Les Bains Macabres

There were several challenges to overcome when creating the video design for this new lyrical work by Guillaume Connaisson. First, to give texture, personality and mystery to the “World of the Absents”, a space for the dead peoples who lost their lives in the “Bains Terminus”, linked to them by the aquatic element. Mathéo is linked to sand in the libretto, Célia, the other protagonist, naturally became a sea related caracter. I had fun weaving these connections to their element, in small touches, all the way through the opera, up to the final wreaths. For the other challenges, technic and artistic were intimately linked. We had to give fluidity and poetry to a skype discussion between the two main protagonists, Mathéo and Célia.Célia is in her apartment, on the set, the other in the “World of the Absents”, off stage, but projected on the scenography. It is very beautiful virtual love duo, mediated true computers and cameras, where the singer offers us a superb close-up of a naturalness so rare in opera. For this to work, they had to see each other in order to play together, see the conductor in order to sing together, and the video could not be out of sync with the music. Then we had to make it elegant on the set …  For the very beautiful “Sand air”, I took pleasure in creating a particul sandstorm (its a generative work, the elements of which are created directly in the computer, like in video games for example) that to direct it live, as to follow the movements of the music and the singer. Several marine elements are also generative, for the sole purpose of perfectly mastering their rhythm, something more difficult with a pre-recorded video.  Last but not least is the decay of Mathéos body  at the end of the opera, returning not to dust but to sand. I used my body-mapping techniques to adorn Mathéo’s body with a suit of sand falling apart, as if his body itself was losing its reality. For once the body-mapping was not here at the center of the work, loike in Skinstrap or Dualskin, it was just one element of visual narration among others.

“Pétillants Bains Macabres à l’Athénée” (Les Echos)

“Poétique et loufoque” (Forumopera.com),    

“Deux grosses heures de plaisir et un immense éclat de rire final.

Plongez sans hésiter dans ces Bains Macabres ; l’ouvrage tient l’affiche jusqu’au 6 février !” (Concertclassic.com)