    a lot of suggestions. We talk about shot values and intentions, we look at
    the cut together, but they have a fundamental creative part because they
    know the necessities and the placement of the cameras, technical aspects
for which I have intuitions but do not control. In the creative process of    Actéon, another important stakeholder was the draughtsman Benoît
    Guillaume, who made sketches and helped make a storyboard from photos that
    I took to prepare the shots.



    I am interested in cinema, but more recently I wanted to share with the
    public the particular concentration that filming creates and the
reflections that filmed projects engender. In my project    L’Entremonde – including the associated workshops conducted with,
    among others, the composer Pedro Garcia-Velasquez and the directors and
actresses Jessica Dalle and Alix Mercier    [56]
    – I experiment with a public of all ages and backgrounds a creative process
    based on a three-dimensional recording technique, binaural recording. This
    allows me to explore the notions of image and inner cinema, through the
    accumulation and solicitation of images in contact with other images, of
    works of art. If I say the word forest to you, for example, you
    will search your memory for a certain number of images with which to
    compose a chimerical forest. In the workshop, we share what this word
    evokes in us: for some it will be the smell of wet leaves in autumn, others
    will have more sonic references, others still will think of light.
    Soliciting inner images is universal, but each person does it in a
    different way according to his or her background. Today there are new tools
    to produce fiction and images, but it is crucial to maintain our ability to
    create and share inner images. This is even more important at a time when,
    with the development of the so-called metaverse, they would like to make us
    to believe that we are only waiting to escape into ready-made inner films,
    a ready-made clothing for imagination. It is not a question of rejecting
    these technologies in a backward-looking way, but of being attentive to
    protect our inner images in front of what looks like an attempt at
    annexation.



    What we put into shape in the workshops is in line with what I think in
    general of the image in theater—a thought that I share, I believe, with set
    designer Adeline Caron, with whom I have been working for twenty years: the
    image must always contain enough gaps and absences to arouse a desire for
    completeness in the spectators, so that they can project their memories and
    desires onto it. There are quite concrete procedures to achieve this,
    formal and structural answers that are diverse and always to be sought, to
    be renewed. There is no single recipe. For a long time, I used darkness to
    leave space in the image—and I still use it, because we imagine what we
    don’t see. But I also know that sometimes a full fire can be full of
    mystery.



    Caroline Mounier-Vehier received her Ph.D. in Theatre Studies from the Université Sorbonne
    Nouvelle – Paris 3 in 2020. Since her dissertation, entitled La scène lyrique baroque au xxie siècle: pratiques d'atelier et
        (re)création contemporaine [Baroque Musical Theatre in the 21st Century: Workshop Practices and
        Contemporary (Re)creation], she has been studying the conditions of production, interpretation, and
    reception of early music performances on the contemporary stage. She has
    published several papers and given numerous talks on the subject. Caroline
    is also active as an orchestra manager and concert organizer.
		




    Romeo Castellucci in conversation with Sofija Perović
         [57]


        

    Romeo Castellucci is an Italian stage director, a lighting and costume
    designer, and a visual artist known all over the world for his theatrical
    language based on the totality of the arts. Besides being one of the most
    sought after and esteemed directors of our time, Castellucci is also a
    published author of more than dozen books and theoretical essays on stage
    directing. Castellucci’s work is characterized by strong images created of
    the primacy traditionally afforded to the dramaturgy and the text,
    exploring instead other means of stage expression such as music, painting,
    architecture, among others. He is regularly invited to work in the most
    prestigious international theaters, opera houses, and festivals on all the
    continents.



    Sofija Perović:
    
        At the heart of your productions, regardless of genre or venue, whether
        it is opera or spoken theater, baroque, romantic or contemporary music,
        we can always recognize the human being, its condition, humanity, and
        humanness. From your point of view, as an artist who actively questions
        the human condition in his works, what role do you see for the Internet
        in its future? Is the Internet a tool which could contribute to cutting
        back alienation among people, or is it putting in danger the very
        essence of human beings by changing and challenging the codes of
        communication?
    



    Romeo Castellucci: I’m not so confident in such a way of communicating
    because I think that mostly it is a matter of social control, and not only
    social control, but much more. In my opinion, it is the control that goes
    into the intimacy of people. I have to say that it is useless to fight
    against the Internet. It exists, but I try to keep myself apart from this
    kind of illness, because the Internet is a way to communicate with other
    people through an architecture built by somebody else. The idea of Internet
    communication is such that communication is under control in the
    architecture. We have the impression of being free, but it is a cage, and
    we like this cage. In my opinion, it is a form of slavery—a soft slavery,
    an invisible slavery, but still a slavery. Especially since it concerns the
    intimacy of each of us. There is a metaphysical side in communication. On
    the other hand, art should be a switch of this forced communication. We are
    obliged to communicate in this architecture, and I believe that art is
    first of all an experience. In my opinion, art should be an experience, and
    in the communication which passes through the Internet there is no
    experience. We only exchange the same words. The word on the Internet is a
    circular word that has nothing to do with me, it is totally detached from
    experience. However, I am not the right person to talk about that, as it
    would be more suitable for a sociologist—and I am not a sociologist, I am
    not a professor, nor a specialist of these things. On the other hand, I
    fight communication. Art is a fight against communication, in my opinion—it
    is always personal. On a stage there is nothing to communicate; it is
    rather a revelation that we receive on a stage, a revelation that is also
    outside language and that is also why our body, the body of the spectator,
    is present. Without me (spectator), the show does not exist, because it
    comes from me, I am half of what I’m seeing. It is an encounter. Theater is
    the art of contact, it is based on the reciprocal presence between what
    happens on stage and me sitting in the theater, of my body meeting another
    unknown body. Obviously the Internet is not like that, it is a fiction that
    is atrocious. I don’t want to be the enemy of the Internet; if it exists,
    it means that there are reasons for its existence. I don’t want to make a
    criticism of the Internet as such, but as a way of communicating it is disturbing.


SP: 
    How do you feel about the online broadcasting of your work? And what future do you predict for newly emerged genres
        such as web opera or Zoom opera?
    


RC: 
    No, that doesn’t make any sense. Sometimes I do the work at the opera and
    there is a video documentary that is programmed by channels like Arte, for
    example, but that’s not theater, it’s a documentary, so to say. It’s a
    totally distant experience. One has the impression of what it might look
    like in reality, but it is not the thing. The thing is an encounter, the
    thing is an act of presence, which is increasingly rare today. I can accept
    it as a documentary, but that’s not what theater is. During the pandemic,
    we did theater broadcasts, but it’s a stupidity, it’s an inherent
    contradiction. When we enter a theater, we are in danger. When we watch
    something at home, we are protected and that prevents the theater
    experience, in my opinion. It’s just my opinion.


SP: 
    
        We’ve already had the opportunity to see the use of artificial
        intelligence in opera, the posthuman condition of the likes of avatars
        replacing singers or dancers. How do you feel about that? Is it
        something we might expect to see in your future work?
    


