Les Etangs – Opera
Paul, an ex-alcoholic still under treatment, is recovering in the cottage of his friends, Noria and Hugo. There, he experiences strange events. The phenomena get worse ; soon he can no longer conceal what he is going through. Viewpoints interfere and intertwine around Paul, discredited by his own mental fragility, as friendship progressively deteriorates day after day.
Rising from the depths of memory, rumours spread around Les Etangs, a property which, in November 1974, was the scene of a bloodshed. Six members of a family were coldly shot while they were sleeping and their savagely mutilated bodies were discovered the next day. The investigation remained unresolved, which will fueled all kinds of wild fantasies : prowlers, madness, suicide, satanic rites,
curse, phenomena from beyond the grave…
Les Etangs is an opera which is meant to be a « lyrical icy gust » for the audience ; the spectator is artistically confronted with the fundamental contradictions and angst of human nature. It is a musical drama with aestethic and rhetorical motives driven by fear, at the crossroads of opera and cinema cultures. In a blend of Wozzeck, Blair Witch Project, Shining and Friday the 13th, fear begets the most irrational phantoms. What is the fundamental nature of the paranormal phenomena and rumours haunting Les Etangs ? Poltergeists ? Phantasm ? Delirium ? Hallucinations ? Chimera ? Pathological mythomania ?
The opera intertwines thoughts on the great Beyond : sacredness, time and Memory at the heart of our societies going round in circles. However the storyline is not on ordinary story about the living dead, but a perspective on the ambiguous relationships between the visible and the invisible. For appearances are essentially deceptive. Les Etangs is first and foremost the disenchanted reflection of a post-materialistic civilisation perpetually questing for re-enchantment. In an era of organised brain-washing toward brainlessness, one thing is sure : in the global village, ghosts are not done being haunted by the living and surviving.
Two excerpts (Orchestral simulation) : Intermezzo / last choir