FULL DREAMS (Purcell & Downland) Rennes 2022 Damien Guillon, Le Banquet Céleste
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Dreams
- Composer: Purcell Henry, Dowland John
- Libretto: various
- Venue & Opera Company: Opera de Rennes. France
- Recorded: May 2022
- Type: Concert Semi-staged
- Singers: Damien Guillon
- Conductor: Damien Guillon
- Orchestra: Le Banquet Céleste
- Stage Director: Cécile Roussat, Julien Lubek
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Culturebox, France TV
- Date Published: 2022
- Format: Broadcast
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Genius poets and stage handymen, the duo Cécile Roussat and Julien Lubek are renowned in the staging of opera, but also in new magic, dance and circus arts. Experts in illusions, they compose with the musicians of the Banquet Céleste a show which is similar to a living painting, fragile and miserable at the same time. To lead us into this cabinet of imaginary curiosities: hanging candles, the magic of an acrobat’s body, the softness of grains of sand and 3 musicians embarked on the adventure…
The poetic and dreamlike universe of this production around the captivating and marvelous repertoire of H. Purcell and J. Dowland allows us to approach the theme of vanities in a subtle and delicate way. The search for absolutes and confrontation with the limits of reality are therefore inevitably evoked subjects, which allows everyone to identify with the characters in this performance. Indeed, the whole point is to support and stage in an intimate, sensitive and pictorial way Man’s confrontation with his solitude as well as the melancholy of existence.
Vigils
Damien sings Dowland and Purcell. In the darkness, his voice, a sensual angel, awakens us, opens our sleeping souls to melancholy, to the touching narcissistic dream of the wounded poet, to the harmonies four centuries old but eternal, to the marvelous of yesterday and today .
Suspension
We invite you to an hour of secular communion, a surprising and intimate parenthesis, immersed in the heart of a living painting, an imaginary cabinet of curiosity, where the Vanity of life and its pleasures shines through. Echoing Damien’s voice, among the feathers that fly, and the musicians who awaken from a distant sleep, the mysterious magic of the body of an acrobat dancer, an undulating and diaphanous reflection of the singer. The fire of candles hanging nowhere, the fragility of optical illusions, the elusive grain of sand that slides on the water…”
Short-lived
This array of moving and singing memories is a fragile installation like a vocal cord, like the fibers of a stretching muscle, or the wings of a butterfly. But these wings can also take us far. In this unexpected meeting of the body and the voice, the universal is particularized, to pose itself as singular. The present moment, alone, counts, and, when leaving the room, the spectators will take with them only the immaterial imprint of a sweet dream… Dreams…
Quoted from banquet-celeste.fr