RC: 
    In my opinion, if there is no original idea behind the use of new
    technologies, it is nothing more than a gimmick—and there are a lot of
    gimmicks out there. There is nothing extraordinary about it, it is a
    normality, it is not surprising. I am surprised by original ideas. Here,
    everything is predictable and that disappoints me. I don’t believe in these
    new forms; I don’t have that kind of optimism when it comes to new
    technologies. New technology is, by definition, always boring because it is
    predictable, at least to me. In theater, the most impressive is the
    anthropological discovery of the individual as an abyss. Most of the time,
    when you don’t know what to do, you fill the space up with new technology
    which is like a gadget, in my opinion—again, it’s very personal. I’ve never
    been surprised by new technologies in theater, with robots, etc.—it’s
    always, “So what?” To me, the idea is fundamental. If someone has an idea
    with technology, then it works—but it is rare.


SP: 
    
        Your latest production at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, a staging ofGustav Mahler’s 
    Resurrection symphony, is advertised as a “striking meditation on the exhaustion and disappearance of all
        things—and takes up in a spectacular way the question of the aftermath:
        the question of a hypothetical renewal.” Unfortunately, I didn’t have
        the chance to see it live, I only saw it on the Internet.
    


RC: 
    Ah, that is not the same thing. I admit it, it was a totally
    anti-television piece. It was important for the festival to have a
    document, but it was totally another experience because the hard core of
    the show was the voids. There was no one there for twenty minutes, and on
    TV such voids are not possible. When there were holes in the ground, that
    was the show and there was nobody. And on television that is not possible.
    On the other hand, I consider it as a documentary—it is not at all the
    experience that one can have in real time and place.


SP: 
    
        Yes, there was this screen between me as a spectator and the real
        experience. However, watching it on the screen I was impressed, if that
        is the word that can be used here, by stunning similarities between the
        images that I saw there and those that we see in the media today [i.e.,
        the war in Ukraine]. And I read that you mentioned on more occasions
        that you conceived those images more than a year ago, so they were purely
        coincidental.
    


RC: 
    Yes, that was an awful coincidence, it wasn’t wanted, and it was too late
    to change the show. Show…it’s not even a show. I was disturbed by this
    coincidence. I had a doubt whether it was legitimate to show images like
    that in a moment when there was the same thing going on in real life. I
    trembled. In the end, we decided with the festival to keep the project as
    it is, but with a note from me saying that I was sorry by the coincidence
    that was beyond me.


SP: 
    
        In a symbolic way, even the place in which this production was
        presented got its “resurrection,” from being a vandalized and abandoned
        building to the place that gave birth to an artistic spectacle of the
        highest quality. Can that coincidence bring any hope for our world
        today, knowing that everything has its end and a new beginning, or is
        it just illustrating the tragic circle of never-ending violence and destruction? 


RC: 
    Hm… Both. When they offered me to work on Mahler’s Resurrection,
    they thought of hope. The hope after COVID-19. We were going out again,
    etc., but I didn’t believe in this kind of optimism. I did not feel that
there was a resurrection happening. On the other hand, the word    resurrection was the most difficult to interpret. It is literally
    a resurrection, but a completely human one, so it was necessary to take the
    anonymous bodies, probably assassinated, out of the ground in order to
    restore their dignity. So, it was a totally human pietas with
    bodies coming out of the ground not for a metaphysical resurrection but for
    a human resurrection. It was not optimistic, but there was a confidence in
    humanity. However, it is true that it all goes through the image of
    violence, because violence caused the existence of this mass grave. That
    was my interpretation of the word resurrection. But it’s true that
    there was also a resurrection of the place, of the stadium, because it was
a dead place. So, there was this double aspect of the word    resurrection, a word which is very powerful and very loaded with
    meaning in our Christian tradition, which is obvious in Mahler’s music; so,
    it was also a question of giving space to Mahler’s music, and that’s why
    there was almost nothing to see. After the first chord, it was a question
    of getting a lot of bodies out of the ground, but there were no particular
    events, it was not a show, it was not a ballet, it was a moment of
    contemplation and of listening, deep listening to the music. We don’t see
    it in the ARTE documentary, but it was important to have half an hour where
there was the earth with the emptied holes,    e basta (and nothing else). The idea was for the holes in the
    ground to be like the sepulcher of Christ; there was also a reference to
    the Christian resurrection, but through these gestures with the bodies,
    with the corpses, it became not a spiritual thing, but rather a heavy thing
    and at the same time very much human.




		





    Figg. 5 and 6. Romeo Castellucci, Resurrection, Aix-en-Provence
    Festival. Photo credit: Monika Rittershaus.


	
SP: 
    Since this production was really anchored in the space where it was presented, would you
        consider producing it in another place?
    


RC: 
    Yes, there are plans to do it again in another place. I think it’s hard to
    find a place like this one, but there are possibilities to do it again.


SP: 
    
        During an interview from ten years ago,
        
            [58]
        
        you said that in the theater we are hostages or prisoners of the
        author. Do you still feel that way? And since you are also active on
        operatic stages lately, where the author of the text is but one of the many personalities involved, does the presence of more than
        one author make you feel as a double prisoner, or is it liberating in some way?
    


RC: 
    In the theater that depends on the attitude that one has as a stage
    director. When we work in a repertory theater, we fall into a faithful
    attitude, an attitude of respect towards the text, and it is that
    illustrative, respectful attitude which prevents the imagination and
    constitutes a cage. In any case, there must be a limit: freedom does not
    exist in the creation. We need limits. In my opinion, it is a fight that we
    have with the limits. In combat, it’s good to have boundaries, but outside
    of an illustrative attitude that’s flat and superficial. It’s about working
    with the author, but it’s also about a fight to give life back (through our
    body) to this piece, to this music. Obviously, in opera the already given
    structure is even stronger, in particular the structure of the tone,
    because everything is given—music is a temporal meter one cannot escape,
    not even from rhythm. Personally, there are authors, composers, with whom I
    cannot work. We resonate aesthetically with certain things and certain
    names, but it is really a question of entering, imagining, and seeing the
    same object from our own point of view. The view goes beyond that of
    repertoire, of habit. We must seek to change the angle of view of the same
    object. It’s true that the music is a very strong constraint—a very, very
    strong one.


SP: 
    As a spectator, I found the video in your production of 
    Orfeo ed Euridice most striking,
        
            [59]
        
        and since there was a direct communication between the stage and the
        hospital I perceived the video on stage as a usage of the Internet in
        the sense of an online communication between the singers in the opera
        house and a participant in the hospital who played the role of
        Euridice, rather than cinematic use of the video on stage. What was
        your intention behind it?
    


RC: 
    It’s true that there was a real-time connection. It was like a ring. Els
    was in contact with us in the opera house through headphones. She was
    listening to the music in real time, and we were watching her listening to
    us, so it was really a kind of ring. But it wasn’t through the Internet, it
    was broadcast live by a camera connected to an antenna, a signal in the
    opera house. Every evening, there was the same course in time. The
    cameraman was in contact with us in the opera house, listening to the music
    to respect the musical time, to speed up, or to slow down when necessary.
    The gaze was Orfeo’s gaze. The camera was Orfeo’s eye. It wasn’t really the
    Internet, it was more of a cinematic language, but it wasn’t even cinema
    because we used sequence shooting—there was no editing. The shooting was
    done without any interruption and it was also dangerous if there was, for
    example, an accident on the road—everything was really fragile and I think
    that fragility was a strong element in this project.


