Schwanengesang D744

Awareness of the pain, according to Schubert, of the abandonment, according to Castellucci. A recital. Curiously distant from the pianist, the soprano stands center stage. An austere two-piece suit, somber. Immobility of a statue. Expressionless face. Her precious song breaks the silence.  A strange climate of waiting. The lieder follow each other in total impassiveness.  And yet a veil of concern ruffles her rigid features.  At the approach of the eighth lied: Schwanengesang D744, Swan Song, her eyes turn, distraught, towards the ≪ gods ≫ in theatre upper balcony. ≪ How I lament this feeling of death, in the dissolution that runs through the limbs≫. The singer feels contaminated by the poem, in her body. She stumbles.  She does an about-turn.  She moves away towards the back-stage wall, she clings to it, runs her palms over it like over another Wall of Lamentations. Elsewhere, already.
Jean-Louis Perrier
in Festival d’Automne a Paris program (extract)