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Representing
an operatic piece on stage is an opportunity to confront theory and practice.
When doing so, the study of historical sources, indeed, gives indications about
how operas were performed at the time they were written. But such an analysis of
a text, aiming to recreate a performance, is worth only as far as it adopts and
integrates the intellectual categories of the piece, not ours. The aim of this
program is to show how eighteenth century intellectual structures, not only give
way to a better contextual understanding of the works, but also allow oneself to
escape this contextualisation and to question our contemporary practice of theatre.
The first
study, implementing this thesis through an example, is dedicated to the Parties intégrantes
of the classical drama, as defined by Pierre Corneille, as a reference
to Aristote's Poetique in his Discours de l'utilité et des
parties du poème dramatique (1660), part of the foreword to his own
theatrical works: « Le poème est
composé de deux sortes de parties. Les unes sont appelées parties de
quantité, ou d'extension; et Aristote en nomme quatre: le prologue, l'épisode,
l'exode et le chœur. Les autres se peuvent nommer des parties intégrantes,
qui se rencontrent dans chacune de ces premières pour former tout le corps
avec elles. Ce philosophe y en trouve six: le sujet, les mœurs, les
sentiments, la diction, la musique, et la décoration du théâtre. ».
The
project aims first to show that a detailed study of well chosen elements of a
piece -selected on the criteria of an historical definition of theatre-
enables accurate decision-making in its performance. But behind this materialistic
goal is hiding an other bet: the one of human spirit, able to free himself
to the designed structure and to transpose it, in order to forecast and design
new works.
Rémy-Michel
Trotier
July 2002
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