SP: 
    
        If I may say you used technology in this production in an absolutely
        unpredictable way and you’ve created something really revolutionary.
    


RC: 
    Well, I don’t know about that, but there was a subject in there much
    stronger than the technology we used. In my opinion, technology must be a
    tool that needs to become transparent. I’m disturbed when I watch
    technology-heavy shows, it’s not interesting in my opinion. In this case,
    it’s true that we used very sophisticated technology, but that was not our
    focus. The presence of Els was the real thing.


SP: 
    
        Media often describes your work as shocking. Personally, I haven’t
        found any of your works shocking nor do I believe that it was your goal
        or intention, I find it each time deeply moving and truthful, but it is
        possible that the truth nowadays comes as or seems shocking and that we
        got very much accustomed to the untruth. Do you believe that it is
        still possible to shock today’s theater audiences by means of stage
        imagery?
    


RC: 
    I don’t know if the word shock is the right word, but I understand
    what you mean, and I think so. I think we have to… we have to shake the
    spectator’s body, yes. It becomes more and more difficult, but I think it’s
necessary and it’s the right place to do it. We can even use the word    scandal, which is a marvelous word, a Greek word. It is necessary
    to be disturbed in a certain way, but apart from provocation. Provocation
    belongs to advertising and the media, which must be provocative all the
    time—so, that’s not a provocation at all because it is still predictable.
    The shock is to be surprised, to be touched in the intimacy. That is the
    shock in my opinion. Shock is something that forces you to change your
    point of view, to reconfigure your view of things—I find that interesting
    and almost essential.


SP: 
    We are living in an era of fake news when all sorts of information are one click away, but
        we are doubting everything, maybe even more than ever. We doubt even
        what we see with our own eyes. How do you inform yourself and what are
        your points of reference?
    


RC: 
    Precisely, it is difficult because most of the time the news is biased. The
    source of information is always one sided. It is a power. Information is a
    power, but also a disease. I seek to interpret with my conscience. I
    distrust all the information. I think there is always something that is
    twisted. I try to find a balance between several sources. When it comes to
    something important—like war, for example—you have to be wary of the
    source. You always have to look and try to have a context for the important
    things. You also need to see what is important in your life. Normally,
    information is not necessary, but there are things which are necessary in
    order to have a conscience. One has to be intelligent, sensitive, and
    attentive, and even cautious about conformism and homogenization. But I say
    this as a citizen and not as an artist.

       




    Simon Hatab in conversation with Sofija Perović



       
        
    
    Simon Hatab is a dramaturg for theater and opera. He works with directors
    Clément Cogitore and Bintou Dembélé (Les Indes galantes at the
    Opéra national de Paris), Silvia Costa (Julie at the Opéra
    national de Lorraine, L’Arche de Noé at the Opéra national de
Lyon), Maëlle Dequiedt (Trust—Karaoké Panoramique and I Wish I Was at the Théâtre de la Cité internationale,    Stabat Mater at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord), Lisaboa
Houbrechts (Médée at the Comédie-Française), Tiago Rodrigues (Tristan und Isolde at the Opéra national de Lorraine), Émilie
    Rousset (Playlist Politique at the Théâtre de La Bastille),
Marie-Eve Signeyrole (Nabucco at the Opéra de Lille, La Damnation de Faust at the Staatsoper Hannover,    Don Giovanni at the Opéra national du Rhin). He collaborates with
    the Opéra national de Lorraine (Matthieu Dussouillez) and Conservatoire
    National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (Émilie Delorme). He
    co-directed with Maëlle Dequiedt the short films
    
        I’m off to Work I have Posted on the Fridge all the Instructions on How
        to Make a Revolution
    
and Histoire du bouc. With photographer Elisa Haberer, he wrote    La Quadrature d’une ville (Les Cahiers de Corée, 2017). He
contributes to the magazines Europe (issue “L’Opéra aujourd’hui”), Alternatives théâtrales (issue “Opera and Ecologies”), and Bande à Part; he also contributed to the Dictionnaire Roland Barthes (Honoré Champion) and to the magazine    Fumigène – Littérature de rue. With Judith le Blanc, he
    coordinated an issue of the magazine Théâtre/Public devoted to
    musical theater. He is a member of the research group “Histoire des Arts et
    des Représentations” at the Université Paris Nanterre, where he has given a
    series of courses dedicated to dramaturgy. He is also an associate artist
    of the program Performing Utopia at King’s College London.


SP: 
        Being a dramaturg in opera is a relatively new position. You have
        worked both as an independent dramaturg and as part of the artistic
        direction team in an opera house. Based on your experience, how would
        you define the work of a dramaturg?
    


SH: I don’t believe that dramaturgy in theater and opera is such a
    new function, but I have noticed that in recent years it has developed in
    France, particularly under the impetus of dramaturgy courses set up by
    institutions such as the École du Théâtre National de Strasbourg or the
    Université Paris Nanterre. Dramaturgy is divided into two complementary
    fields: production dramaturgy, where we work on the shows, and publishing
    dramaturgy, where we are focused on theater programs, the editorial policy
    of an institution, meeting with the public, and everything that promotes a
    link between the stage and the audience. Of course, there is a link between
    the two since the dramaturg of a show is well placed to contribute to the
    theater program or to make introductions to the audience before a
    performance.


SP: 
    
        What does your work on the shows consist of? Are you a dramatic advisor
        to the directors?
    


SH: 
    I do not consider myself as the dramatic advisor of the artists with whom I
    work because that would imply that I have an ascendancy over them, which is
    not the case. I see myself more as a craftsman who (re)searches with the
    director and the artistic team, at the table and on the stage. I don’t
    think that the dramaturg is a scholar with knowledge that gives him or her
    an expertise. Certainly, there is a part of research which aims at making
    links, creating connections, working on the resonance of the spectacle. But
    it seems to me that dramaturgy is also based on forgetting. For example, if
    I am a dramaturg of Don Giovanni, perhaps I have a certain version
    of the character, but it is likely that the director has a completely
    different one. I must hear and follow them in this vision. That’s why
    forgetting is important. When I start working on a project or when I arrive
    at a rehearsal, I must try to forget, to unlearn everything I believe I
    know to listen to what this strange creature that is forming on the
    stage—which is the show in the making—has to say to me.


SP: 
    
        You say you are (re)searching with the stage director, but also with
        the rest of the artistic team. Who are the persons you are
        collaborating with?
    


