ERWARTUNG, 2013

What strikes the mind, the heart and the subterranean territories of who ever listens to  and sees Erwartung is first of all the perfection of a musical language which nevertheless still belonged, in 1910, to the Schoenberg in search of a great work. (Work) in progress. «A single second of the most intense emotion», also says Schoenberg, contains the «half hour of the work» (when the woman discovers the «object», «das ist er», it is him): strange experience of Time in this nightmare-enigma, where the space of the forest is traversed in a feeling of dreadful expectation (Erwartung!) of a truth that will never come to light. «Regardless of what happens, does not happen, it is the wait that is magnificent», announced André Breton who, beyond his physical death, will continue in eternity to «seek the gold of time». On stage here, this expectation is a malevolent but fascinating threat. Therefore, to try to   approach some representation that does not betray it, rigor of uniqueness (the solitary quest of the woman) and proliferation of what «surrounds» her (the world, her own mental labyrinth). It is in this that the Lyon performance seems to respond completely to the distressing questioning of this monodrama, without yielding to too much virtuosity that a conception of interpretation that is too little internalized might call for. And the work of staging entrusted to Alex Ollé respects, again without excessive mental spectacle which would be unleashed to the detriment of the text, the spirit of interrogation which presides over this ceremony of the strange.

Emmanuel Carlier’s video set, which one might fear is «too illustrative», imprisons well- in the immobile huis clos of objects as in the whirling of the forest depths – the woman, somewhere between German romanticism the Friedrich and a surreal “maxernstien”. Erwartung (waiting, hope) focuses on the physical and mental wandering of a woman who sets off in search of the beloved man in a forest that has arisen from her dreams. The jealous lover has become a corpse, his corpse, the truth is at this price. Everything here is in direct contact with the work, its history, its characters. with the optical illusions obtained by Emmanuel Carlier’s video.

Stage Director: Àlex Ollé (La Fura dels Baus)

Video: Emmanuel Carlier

(more credits) : http://www.alexolle.com/work.php?id=53

Erwartung / Schoenberg from Emmanuel Carlier on Vimeo.