Teatro di San Carlo de Napoli’s production of Bellini’s Norma, Teatre Principal, Palma, Spain (June 2018).
By James B. Mowdy
(Santa Fe, NM) - When I arrived in Paris last summer to see what were thought to be French pop icon Mylène Farmer’s final concerts, I didn’t realize how these experiences would not only transform how I see pop music, but opera, too.
Mylène Farmer 2019 began with “Coming from the Vortex,” our alien queen Mylène arriving onstage in a glowing orb lowered from the ceiling, followed by two hours of highly choreographed, Jean-Paul Gaultier-costumed extravaganza - successive, visually impactful vignettes with uniquely talented musicians and dancers. The finale was the dramatic full circle of "L’Horloge,” a poem by Baudelaire set to the music of decades-long collaborator Laurent Boutonnat, as well as the explosive opening of her first 1989 tour. Like the high priestess of the Druids, the high priestess of French Pop seemed to channel Bellini’s Norma, exiting the stage though a massive wall of projected flames augmented by billowing steam or smoke, climbing to the top of her own funeral pyre. After seeing this concert twice at Paris’ La Defense Stadium, I realized that the French word “spectacle” would forever describe the incomparable career bookend I shared with 50,000 fans over two nights. Stepping back a bit, Mylene’s oeuvre has always been quasi operatic in vocal style (high soprano), dramatic video visualizations and her ability to make an arena intimate. For over 30 years, across screens and on stages in the French speaking world, Mylène has presented universal human themes, touching on revolution, rebellion and renewal. The dark and the light. Sex, blood, murder, death and various forms of rebirth. If that’s not operatic, I don’t know what is.
WATCH: Mylène Farmer performs “L’Horloge,” the finale of her “Mylène Farmer 2019” series of concerts and the final performance of her Paris residency (June 22, 2019).
After seeing Mylène for the second and final time, I returned to my Air BNB between Opéra and Place Vendome, but not before having the foresight to video some of these operatic thoughts in front of the Palais Garnier Opera House (swipe left until you reach the 8th video).
Et voilà, the perfect segue…
Fast forward to April 2020. Isolated in New Mexico, the pandemic spreading, I accidentally discovered Christine and the Queens’ new EP as short film, the brainchild of “Chris” herself (a.k.a. songwriter, dancer, and creative extraordinaire Héloïse Adelaïde Letissier). Filmed entirely on the premises of the Palais Garnier de l’Opéra de Paris, “La Vita Nuova” is, in fact, an opera of sorts, augmented by visually arresting moments and incredible dance sequences, all powered by five of Chris’ dreamy, activated electropop cuts sung in English, French and Italian. Letissier says this in the New York Times, relating a preliminary conversation she had with director Colin Solal Cardo: “ I want to use the postcard of Paris, and I want to be the broken clown inside it. And then a faun will haunt me.”
Héloïse Adelaïde Letissier and actor Félix Maritaud as The Fauna begin their ill-fated entanglement atop the Palais Garnier in Christine and the Queens’ La Vita Nuova, a short musical film released on February 27, 2020, directed by Colin Solal Cardo. Photo: Vogue Magazine and Christine and the Queens.
In the opening shot, the Paris skyline in sight, the gorgeous dandy Chris encounters The Fauna, a mystical creature with lustful intent (as above). Loosely drawing from Dante’s work, a series of fabulous sequences follows, viewers literally falling into the Paris Opera Ballet’s dance studio with Chris, then onto the Garnier stage, into the Grand Foyer and then into the bowels of the building. At this point, she sucks the creature’s life away to herself become a lustful Fauna who pines for vocalist Caroline Polachek in the title track’s club-like sequence that Vogue dubbed as Thriller meets Paris is Burning. Is it a classic text fairy tale set to pop music? A “fever dream”, as described by an artist who “(likes) to think of everything as a novel” because she enjoys them? A melding of dramaturgy, fantasy, pop and dance set in the one of the world’s greatest monuments to classical arts?
Yes.
And we should factor in how many Christine and the Queens fans might now consider a visit to Opéra de Paris, based upon how beautifully La Vita Nuova showcases - and markets - it and the art that’s created there. The same could be said for Kylie Minogue’s Music’s Too Sad Without You, filmed at Venice’s famed Teatro La Fenice in 2018 (this Kylie fan’s interest doubled).
Yes, Christine and the Queens is one of France’s hottest pop acts and La Vita Nuova is an incredible achievement. However, Letissier isn’t an opera singer and her work isn’t considered operatic. But like Queen of French Pop Mylène Farmer, she creates musical connectivity to a visual story as a composer and librettist might, drawing upon universal human themes often found in literary works of high renown, their art songs for our time. And we can’t forget that when opera arrived, it was the pop music of its day. Now that operatic performance is mostly banished from the stage (as we knew it and for an unknown period of time), what could 21st century opera learn from contemporary pop music and the pop music concert experience? To create greater appeal and adoption by global audiences in a world primed for reconnection through music? To become a better, more widely appealing and durable art form?
This is the open question we’ve posed to several professionals, all of whom have deep operatic experience and training, as well as an understanding of pop music’s unifying power and mass, cross-cultural resonance. Each individual has been encouraged to utilize their personal definition of pop music. Their interpretations and/or opinions will center around their primary area of expertise (or not, that’s their call). Looking forward to their thoughts i.e. how does opera innovate, perhaps borrow elements of pop music that make the most sense, evolving into something that still includes classical voice? Our first contributor’s thoughts arrive soon. In the meantime, watch Christine and the Queens’ La Vita Nuova and, like opera, enjoy the visit to a visually arresting sound world. JM