It was before the strike and before the confinement. Released in 2017, “L’Opéra” by Jean-Sébastien Bron told from the inside how the Parisian lyric and dance institution worked. A magnificent documentary to watch or watch for a week.
France.tv/culturebox as well as the Paris Opera site put online from this Monday at 7:30 p.m. the documentary by Jean-Sébastien Bron The Opera, which will be available for free (and at any time) for a week. The opportunity to discover this incredible foray into the great house of music and dance, not without a certain nostalgia.
Because since the release of this film in April 2017, the institution, which recently celebrated its 350th anniversary, has been shaken by two real earthquakes: the longest strike in its history against the pension reform (started in December 2019), which led in particular to 85 cancellations of shows. And then the health crisis that caused the representations to stop completely. A cataclysm.
Its director general Stéphane Lissner declared on May 5 that the Paris Opera would be reunited “without working capital and a deficit of around 40 million euros”, because the institution “is more than 60% self-funded”. A burden that will inherit from 2021 the German Alexander Neef, the successor of Lissner, forced to leave for exceeding the age limit.
In order not to lose the link with its public, since March 17, the Paris Opera offers weekly the retransmission of a show in collaboration with France.tv/culturebox. And it is in this context that the distribution of this documentary by Swiss director Jean-Sébastien Bron is situated.
The story begins in summer 2015 and covers the first season of Stéphane Lissner at the head of the institution. For a year, Jean-Stéphane Bron’s camera will go and see them. Those of the management, but the others too. Above all, on all floors of this imposing Bastille Opera building, as in the other historic site of the Parisian opera house, the Palais Garnier. Behind the scenes, the corridors, on the stage where we rehearse. In make-up boxes, at wig makers. With the costumers, the men and women who do the cleaning, the song leader, the director, the decorator, the choir … Welcome to this city in the city.
Eight years after the film by Frederick Wiseman, Dance (dedicated only to Ballet), The Opera by Jean-Sébastien Bron is a curious, touched and sometimes amused look at the before and after performance, on the work of the shade which allows the light. What he shows us is not the spectacle itself, but the social, human life of a vast place. Never opera or ballet passages are shown full frame in this film, they are always seen through the prism of work, by the eye of a professional, by the backstage. And the magic of this film is there.
A few main characters serve as our guide: so there is Stéphane Lissner, a team man immersed in the thousand wheels of opera production, a man who listens as much as a skilled negotiator. But also a lonely man, seen for example watching the premiere of Moses and Aaron of Schönberg isolated in front of his post.
There is Mikhail Timoshenko, a young bass baritone from a small village in Russia, selected to enter the Paris Opera Academy, the program for young artists who are half-student, half-professional. Doted with a talent, handsome kid, curious about everything, Micha is especially the brand new eye through which the spectator of the film discovers the universe of the opera.
Here is also Philippe Jordan, the music director of the institution. He is the one who makes the machine run artistically, he is at all the rehearsals, he is the transmission, he is the listening, but he is also the efficiency, moreover his corpulence appears here very muscular to face all his tasks.
Other figures, more or less recurring, populate this film. Like the stage manager, the one who, from her cabin, gives the “tops”, that is to say, she indicates to the lighting services, accessories, machinery, etc. when to intervene in the show. She is at the origin of some scenes of great poetry that we let you discover. Other people met in the film are real stars, like Benjamin Millepied, who was for a year and a half director of Dance, or Jonas Kaufmann, one of the most famous tenors in the world, filmed during a rehearsal orchestra. But their presence is only very fleeting. Here, in any case, everyone is treated equally.
Jean-Stéphane Bron’s staging is both dynamic and sensitive. The montage of images of the film sets the pace. But parallel to this, a sound montage, consisting of additional music, offers like a second narration, which allows you to take a nice distance, highlight a tension, put suspense or reinforce a joyful feeling.
How is negotiation with the unions going after strike notice threatening production? How do you discuss with the choir about its positioning on stage, square or diagonal? How do you tell Benjamin Millepied on the phone that a potential successor has already been found for him? The still very sober look of the camera focused on social confrontation is one of the interests of this film. Today, after the social conflict experienced by the Opera, it is all the more powerful.
Artistic production also reveals pearls: the replacement of a baritone in the production of Singers, two days before the first request to the Paris Opera teams for a reactivity that shows through here in all its fluidity: magic! The casting of a bull planned on the production of Moses and Aaron is him, shown with poetry and humor…
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