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Olga Neuwirth and the entire crew of the Pequod take us on board the whaler's deck, where her music hits us in the face like a Pacific wave. With the forces of the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Orchestre du Conservatoire de Paris conducted by Matthias Pintscher, The Outcast, inspired by Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick, is given its French premiere at the Philharmonie de Paris.
The spatial configuration of the Grande Salle Pierre Boulez has been significantly altered to accommodate the stage set-up for The Outcast, a work defined by the composer as "musicstallation - theater with video". There is no staging as such, but costumed figures speak and sing at the front of the stage, and two choirs are placed at different levels: 24 men(Company of music) behind the orchestra, and 24 boys in masks(München Knabenchor), placed overhead, forming a light spot (like a sand dune or sea foam) in an overall very dark context. Three ladders can be seen at the back of the stage, and halyards criss-cross the space, reminding us that the story takes place on the open sea and on a boat. The images - those of Netia Jones - are projected onto five panels of different sizes, perhaps representing the archipelago of Les Îles enchantées, another of Melville's adventure novels mentioned in the booklet. The video (marine atmospheres, clusters of figures, tormented skies, but also characters filmed in close-up) is an integral part of the dramaturgy, like an additional layer to the text and music, which it superbly counterpoints.
Although Olga Neuwirth tells us a story, the catastrophic tale of the whaler Pequod and its crew, the narrative is in no way linear, more like a screenplay, so much so that the elaboration technique evokes the cinema with which the composer is familiar, having studied its mechanisms. The English-language libretto, written by Barry Gifford, is complemented by Old Melville's monologues, written by Anna Mitgutsch. Melville, in the twilight of his life, becomes a central character (actor Johan Leysen) in The Outcast , which brings out that part of the theater that Neuwirth wants to emphasize. Seated in the garden in front of his keyboard, he lends himself to long, solitary reflections on the idea of death and the meaning of his own life, tackling other existential questions that animate his mind as well as Neuwirth's: greed, the thirst for power, ecological disaster... digressions (always supported by electronics or the light texture of strings) that do not exclude humor or even irony, and whose length may seem excessive, excess always being an expressive spring for the composer! She herself adds other texts (by Lautréamont, Lewis Carroll, Walt Whitman, etc.) and introduces an alien soul to the Moby Dick novel, the whimsical Bartleby (a role sung and played by a woman). Bartleby is the anti-hero of Melville's short story of the same name, written two years after Moby Dick, a strange character who avoids all forms of alienation by saying "I would prefer not to".
The work, in three parts and sixteen linked scenes, immediately plunges us into a highly reverberant sonic space where the hybridization of materials (instruments and electronics) and style - "multi-sensory and with drawers", as the composer likes to say - reign supreme. Within the orchestra, which features a substantial string section, we hear an electric guitar, whose every solo intervention flirts with jazz, a sampler mixing its foreign bodies with the timbres of the orchestra and a liturgical organ, notably for the sermon scene, where Father Mapple (spoken role), during his generous preaching supported by string outlines and the high frequencies of the electronics, aptly recalls the biblical tale of Jonah punished by God and reclined in the belly of the whale. The orchestra is often impulsive in its interventions, the writing featuring the trumpet (the composer's instrument) heard through the filter of numerous mutes.
The journey begins with a jaunty sailor's song sung by the boys' choir, whose pure timbre and clear register stand in stark contrast to the highly hybridized orchestral sound, taking us back into the Pequod's wake at every turn. As for the eight soloists singing at the edge of the stage, they concentrate as many vocal colors and specificities as they do embodied personalities. Among the quintet of crew members, all off to kill the white whale, Queequeg the harpooner - "not a hair on his head, except a sort of braided skull knot on his forehead", writes Melville in Moby Dick - stands out with his countertenor voice, the radiant one ofAndrew Watts, fetish performer of theTribute to Klaus Nomi written by Neuwirth in the same year, 2010. We're hardly surprised to hear, through his voice and the orchestra that echoes its articulation, Purcell's famous "cold air", anamorphosed in this foreign context. Pip, the cabin boy and his tambourine, who escapes drowning but loses his mind, is a child's voice (David Schilde), touching in the fragility of his intonation. It is the only voice to move Ahab/OttoKatzameier, the captain of the Pequod through whom all evil comes, and against whom Old Melville revolts: "The world is a warship where some arrogate divine power to themselves and the others are their victims," he tells us in essence. The baritone's voice, for which Neuwirth reserves some very fine solos, is broad and richly timbred. Far from being monolithic, the baritone's high register is sumptuous and highly expressive, revealing all the nuances of this complex personality. Stubb (baritone Peter Brathwaite) and Starbuck (tenor Johannes Bamberger) also have something to say in this chronicle of life on board, in which the vocality embraces the accents of the English language. They rail against the captain's xenophobia and vengeful madness, trying in vain to stop him in his obsessive plan to kill the white whale that once tore off his left leg. While we hear Ahab chatting with old Melville (superb Johan Leysen) in the third part of the film, the two female characters are also in tune with the writer, seeing themselves as his double or alter ego. Ishmaël(a) - the narrator in Moby Dick - is played by soprano Susanne Elmark, taking on both a spoken role and an often dizzying lyrical part. The voice is as flexible as it is luminous, free in its delivery and highly homogeneous in its timbre. The intermittent appearances of Bartleby/AnnaClementi, another pariah figure who seems to taunt her interlocutor, do not fail to have their effect: a slightly nasal, music-hall-like voice, set with ad hoc instrumental sonorities - plugged trumpet, synthesizer and teasing electric guitar - musically transposing to perfection the "nonchalant disobedience" (in the words of Laurent Feneyrou) that she maintains.
We catch up with the story in the third part ("The Black Sea"), where Neuwirth first evokes the swell of the ocean - a beautiful choral page entirely vocalized - then the Pequod's fight with the white whale, an impressive scene in which the sound of the orchestra stylizing the wave and the flow of the image gradually changing from black and white to red....
The epilogue takes place under a blue sky with light white clouds, an Edenic realm where Old Melville, the boys' choir and Ishmaëla sing her message of peace in a final, distraughtly lyrical aria: "Why don't we behave like the clouds that slowly cross the sky...".
The work - a masterpiece - is defended tooth and nail by a team - video artist and technicians, chorus, soloists and orchestra - in close synergy to articulate all the components of this proposal as ambitious as it is firmly mastered by the master on board, Matthias Pintscher; The Outcast is this world-work by a composer who intends to confront the reality of her time with a drive and commitment that compel admiration.
Michèle Tosi
