Gualtiero Dazzi
On Boulevard de la Dordogne

Interviews 04.03.2021

Boulevard de la Dordogne, a little music of exile at the crossroads of history and poetry.

Italian composer Gualtiero Dazzi left Milan at the age of 22, at the end of the 1970s. After a stint in Paris, he multiplied his projects - residencies, creations - in Strasbourg, where he settled in 2001. In 2019, the history of his city during the Second World War moved him and inspired a work as lyrical as it is symphonic: Boulevard de la Dordogne. A behind-the-scenes look at the creative process.

"This "operatorio" premiered in Strasbourg on November 25 and 26, 2019, on the occasion of the commemorations of the 1939 evacuation and the November 25, 1943 roundup in Clermont Ferrand. On stage, the young musicians of the University Orchestra and their remarkable conductor: Corinna Niemeyer. An "operatorio" is like a grand opera, with a large number of musicians - 160 on stage - but without staging, in a concert version. The gestation period was rapid and, above all... very intense: I composed this two-hour work for full orchestra, full chorus and solo singers between May and October 2019: six months. I worked ten to twelve hours a day, completely engrossed. Once the score was finished, I had a serious baby blues... and then the pandemic hit. Mon operatorio was due to be revived in Clermont-Ferrand last November, but due to the health situation, the performances were cancelled.

It's a historical piece, but more generally, it's a work about exile, a subject that's more topical than ever. The idea came to me one morning as I was leaving my home in Strasbourg. Like every day, I was crossing the Boulevard de la Dordogne, near the bridge of the same name over the River Ill. I often wondered how it got its name, until one day a very distinguished gentleman approached me and asked if my phone could take pictures, and if I'd be so kind as to capture an image of the plaque hanging on the edge of the bridge. The text on the plaque explains that it was engraved and inaugurated to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the evacuation of part of Strasbourg's population to the city of Périgueux. It pays tribute to the hospitality of the Dordogne department, on the occasion of the arrival of these refugees. A little-known episode of the Second World War.

Excerpt from the booklet by Michelle FinckShéhé ...

Poetry. Saying what is. To stand up

Lift yourself up. Poetry: sketch

Scream. To rise. Flint.

Poetry. But you'll have to write almost

No image. No beauty. Almost without

Image. Just the rhythm. The nude

Rhythm. The bone of rhythm

The white space between the words is silence.

This encounter on the Dordogne bridge gave me a lot to think about: I needed a musical project that would tell the story of this episode and, more generally, of exile. The libretto was entrusted to Elisabeth Kaess, who carried out an enormous amount of research and compilation work: she used various texts by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Virgil' s Aeneid and poems by Michèle Finck on the journey of a Syrian student named Shehe. Elisabeth has also used testimonies collected from people of different eras, with very diverse backgrounds: those who lived through the evacuation of September 1939 and were expelled from Alsace, Moselle and the Ardennes at the time of the Occupation; those who left Spain at the time of the "Retirada" in 1939; and, closer to home, the testimonies of refugees and asylum seekers fleeing today's conflicts, in Syria for example.

https://vimeo.com/387961825

This booklet would not have been possible without the help of a Strasbourg-based association, La Cimade, which was set up in 1939 to organize the relocation of some 700,000 people evacuated from Strasbourg to Périgueux, and which today is at the forefront of migrant reception and respect for the rights of foreigners. Cimade organized the collection of migrants' testimonies. At the moment, I don't know when Boulevard de la Dordogne will be back on stage: such a work is not really compatible with the sanitary measures on stage... In any case, it's a great reflection on the status of refugees, a political work. In times of crisis, it is more essential than ever to resist with the weapons that are ours, the weapons of poetry, to paraphrase Pasolini's words."

Interview by Suzanne Gervais

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