SH: 
    My privileged interlocutor is the stage director, but the collective
    dimension is very important. If the role of the dramaturgy is to conceive
    the show, that is not the prerogative of the dramaturg alone. The director,
    of course, but also the other members of the artistic team (scenographer,
    costume designer, lighting designer, among others) make the dramaturgy in
    the sense that they all participate in thinking the show. On the stage,
    there is as much meaning in a costume or in a lighting variation as there
    is in a monologue. The fact that the dramaturgy belongs to everyone makes
    Christoph Marthaler say that the dramaturg is “a king without a kingdom.” I
    think this is a beautiful idea and perhaps I can propose another one: I
    believe that dramaturgy is a kingdom, but an invisible one. And in Greek
    mythology the invisible is the other name for the kingdom of the dead. So,
    it makes me think of Heiner Müller, who says that theater is a dialogue
    with the dead. I imagine that there is also some of that in the dramaturgy…


SP: 
    
        Since the purpose of this Forum is to examine the use of the Internet
        in all its forms in opera productions today, and to try to understand
        the new ways of using it on stage and also behind it, could you tell us
        what is the role that Internet plays in the day-to-day work of a
        dramaturg in a theater or opera production?
    


SH: 
    The aforementioned dialogue with the artistic team is established from the
    first intuitions of the show and continues until the final stages of the
    production, lasting from several months to several years. This dialogue
    needs a support, a place to develop. There are of course workshops that
    bring together the entire artistic team in the same room, around a table or
    in a rehearsal room. But between these workshops, the dialogue continues by
    email or telephone. These times of remote discussions are part of a
    different temporality because these are the ideas that we can think about
    for a long time, that we can let settle. Settling seems to me very
    important in an original production. In addition to these exchanges, we
    work a lot with shared files. Each of us can put down inspirations and
    materials for the show, for the scenography, the costumes, the lights… When
    we form an artistic team for a show, we all start with different languages,
    imaginations, backgrounds that are our own. Each of us keeps his or her
    singularity but we also must build a common territory to find each other,
    to get along, to understand each other and to create the project. These
    shared files are a way to give substance to this attempt to build a common
    space.


SP: 
    In what measure are you using Internet in your research?


SH: 
    We use Internet to do the research and to share it with others. I think
    that this common space that we build should not only be intellectual but
    rather sensitive: it can be a text but also music, a painting, an
    installation, an extract from movies or tv shows…


SP: 
    
        Has the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced us to discover the advantages
        of working remotely, influenced the way you interact with members of
        the team for the piece you are working on, and how important it is for
        you to have a direct contact with your colleagues in the preparatory
        phases of a show?
    


SH: 
    I don’t really know how to answer that question. In the professional world,
    I see that Zoom has made it possible to handle certain meetings remotely
    that used to take place in person, and that’s a good thing for the planet…
    At the same time, we don’t dialogue in quite the same way remotely as
    around a table. I also have the impression that projects start existing
    once we meet.


SP: 
    
        Could you tell us about your experience working as a dramaturg for
    
    Les Indes galantes
    
        at the Opéra Bastille? This production was somewhat revolutionary in
        the sense that it brought hip-hop and krumping dance to the stage of
        the Opéra national de Paris, an institution that has played such an
        important role in the history of dance and is still a stronghold of the
        tradition of classical ballet.
    


SH: 
    Having worked on this project for almost three years, I can’t judge whether
    it was a revolutionary production. I would not be very objective. Moreover,
    in one of her interviews, Bintou Dembélé recalls that hip-hop had already
    been represented on the Bastille stage, notably during a show where her
brother performed. What seemed new to me in Les Indes galantes was the part that these dances took in the dramaturgy,
    their capacity to carry stories, to dialogue, to interact with the vision
    of the world created in the libretto. My job, together with Katherina
    Lindekens who was the other dramaturg of the production, was to accompany
    the project from the very beginning to its creation. This meant having many
    coffees with Clément and Bintou, participating in workshops, following
    rehearsals, having coffees again… maintaining this continuous dialogue from
    the beginning to the end. One of the original features of the production
    was, of course, the importance of dance, and Bintou and Clément made sure
    that the dance rehearsals didn’t just start at the time of the production
    rehearsals (i.e., six weeks before the premiere) but more than a year and a
    half before it. The dance was a truly important component of the show, it
    carried a lot of the dramaturgy. I could compare this to another show that
    was created in 2016 at the Paris Opera: Così fan tutte, directed
    by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. There too, the dance was so important that
    rehearsals with the dancers had to start very early. These are two cases in
    which the Opéra’s production machine has managed to adapt in order to
    create such unusual shows.


SP: 
    
        This project started well before the premiere at the Opéra Bastille:
        the short film to the tune of “Forêts paisibles” was presented on 3e
        Scène and went viral on the Internet, attracting the attention of a
        much wider audience than the usual one of the Opéra de Paris…
    


SH: 
    It is true that the origins of this show are to be found in the short film
    that Clément made on an excerpt from Les Indes galantes,
    choreographed by Bintou, Grichka, and Brahim Rachiki for 3e Scène, the
    now-dismantled digital stage of the Paris Opera. The director of the Opéra
    at that time, Stéphane Lissner, saw it and, I imagine, found that there was
    a powerful relationship between the music, the images, and the dance, which
    encouraged him to entrust Clément and Bintou with the entire work. We are
    thus in an original case where it is a film which generated an opera rather
    than vice versa… A few in the audience had already seen the short film
    before attending the show, as the video had become viral. It is said that
    it inspired other dancers to choreograph and dance to excerpts from baroque
    music. It has almost become a pop culture object.


SP: 
    
        What do you think was the impact of this popularization of an
        eighteenth-century piece of music to the younger generations who had
        the opportunity to discover it in a space and culture they understood
        and knew (Internet and hip-hop)? Did this contribute to the
        democratization of the operatic genre in Paris/France or were there
        still limitations that could not be overcome? And what was the role of
        Internet in all this?
    


SH: 
    Has the show contributed to the democratization of opera? It is difficult
    for me to answer this question. We work on shows but, in the end, we don’t
    own the effects they produce. Some time ago, I read a book by the
musicologist Sylvie Pébrier, Reinventing Music.    [60]
    In this book, she defends the idea that the crisis affecting culture today
    is first and foremost a crisis of narratives. I imagine that everything
    that can contribute to putting the narratives on stage a little more in
    phase with the narratives of those who have not had a voice until now is
    good to take. In a way, this is what Les Indes galantes does:
    through the vision of Clément and Bintou, the dancers’ bodies carry the
    krumping, voguing, electro… political stories that have often been erased
    or hidden. But democratizing opera is not just an aesthetic question. There
    are other issues in opera’s accessibility, such as the price of seats in
    certain institutions, or the symbolic capital it represents, which can be
    intimidating for certain audiences. When we work in dramaturgy, we work in
    the field of representations, on the symbolic significance of works and
    performances. But to make things evolve, these symbolic acts must be
    articulated with political acts for which they cannot substitute.


SP: 
    France has a highly developed dance tradition to which 
    Les Indes galantes
    
        belongs. What I found particularly innovative in this production was
        the introduction of another dance tradition that comes from a different
        country and continent—hip-hop. To your knowledge, how important was the
        role of the Internet in the introduction and development of the hip-hop
        scene in France?
    


