The 3rd Digital Scene: "It's only the Paris Opera that does it"

Text by: Siegfried Forster

Unique, it brings together filmmakers, choreographers, visual artists, actors as diverse as Bertrand Bonello, Ramzi Ben Slimane, William Forsythe, Clément Cogitore or Mathieu Amalric. "The 3rd Stage of the Paris Opera is a bit of a" free Netflix "of the short film," says Philippe Martin, film producer and artistic director of this accessible excellence platform of the Paris Opera. Interview.

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RFI : The Opéra Garnier and the Opéra Bastille are two famous scenes all over the world. How is the 3rd Stage unique internationally ?

Philippe Martin : The Paris Opera is the only major institution that has decided to have a digital platform for which there would be creations distinct from the recordings or things that we see in general. These are productions made for this digital platform and which can be accessed free of charge around the world. A cultural platform with its own editorial. Only the Paris Opera does it.

Many projects are currently emerging on the Internet. Platforms like the Los Angeles Dance Project by Benjamin Millepied or batshevacreates.com of the Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv. The 3rd Stage, created in 2015 by Stéphane Lissner, director of the Paris Opera, was it a pioneer project ?

You could say it still is, because it's free. The principle of the 3rd Scene is a bit of being a “free Netflix” of the short film. You can see around sixty films of fairly short duration. And anyone can see them, which is not the case for most of the other platforms that are always paid.

Since the experience of confinement, many artists and cultural institutions are interested in the virtual. The Louvre said it had increased its site visits tenfold since March. What has changed for the 3rd Scene ?

Attendance has greatly increased [ compared to 5.4 million views between 2015 and 2019, note ]. There will be between 700,000 and 800,000 more views, just during the confinement period. According to the films, there were between five and ten times more views than last year, at the same time. Of course, the project found its full meaning during the confinement.

Have you observed a change in the behavior of your audience ?

It's a much younger audience than the average opera audience. Many do not attend opera. It was the project from the start, to address an audience other than the opera. On YouTube, and this is quite exceptional, we realized that our films, half the time, are seen in full. It is a real success. People come across a film by an artist they know or don't know, on a subject that may seem strange to them. And one in two people watch the entire film. It was really a big surprise.

And it works in France, but also a lot abroad. After France, the United States and Brazil are the countries where there are the most views.

For a very long time, many of the performing artists were rather reluctant regarding digital projects. Have they changed ?

I do not feel a barrier. The 3rd Scene gives an artist the opportunity to do something he would not do anywhere else. Most of these artists would never have made a short film for the cinema as they did for the 3rd Scene. They would not have done a work for contemporary art as they would have done for the 3rd Scene. This platform principle calls for its own expression. So there is no reluctance. On the contrary, there is a lot of interest and curiosity.

Clément Cogitore's video, Les Indes galantes , which was later transformed into an opera performance, is considered a turning point for the 3rd Scene. Is the coronavirus crisis a new turning point for the platform's perception and activities ?

What is certain is that the coronavirus crisis will have greatly contributed to the notoriety of the 3rd Scene. Many have discovered the 3rd Scene on this occasion. For two months, cultural institutions tried to exist on digital by putting shows online, by making interventions. And we realized that the Paris Opera has already had this project for several years. And the project is now quite successful. The catalog is quite impressive.

The two stages of the Opéra Garnier and the Opéra Bastille may remain closed until the end of the year. The 3rd Scene will therefore be the only open stage. Does this mean an increase in budget and more creations online ?

I think that an increase in the budget [ currently 600,000 euros per year on a budget of 225 million from the Paris Opera, editor's note ] is not at all on the agenda. It is difficult to answer this question, because the Paris Opera is going through such a difficult financial situation that I do not believe that the budget for the 3rd Stage will increase ... I have to fight a lot so that it could last.

In addition to a certain mix of audiences, the 3rd Stage also undertakes a hybridization of the arts, but also of places. Films are available everywhere and the creation scene itself can be transposed anywhere. The Opéra Monde exhibition at the Center Pompidou-Metz showed how the African-American artist Kara Walker projected the history of Bellini's opera, Norma , in a colonized African country or how the German Christoph Schlingensief created a village -opera in Burkina Faso. Today, on the 3rd Stage, the choreographer Ramzi Ben Slimane sends his dancer Lorenzo Da Silva to the streets of Barbès. And Bintou Dembélé, the first black woman to sign a choreography at the Paris Opera, makes Les Indes galantes by Rameau dance to krump movements. In the visual arts, 40 years ago, the exhibition The Magicians of the Earth broke down the borders of Western art. Does the 3rd Stage plan to play a similar role for the opera ?

This is a very interesting remark, because in the films that have been filmed, but not yet put online on the 3rd Scene, there is notably a film by an Algerian director, Karim Moussaoui ( Les Divas du Taguerabt ). He wonders: what would an opera in Algeria be, in relation to the Algerian musical tradition? Iranian director Jafar Panahi discusses in Hidden the question of the voice and the impossibility of singing for certain female singers in Iran today, faced with religious prohibitions. So these questions are at the heart of the development of the 3rd Scene. How to resonate this form of expression which is opera in countries other than France, in countries far removed from our opera culture.

This Wednesday, May 27, you are putting online a new creation, Violetta , the first short film by Julie Deliquet. What is its innovative aspect ?

I really liked his productions at the Comédie-Française. The film parallels both a singer who plays the role of Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata . We see her prepare and interpret this woman who dies at the end of the opera. Julie Deliquet makes this story resonate with a woman today who begins chemotherapy at the Gustave-Roussy hospital in Villejuif. The film is a reflection on interpretation. How do you interpret a sick woman in the 19th century and how do you interpret a sick woman today? It is a very aesthetically strong film, very striking and very moving.

The third scene of the Paris Opera, treated as equals with the other two scenes? (Philippe Martin)

RFI · The 3rd Stage of the Paris Opera, treated as equals with the other two stages of the opera?

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