Who the H... is Georges Aperghis? 
- 1996 Opera Production 
 

With the support of Association Française d'Action Artistique - the cultural division of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Government of France

avec le soutien du Ministère Etrangères - Association Française d'Action Artistique

• Director's notes
• Music Director's notes
• Program
• Artist Biographies
• Return to Who the H... is Georges Aperghis? Main Page

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Director's Note

You will first be captivated by the sound, a dizzying array of wild and wonderful voices, sometimes fanning out to gravity-defying heights, at others deep and authoritative, vying for power and yet ready at any moment to make us laugh with the pleasure of recognizing ourselves in our daily lives. Samurai cries, shrieks of disagreement, sighs of passion, dripping sounds, whirlpools and waves, storms and sirens, rebellious adolescents, patriarchs, revolutionaries: as one popular newspaper used to say "all human life is here!"

Welcome to the fascinating music theatre world of Georges Aperghis. Welcome to Water and Gravity.

After the wide range of sound qualities, instrumental as well as vocal, you'll be struck by the variety of texts, drawn from several sources and languages, all used for their potential to make music. A major component of both pieces comes from Leonardo da Vinci's observations on the nature of both gravity and water, about which he wrote extensively in his celebrated notebooks. The texts are used, however, as much for their subversive or metaphorical meaning as for their literal comments on water and gravity.

The event's title is taken from the two works performed: De la nature de la gravité (of the nature of gravity, written in 1980, yet considered too difficult to perform until now) and De la nature de l'eau (of the nature of water, written in 1974 and a first time performance for North America). And if Aperghis' work were not unconventional enough, in a new departure for presenting work of this kind, "gravité" will be performed twice in the evening in two distinctly different stagings.

This is music theatre at its most exciting, where musical gesture is pursued to the limits of its impact on the body and on emotion within the rituals of human existence.

Georges Aperghis' music theatre compositions present a formidable challenge for all concerned in realizing them for the stage, but none more so than for the performers themselves. In creating Water and Gravity, I have been both thrilled and fortunate to work with a group whose enthusiasm and dedication has been second to none; many of them received advanced training in this kind of material in previous Banff Centre programs, and without their active contribution to the creation, this collaborative event would have been impossible.

Richard Armstrong

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Music Director's Note

Georges Aperghis is not a composer of abstract concert music or of opera, even though he has often applied himself to these musical genres, which are precisely classified in our occidental world. However, even in these cases, he remains faithful to his natural creative inclination: to contact his "dream" interior. This is manifested by the performers through sound, certainly, but also through all kinds of classic human expression: the word, the movement, the whole range of emotions, ambiguity, sensitivity, etc. All this is clearly evident in the two works presented here: the word is there, the profound and noble word of Leonardo da Vinci, interwoven with what one could describe as daily situations, even when they lead to crises and death. This dramaturgy, far from weakening the words of Leonardo, rather emphasizes the universal character within them. Simultaneously, the heightened thought of the texts puts into sharp relief the conventions and the absurdity of the characters' lives.

But the intention is also above all, the music: music as magic in the ancient sense of the word; the profound need to express often obscure or closed areas of the self, areas where the performers are led to immerse themselves, driven by the total engagement demanded by the difficulties and the multidisciplinary nature of their task.

In the world of Georges Aperghis, one laughs or cries at the same time, anxiety and pleasure exist side by side: c'est une musique a vivre très simplement.

Jean-Pierre Drouet

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PROGRAM

De la nature de la gravité (of the nature of gravity) version one

pause

De la nature de l'eau (of the nature of water)

intermission

De la nature de la gravité (of the nature of gravity) version two

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