SH: 
    I am not a dance specialist; all I know about the subject comes from my
    exchanges with the dancers and conversations that I had with the
    choreographer Bintou Dembélé during rehearsals, and which continued
    afterwards. Hip-hop culture arrived in France at the end of the 1970s and
    first spread through television and VHS imported from the United States. As
    for the role of Internet, which has now taken over from VHS in the
    dissemination of these dances, it has allowed dancers to train by freely
    viewing videos. It has made the boundaries between styles much more porous.
    This was evident when talking to the dancers: some claimed to be of several
styles, others did not want to label their dance. In    Les Indes galantes, the dances that we gather under the label
    “hip-hop” are in reality multiple: there is the K.R.U.M.P., the Electro,
    the Vogue, the popping, the gliding, the waacking, the b-boying… Each one
    carries a political history. For example, the K.R.U.M.P. was born in the
    wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, following the beating of Rodney King by
    police officers. That’s why, in the production, these dances show political
    stories through gesture. For me it is at this level, in this taking of
    space, that the dramaturgy of the show was played out, more than in the
    fiction—in the very movements of the bodies. I believe that it was a
    radically different project from the role assigned to dance in the
    opera-ballet you mentioned, since the aim of this dance was originally to
    entertain—i.e., to divert attention in order to establish the authority of
    the king. Here, conversely, what the dance carries is essential: it carries
    stories and lives. It opens a space of protest and resistance.


SP: 
    
        The fact that this production of an opera-ballet was directed by
        Clément Cogitore—known to the public as a film director, even if he did
        not necessarily want to include video in his staging—made it possible
        to bring together cinema and its aesthetic with opera, ballet, and
        classical/baroque music.
    


SH: 
    Today, opera faces a strong challenge to reinvent itself by inviting new
    directors from prose theater, cinema, or the visual arts… This was the case
    for Clément, for whom Les Indes galantes was a first attempt at
    staging an opera. When directors start working in opera productions, it
    happens that they are overwhelmed by the production machine which does not
    allow them the freedom they have, for example, in theater. Opera is
    sometimes a bit like Cronus devouring his children. I believe that Clément
    was very conscious of these risks and that he arrived very prepared.
    Throughout the creative process, he attended many performances to
    understand the possibilities of this strange art form that is opera. Before
    we met, he had conducted an in-depth study of the work. He would come up
    with very strong intuitions, often visual, such as: “In this scene there
    will be a merry-go-round.” As a dramaturg, our job is to think about the
    meaning, or meanings. So, when a director comes up with strong images that
    you can tell are deep insights, it is a gift: it’s thrilling to have to
    think, to decipher strong images step by step, especially when they resist.
    I think that Clément gave himself to this project. We were also supported
    by the Opéra’s various teams, who were committed to the success of this
    unusual project: we found solutions together to every technical problem, as
    if this project had to be done at all costs.



    You are right to say that, from the start, it was clear to Clément that he
    would not use video. This may seem paradoxical knowing his artistic
    background, but I think it was a very accurate intuition: when artists from
    another field come to opera, something breaks down, decomposes, and it has
    to be recomposed in another way; they have to try to find their aesthetics
    again, but with other means, the scenic means that are specific to theater
    and that are not those of video-making. For Clément, I imagine that this
    radical choice was a way of not cheating, of taking this question head on.



    In short, there was a lot of preparation for this project, regular
    workshops punctuated the preparation phase. I remember my girlfriend
    telling me: “You’re still in a workshop on Les Indes galantes? But
    what do you still have to prepare? Are you writing the reviews of the
    show?”


SP: 
    How did the aftermath of Les Indes galantes go?


SH: 
    I think that after the show we wanted to move on, to turn a page. Perhaps
    it was also a way of letting the public take possession of this object that
    we had created, of letting other people than ourselves think about it. A
    show does not stop at the curtain call. If it has marked us, then a few
    hours, a few minutes, a few seconds can continue to play again within us
    long afterwards.


SP: 
    
        Did the documentary released two years later in theaters—directed by
        Philippe Béziat, who followed the creation process—allow you to dive
        back into it?
    


SH: 
    I didn’t go see it. Philippe spent a lot of time with us, so I imagine he
    had a lot of material… But putting on a show is a very intense collective
    adventure: it’s like a few weeks of our lives that go up in flames. So,
    it’s hard to get back into it two years later.


SP: 
    
        Could you tell us about your future projects and your current
        collaborations with Clément Cogitore and Bintou Dembélé after
    
    Les Indes galantes?


SH: 
    After Les Indes galantes, I continued to work together with
    Clément and the rest of the team. We are currently preparing two operas:
    one for Paris and the other for Antwerp/Ghent, but I believe these are
    projects that have not yet been announced, so, unfortunately, I can’t say
    more about them in order not to spoil. After Les Indes I also
    continued to dialog with Bintou, notably when she was in residence at Villa
Medici and then in Chicago. I wrote her portrait for    Théâtre/Public and took part in an extensive interview she gave
for the same magazine, with Christian Biet and Marine Roussillon.    [61]
    This long-term dialog brought me a lot: in addition to her political
    questions, I was trying to understand how one could conceive a dramaturgy
    that would not pass through words but through body, movement, and gesture.
    She sometimes contacts me to write her biography. I’m not talking about
    writing her life in 500 pages… I’m talking about the little biographies
    that are inserted in the press kits. It seems anecdotal, but I think it’s
    very important: for years, the story of these dances has been told by
    others, and there’s something very important at stake in having it told by
    those who carry them. So, reading her bio again is the most useful and
    concrete thing I do for her. There is also the conductor—Leonardo García
    Alarcón—with whom I currently have the pleasure of working on an opera with
    the choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui for the Grand Théâtre de Genève.
    Leonardo has been very important in Les Indes galantes: he is a
    conductor who is able to put himself entirely at the service of projects in
which he believes. He has been a great supporter of    Les Indes galantes, which would not have been possible without
    him. He is a precious partner in dialog.


SP: 
    Three years later, what do you take from 
    Les Indes galantes?


SH: 
    Many of the questions that continue to accompany me in dramaturgy were
    already there at the time of Les Indes galantes: what does it mean
    to flabbergast the audience? By representing violence, do we perpetuate it?
To what extent do the stories we tell belong to us? Can we tell a story?    Les Indes galantes was also a symbolic production for me because,
    right after, I left the Paris Opera where I had worked for more than ten
    years. I had been lucky enough to grow up in this opera house, to learn my
    craft from incredible artists and people. So now I wanted to accompany a
    new generation of artists, in theater and opera, to take care of the
    future.



		

    Fig. 7. Les Indes galantes by Clément Cogitore, Opéra national
    de Paris YouTube channel, still photo from video.






    Julia Bullock in conversation with Sofija Perović




		

    Fig. 8. Julia Bullock and Roderick Williams in Michel van der Aa’s    Upload, Dutch National Opera. Photo credit: Marco Borggreve.




