Dafne | Mitterer

We know that the laurel wreath is the distinction of the victorious poet. It is also a hunting trophy and a mortuary emblem, commemorating the memory of a fatal passion: that which launched Apollo on the steps of the nymph Daphne, transformed into a tree before letting herself be reached...

In the early 17th century, the myth of Daphne provided the German Monteverdi, Heinrich Schütz, with the material for a pastoral. Premiered in 1627, his Dafne marks an essential date in the history of German opera. Unfortunately, the score was destroyed and only the libretto by Martin Opitz has survived. Reading it gave Geoffroy Jourdain the desire to follow in Apollo's footsteps. For the race of the god defeated by Cupid, seeking in vain to reach the object of his desire, is sometimes the image of the artistic quest. The founder and director of Les Cris de Paris invited Wolfgang Mitterer to recreate a work based on the words of Martin Opitz, in which the roles seem to emerge from the choral mass before plunging back into it, and in which the electronics blur the boundaries between singing and pure material vibration. Aurélien Bory has designed a circular, enveloping and dynamic space for this operatic metamorphosis: as secret as the rings of a tree, as vast and deep as the spheres of the ancient cosmos.