Name: Benjamin, dernière nuit
Start: 2016-03-15T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2016-03-26T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Opéra Nouvel de Lyon

Organization

Festival d'Aix en Provence

Biennale Musiques en Scène

Cantante

Jean-Noël Briend

Walter Benjamin

Michaela Kušteková

Asja Lacis

Michaela Selinger

Hannah Arendt

Charles Rice

Arthur Koestler

Scott Wilde

Gershom Sholem

Jeff Martin

Bertolt Brecht

Gilles Ragon

André Gide

Károly Szemerédy

Theodor W Adorno

Tenore

Vincent Ordonneau

Un joueur d'échecs

Direzione d'orchestra

Bernhard Kontarsky

Regia

John Fulljames

Scenografia

Michael Levine

Costumi

Christina Cunningham

Video

Finn Ross

Luci

James Farncombe

Suono

Carolyn Downing

Direzione del coro

Philip White

Coreografia

Maxine Braham

Will Duke

Opéra de Lyon

Others

Lyon Opera Choirs

Orchestra

Lyon Opera Orchestra

Benjamin, dernière nuit

Lione

Francia

Opéra Nouvel de Lyon

German-Jewish essayist, philosopher, and critic Walter Benjamin was one of the early 20th century's most influential thinkers, a light in the darkness of looming war and political oppression. In Benjamin, dernière nuit, composer Michel Tabachnik and librettist Régis Debray examine this life cruelly cut short by despair in the face of Nazism. Experience the opera here in its highly acclaimed 2016 premiere production at the Lyon Opera.

Benjamin, dernière nuit begins at the end: with a tableau of the body of Benjamin in a Port-Bou hotel room following his suicide. After the opening scene, the opera returns to earlier in the evening: Benjamin’s arrival at the hotel, greeted by a menacing innkeeper. Informed that the Spanish authorities are coming to deport him back to France and into the hands of the Nazis, he decides to end his life, poisoning himself with an overdose of morphine tablets. Joined on stage by his doppelganger (the Walter Benjamin singer), the actor Benjamin reminisces about meetings with various friends and colleagues (among them Arthur Koestler, Bertolt Brecht, André Gide, Hannah Arendt) from the past year in a morphine-induced reverie, with the singer Benjamin reenacting the past in front of him. The actor Benjamin slowly expires, but the singer survives to the end of the opera, living on as a symbol of the philosopher's contemporary relevance.

Benjamin, dernière nuit Tabachnik

Public

Approvato

Libretto di produzione

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