    Despite her young age, the acclaimed American soprano Julia Bullock has
    already worked on many groundbreaking and innovative projects, but probably
    the most striking one was sharing the stage with an actual avatar in Michel
    van der Aa’s opera Upload. Bullock belongs to the generation of
    new operatic stars reachable on social media, where it is possible to
    follow their activities and “stay in touch” over the Internet. We met—quite
    symbolically, but also practically, being on different continents at the
    time—on Zoom on August 12, 2022, to talk about Internet and its application
    on contemporary operatic stages and beyond.



    Sofija Perović:
    
        You are quite active on social media and generally on Internet. I have
        reached you through Facebook for this interview and you have kindly
        replied to me. I also noticed that you are engaged and very generous
        with sharing the work of your colleagues, supporting and praising them
        on social media. You are not only using Internet as a platform for your
        personal work and art, but you are also socially engaged and responsive
        to your fans and followers. How do you see the role of Internet in the
        creation of the image of a new operatic star, someone who is not
        entirely distant anymore and not a “mythical,” unreachable creature,
        but rather someone who has a closer personal relationship with her
        audience?
    



    Julia Bullock: Yes, well, part of it is just because I enjoy interacting
    with individuals who come to performances or who are interested in the arts
    and it’s just a way to stay engaged. It’s also a way, as you mentioned, for
    me to share what some of my colleagues are working on and things that are
    really exciting to me. I think the Internet, like any form of technology,
    is just an additional tool that can be used to connect people. So, I’m
    thinking of radio broadcasts, or when television became really popular and
    people had these amazing variety shows… This is just another platform which
    is more direct and allows people to connect on either a very intimate level
    or just with the fun casual exchange. So, I really value social media
    platforms, especially more recently when COVID-19 and the struggles with
    the pandemic hit, when people were feeling very much separated from each
    other—it’s been such a tremendous tool. But I kind of go in and out of
    phases of utilizing social media. Just think of YouTube—I’ve been grateful
    that I’ve had access to so many different performances and so many
    different people across the globe because of the Internet, and for a
    variety of reasons.


SP: 
    
        Since you mentioned YouTube, I had the opportunity to watch there a
        recording of the masterclass you previously held on Zoom, and I must
        say that I was amazed to see how it worked so well for the participants
        who were in another city or in another state, and also for the singers
        all over the world who could rewatch it later on. I know it was
        organized under the particular circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic,
        but do you see this as a possibility in the future as well? Or was it
        just a one time for you? How do you feel about those online
        masterclasses?
    


JB: 
    I’ve taught a fair amount online over Zoom or Skype. Skype actually seems
    to work really well, at least for me, as a teaching platform because I’m
    able to look at the singer and also to look at their scores while they’re
    working. And yes, I’m totally open to continuing working in a virtual
    space. I have also taken lessons virtually, so I think a lot can be
    transmitted even over an iPhone. I’ve only conducted these masterclasses, I
    haven’t sung in them, but it is just a way for people who otherwise would
    not be able to gather together; and also, I do think that even just a sound
    or, you know, talking through ideas, all of that is still really valid in a
    virtual session. So, those have been valuable tools.


SP: 
    
        From your point of view, is the Internet a place to redefine operatic
        codes and create a new atmosphere, to change the way things work or
        used to work in opera for its creators, interpreters, and audiences?
    


JB: 
    I don’t know if it can be used to redefine—maybe with intimacy and direct
    exchange… I mean, the internet was there for us, or I think developed for
    us, to help us connecting with each other. Ideally, right? So, maybe the
    formality of codes of operatic spaces is starting to shift a bit, but only
    because I honestly don’t really know how much that kind of formality was
    sustainable anyway, as people everywhere are looking for legitimate
    connections with each other, connections that are not postured nor
    protected by any kind of artifice. We are seeking out ways, various ways to
    communicate and this kind of immediacy of seeing somebody on a live screen
    that’s not prerecorded is amazing—truly like a very intimate thing. And I
    can just think about it, even when I’m recording a song. I did a few
    recordings with my husband early on during the pandemic, just him and I and
    the piano, but I just imagined somebody’s face, a loved one or a friend or
    somebody in the audience directly on the other side of the screen, just
    sitting, you know, two feet from me. That kind of intimate exchange is not
    something that we get very often in the concert hall, even though the
    intensity of it can be very vivid in a live performance where there’s a big
    stage and more separation. So, I don’t know if it is changing codes, I
    think it’s just allowing people to open up the landscape for however people
    want to make and share music, or art in general.


SP: 
    You had the opportunity to perform in Michel van der Aa’s opera 
    Upload
    
        , which deals with a truly innovative subject for an opera. At the same
        time, though, the subject of accumulated online experience and its
        possible preservation for future generations is no longer fiction or a
        distant idea; with the development of AI, virtual reality, the
        Metaverse, and so on, this subject is becoming very reachable in the
        near future. Would you like to tell us a little bit about how it felt
        being on stage with the avatar of your colleague?
    


JB: 
    Honestly, a little frustrating at the start of rehearsing when we were
    putting the show together, because it was during the height of the pandemic
    and Roderick [Williams] and I were not able to be close to each other
    because this was before vaccinations or anything, so the reality of being
    separated and isolated was palpable and I think it did influence our
    creative process. It was also a little bit overwhelming because the avatar
    was so large and it was constantly shape-shifting, and sometimes was at a
    height of 5, 10 meters above me. Usually, when you are on stage, you’re
    interacting with other people and maybe there is someone moving set pieces,
    there are some props, etc., but in this instance there was nothing other
    than myself and moving of a few screens. There was no tactile interaction
    between anybody on stage, there was nobody performing, which again was very
    much a reflection of art at the time, a reflection of what was going on in
    the world.



    And getting all the technology together was a slow process as well. Michel,
    the composer and director and writer and visionary for the piece, together
    with his team were still figuring out what the avatar was going to look
    like at different points over the course of the opera. So, it was also very
    time consuming, there was a lot of waiting around and watching them fiddle
    with, pushing various buttons and things. But those were also the moments
    when Roderick and I were able to talk and just connect as people. So, just
    looking back on it now, I really valued that time. It’s been a couple years
    now and it was a unique process, and, as with every new opera or every new
    piece that I perform, there’s something to be learned. I think I learned to
    be much more patient and then also just to find, again, this kind of
    legitimate ways to connect because the usual ways through which you would
    learn to come to a relationship with somebody you were working with weren’t
    possible—so, it was cool. And when we got into the groove of the
    performances, I was so happy with how streamlined the entire piece was; and
    I think the filming is kind of one experience, but the live performance was
    really stunning. It was one of the most spectacular, extraordinary visual
    experiences that I have seen on an opera stage, and even just as a
performer, I know that the impact of it is amazing and sleek. Yes, I think    sleek is the word I would use to describe it: stimulating and
    sleek.


SP: 
    
        It sounds very exciting from what you’ve just described, and I must say
        that it seems a little like a movie filming, with all the waiting in
        between takes…
    


JB: 
    Yes, it definitely was like that.


SP: 
    
        When you were approached for the first time to work on this new work,
        did you have any reservations, or did you accept the challenge right
        away?
    


