AFP Videos – France
A minotaur and a scorpion woman in Toulouse for a grand urban opera
Impressive horns, smoking nostrils, delicately sculpted wooden torso, Lilith, the giant scorpion woman of the urban opera designed by the street theater company La Machine, contemplates the compact crowd on Saturday in old Toulouse.”She is tall, eh?”, whispers a mother to her young son, whom she holds at arm’s length so that he can see Lilith bat her eyelashes and come back to life on Saturday morning. Not far from there, a little girl with blond hair displays a worried look in the face of this monster which suddenly comes alive to a soundtrack of groans and murmurs. One might believe that the appearance of a giant scorpion would empty the streets of Toulouse but the curious flock by the thousands on Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to admire Lilith, the new mythical protagonist of The Machine. With dark gray-green scorpion legs bristling with small spikes, Lilith seems to be looking for Asterion the minotaur, a colossus weighing 47 tonnes and 14 m tall who, since the first opus of this opera, in 2018, has become the guardian of the Pink City. His awakening, Friday evening, marked the first act of this show, “The Gate of Darkness”, during which the giant will attempt to “open a passage to the beyond” to subjugate new “damned souls” and thus extend its power, according to the booklet accompanying this performance, distributed widely and available via QR code.- Aiguillon -D’un slow and majestic pace, Lilith reaches the Place du Capitole, a few hundred meters away, accompanied by hundreds of people, many of them children, in a form of chase backwards to better admire the spectacle. A few lucky ones take advantage of the passage of the immense machine to the balconies of their accommodations, but the machinists seem to take great pleasure in directing in their direction the plumes of steam that Lilith propels through her nostrils or her scorpion sting. With the “Door of Darkness”, the director of La Machine François Delarozière wanted to “make the city enchanted, make the city marvelous”, he told AFP a few days earlier. Mission accomplished, judging by the astonished faces in the autumn cool. In 2018, the first opus brought together 800,000 people. This time the organizers are expecting a million. On Friday, some 100,000 curious people, according to the town hall, have already come to admire the machines. “I simply want to leave a lifelong memory, a mark in the mind. I like the public to rediscover this child’s gaze. , a moment when we forget prejudices, beliefs and find ourselves faced with an emotion which is a little total and in the public space”, explains François Delarozière. “Fortunately the bishops have consecrated us, eh?”, says , mockingly, a woman with curly hair and blue eyes. The approach to the event was in fact marked by a controversy fueled in particular by the Archbishop of Toulouse, who denounced a “dark” spectacle accompanied by “a symbolic satanic”.- Perilous dance -At the bend of a street in the city center, closed to traffic on the occasion of this flagship event in the cultural programming of the Toulouse metropolis, which financed the project for a total cost of 4 .7 million euros, Lilith finally emerges on the Place du Capitole, where Asterion still sleeps. To the rhythm set by the musicians installed on the balcony of the town hall, sometimes captivating, sometimes twirling, the scorpion-woman s The minotaur slowly approaches, circling the square in front of thousands of gazes and smartphones immortalizing the scene. Asterion, who has come to protect the city, cannot resist the spell cast upon him by Lilith. The two immense machines begin a perilous dance for the numerous stagehands clinging to these colossal structures of wood and steel, before separating and leaving in two separate streets, to thunderous applause and cheers.The first big scene of Act II of “Dark Gate” ends. Spectators disperse before the rest of the festivities, which will last until the end on Sunday evening.vgr/chv/gvy