JB: 
    I did accept it. Part of it was because Michel and I had a really nice
    conversation a few years before he began, and he told me about the idea of
    the project and that it was about human relationship; he said that,
    obviously, the technical side of it is increasingly incorporated into the
    piece, but that what he was really looking to highlight were the
    complexities between such relationships, so I didn’t hesitate for one
    second. Also, I had looked at a couple of other works by Michel, just on
    video, and his aesthetic was so stunning that I didn’t hesitate to take on
    the piece.

             

        
        

    

    

     
        
            
                [1]
            
             A party line was a multiparty line or a shared service line used
            to provide telephone service. These lines were often the only
            available ones and they had a discount over an individual service.
            Since lines were shared, when one user was on the phone, other(s)
            couldn’t make a connection, but they could hear the conversation of
            the other user(s).
        

    

    
        
            
                [2]
            
             Anna Schürmer, “The Extensions of Opera: Radio, Internet, and
            Immersion,” Contemporary Music Review 41, no. 4 (2022): 401.
        

    

    
        
            
                [3]
            
             Schürmer, 402.
        

    

    
        
            
                [4]
            
             “Tod Machover—Opera of the Future,” People, Mit Media Lab website,
            accessed February 23, 2023.

    

    
        
            
                [5]
            
             Béatrice Picon-Vallin, “Ne pas faire semblant d’oublier
            momentanément la souffrance, la perte, le sentiment de
            l’imperfection, toutes nos peurs…,” interview with Dmitri
            Tcherniakov in Isabelle Moindrot and Alain Perroux, ed., Le théâtre
            à l’opéra, la voix au théâtre, special issue of Alternatives
            théâtrales 113/114 (July 2012), 40. My translation.
        

    

    
        
            
                [6]
            
             Interview with Romeo Castellucci, this Forum, below.
        

    

    
        
            
                [7]
            
             Tereza Havelková, Opera as Hypermedium: Meaning-Making, Immediacy,
            and the Politics of Perception (New York: Oxford University Press,
            2021), 99.
        

    

    
        
            
                [8]
            
             Thomas Edison, preface to William Kennedy Dickson and Antonia
            Dickson, History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, and
            Kinetophonograph (1895; repr., New York: Arno, 1970), [4].
        

    

    
        
            
                [9]
            
             “Web Opera,” OMF website, Reframe, accessed February 1,
            2023.
        

    

    
        
            
                [10]
            
			“You Are Here,” online presentation, Reframe, accessed February 1,
            2023.
        

    

    
        
            
                [11]
            
             “Omnivore,” official website, accessed February 1,
            2023.
        

    

    
        
            
                [12]
            
             “Mini-Web Opera: RUR,” OMF, Reframe, accessed February
            1, 2023.
        

    

    
        
            
                [13]
            
             “The Mystery of the Blue Squirrel,” Opéra Comique website, accessed February 1, 2023.
        

    

    
        
            
                [14]
            
             Opéra Comique—Page officielle, “Webopéra à partir de 8 ans,”
            Facebook, February 21, 2016. My translation.
        

    

    
        
            
                [15]
            
             See Opéra Comique, “Webopéra à partir de 8 ans.”
        

    

    
        
            
                [16]
            
             Martin Schneidel, “Verdi on the web,” trans. Claire Mcbride,
            Cafébabel, February 7, 2007.
        

    

    
        
            
                [17]
            
             The Web Opera, official website, accessed February 1, 2023.
        

    

    
        
            
                [18]
            
             “About OperaVision,” OperaVision website, accessed February 1, 2023.
        

    

    
        
            
                [19]
            
             Michael Earley, “After The Twilight of the Gods: Opera
            Experiments, New Media and the Opera of the Future,” in Opera in
            the Media Age: Essays on Art, Technology and Popular Culture, ed.
            Paul Fryer (Jefferson: McFarland, 2014), 237.
        

    

    
        
            
                [20]
            
             Kurt Gottschalk, “Michel van der Aa’s Upload Questions the Meaning
            of Life… and of Opera,” Bachtrack, March 24, 2022.
        

    

    
        
            
                [21]
            
             “Manifesto,” 3e Scène, Opéra de Paris website, discontinued, accessed February 1, 2023, through Internet Archive.
        

    

    
        
            
                [22]
            
             “La Gaîté Lyrique, a cultural establishment of the Ville de Paris,
            is both a space and a medium that puts the spotlight on
            post-Internet cultures. It’s the place where these artistic
            practices, born on or transformed by the Internet, are showcased
            but also imagined, created, experimented and transmitted. A space
            of discovery, La Gaîté Lyrique aims to understand our era and its
            relationship to virtuality, while also being a place of creativity,
            sharing and celebration.” We are La Gaîté—The Project, La Gaîté
            Lyrique official website, accessed February 1, 2023.
        

    

    
        
            
                [23]
            
             Vlado Kotnik, “The Adaptability of Opera: When Different Social
            Agents Come to Common Ground,” International Review of the
            Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 44, no. 2 (2013): 303.
        

    

    
        
            
                *
            
             English translations from French quotes are by the translator of
            the article, Sofija Perović.
        

		

	
        
			
                [24]
            
             Julie Koch, “Au web ce soir, le théâtre des planches à la Toile,”
            La Croix, April 23, 2010.
        

    

    
        
            
                [25]
            
             Marie-Laure Combes, “Le théâtre en live depuis votre canapé,”
            Europe 1, April 28, 2010.
        

    

    
        
            
                [26]
            
             “Au web ce soir – Ursule 1.1, un cyber-spectacle pour
			web-spectateurs,” RTL info, April 27, 2010.
        

    

    
        
            
                [27]
            
             “Opéra. Ursule, un spectacle webcam décalé,” Le Télégramme, May 3,
            2010.
        

    

    
        
            
                [28]
            
             “Théâtre de Cornouaille. Rendez-vous avec Ursule sur le web ce
			soir,” Le Télégramme, April 29, 2010.
        

    

    
        
            
                [29]
            
             Koch, “Au web ce soir.”
        

    

    
        
            
                [30]
            
             Benjamin Lazar, Marion Boudier, and Florent Siaud, “Dramaturgie et
			mise en scène des classiques,” Agôn, Dramaturgie des arts de la
            scene (2009).
        

    

    
        
            
                [31]
            
             “Actéon,” Les Cris de Paris official website, accessed February 1,
            2023.
        

    

    
        
            
                [32]
            
             Renaud Machart, “Actéon, sur Arte.tv: un petit opéra de
			Charpentier repensé au long d’un plan-séquence,” Le Monde, February
            22, 2021.
        

    

    
        
            
                [33]
            
             “Actéon,” Théâtre du Châtelet official website, accessed February
            1, 2023. This is also the expression used by Sofija Perović in her article
            “Métamorphoses du chasseur chassé—Actéon, filmopéra,” Alternatives
            théâtrales, online blog, September 23, 2021.
        

    

    
        
            
                [34]
            
             See the next section of this Forum “Transposing the Necessity of
            the Present,” an interview with Benjamin Lazar conducted by
            Caroline Mounier-Vehier.
        

    

    
        
            
                [35]
            
             Lazar, Boudier, and Siaud, “Dramaturgie et mise en scène des
            classiques.”
        

    

    
        
            
                [36]
            
             See Emmanuelle Hénin, Ut pictura theatrum. Théâtre et peinture de
            la Renaissance italienne au classicism français (Geneva: Droz,
            2003); Jean-Louis Haquette and Emmanuelle Hénin, eds., La scène
            comme tableau (Poitiers: La Licorne, 2004).
        

    

    
        
            
                [37]
            
             See Anne Surgers, L’Automne de l’imagination. Splendeurs et
            misères de la représentation (Bern: Peter Lang, 2012), in
            particular “Le divorce entre scène et salle: un modèle qui sépare,”
            256–71.
        

    

    
        
            
                [38]
            
             Benjamin Lazar, “Entre le théâtre et le cinema,” presentation of
            Au web ce soir for Europe1.fr, Dailymotion, posted April 28, 2010.
        

    

    
        
            
                [39]
            
             “Au web ce soir,” video interview conducted by Emmanuelle Giuliani
            and Julie Koch with Morgan Jourdain and Benjamin Lazar for La
            Croix, Dailymotion, posted April 22, 2010.
        

    

    
        
            
                [40]
            
             “Au web ce soir,” video interview.
        

    

    
        
            
                [41]
            
             See the next section of this Forum “Transposing the Necessity of
            the Present.”
        

    

    
        
            
                [42]
            
             “Transposing the Necessity of the Present,” interview.
        

    

    
        
            
                [43]
            
             Expression used by Benjamin Lazar in the video interview conducted
            by Emmanuelle Giuliani and Julie Koch with Morgan Jourdain and
            Benjamin Lazar, presented in Koch, “Au web ce soir.”
        

    

    
        
            
                [44]
            
             Combes, “Le théâtre en live depuis votre canapé.” In particular,
            the journalist reports the following remarks by Benjamin Lazar: “We
            suggest inviting friends to your home to create a true moment of
            conviviality.”
        

    

    
        
            
                [45]
            
             See Cathy Dogon, “Web-opéra: Le Mystère de l’écureuil bleu,”
            France 3 online, February 19, 2016, updated June 11, 2020;
            Benoît Fauchet, “Le Mystère de l’écureuil bleu: baptême public d’un
			web opéra,” Diapason, February 24, 2018.
        

    

    
        
            
                [46]
            
             Molière and Jean-Baptiste Lully, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, musical
            direction Vincent Dumestre (Le Poème Harmonique), staging Benjamin
            Lazar, Paris, Théâtre du Trianon, 2004. Videorecording directed by
            Martin Fraudreau, France, Alpha Classics ALPHA700, 2005, DVD.
        

    

    
        
            
                [47]
            
             Martin Fraudreau, dir., Les Enfants de Molière et Lully, France,
            Alpha Productions and Amiral LDA, 2005, video.
        

    

    
        
            
                [48]
            
             Pantagruel, concept Benjamin Lazar and Olivier Martin-Salvan based
            on the novel by François Rabelais, Quimper, Théâtre de Cornouaille
            – Scène nationale de Quimper, 2013.
        

    

    
        
            
                [49]
            
             Claude Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande, musical direction Maxime
            Pascal (Malmö Opera Choir and Orchestra), staging Benjamin Lazar,
            Malmö (Sweden), Malmö Opera, 2016. Videorecording directed by
            Corentin Leconte, Bel Air Classics BAC144, 2017, DVD.
        

    

    
        
            
                [50]
            
             Jean-Baptiste Lully, Phaëton, musical direction Vincent Dumestre
            (musicÆterna and Le Poème Harmonique), staging Benjamin Lazar, Perm
            (Russia), 2018. Videorecording directed by Corentin Leconte,
            Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS015, 2019, DVD.
        

    

    
        
            
                [51]
            
             L’Autre Monde ou Les Estats et Empires de la Lune, based on the
            novel by Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, staging Benjamin Lazar,
            musical concept by Florence Bolton and Benjamin Perrot (La
            Rêveuse), Arques-la-Bataille, Académie Bach, 2005. Videorecording
            directed by Corentin Leconte, Paris, L’Autre Monde, 2013, DVD.
        

    

    
        
            
                [52]
            
             Traviata – Vous méritez un avenir meilleur, concept Benjamin
            Lazar, Florent Hubert and Judith Chemla after La Traviata by
            Giuseppe Verdi and La Dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils,
            staging Benjamin Lazar, arrangement and musical direction Florent
            Hubert and Paul Escobar, Paris, Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, 2016.
            Videorecording directed by Corentin Leconte, Bel Air Classics
            BAC156, 2019, DVD.
        

    

    
        
            
                [53]
            
             See the previous section of this Forum, “Creating Opera for the
            Web.”
        

    

    
        
            
                [54]
            
             See the previous section of this Forum, “Creating Opera for the
            Web.”.
        

    

    
        
            
                [55]
            
             La Chambre de Maldoror, based on Les Chants de Maldoror by the
            Count of Lautréamont, directed and performed by Benjamin Lazar,
            Montpellier, Théâtre des 13 vents - Centre dramatique national,
            January 24–27, 2023.
        

    

    
        
            
                [56]
            
			A video presentation of the L’Entremonde project is available
            online on the official website of the Théâtre de l’Incrédule,
            Benjamin Lazar’s company.
        

    

    
        
            
                [57]
            
             The conversation transcribed here took place via Zoom on September
            9, 2022.
        

    

    
        
            
                [58]
            
             Borka G. Trebješanin, “Volim da gledaocu serviram probleme,” interview with Romeo Castellucci, Politika, September 10, 2012.
        

    

    
        
            
                [59]
            
             Romeo Castellucci has staged Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice for
            the 2013/2014 season at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in
            Brussels, a season devoted to the theme of “Rebellion.” The
            rebellion is one of the most important aspects of the myth of
            Orpheus—rebellion against the death and against athe cruel destiny.
            For this most original production, Castellucci took the ancient
            myth and interpolated it with the real-life story of a young woman,
            identified only as Els, who lives in Brussels’ hospital in a
            coma—her body completely paralyzed except for her eyes and
            eyelids—and who played the role of Euridice. Els is in a type of
            coma in which the patient is aware of the surroundings, but is
            unable to react—a state that is still poorly understood and is the
            subject of research in neurology. The idea of featuring a real
            person in a coma is daring, especially since it is not a video, but
            a live projection from the hospital, where Els is listening to the
            performance of the opera from La Monnaie, while an on-site film
            crew transmits the images of the hospital room, filmed live to the
            audience in the opera house.
        

    

    
        
            
                [60]
            
             Sylvie Pébrier, Réinventer la musique dans ses institutions, ses
            politiques, ses récits (Château-Gontier: Aedam Musicae, 2021).
        

    

    
        
            
                [61]
            
             Christian Biet, Simon Hatab, and Marine Roussillon, “Extension du
            domaine de la danse: entretien avec Bintou Dembélé,”
            Théâtre/Public, no. 236 (July-September 2020).
        

    



            
            
    



                

            

                

            

          
          
        
        
        
