"Violetta", "La Traviata" between hospital and opera

Text by: Siegfried Forster

“I don't feel so digital and connected. And yet, in her first film, director Julie Deliquet merges reality and fiction, the arts and life, transcended by chemotherapy in the hospital and the tragedy of La Traviata. It is therefore logical to launch this confusing and moving Violetta on the 3rd Digital Stage of the Paris Opera.

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RFI : You are a highly acclaimed director, at the Comédie-Française, at the Théâtre de l'Odéon, at the Théâtre Gérard Philipe. What does it mean for you to launch Violetta today  on the 3rd Stage, the digital platform of the Paris Opera, to thus become a “ 3rd Stage director ” ?

Julie Deliquet : It's true, it's special when you respond to this command from the 3rd Scene when you're not a director. I took it as a pretty extraordinary playground. It was a way of taking my first steps as a director, even if I had studied cinema in high school. I passed a baccalaureate in cinema, I had done a workshop in college, but it was above all a look at film analysis. When you make your first little film, it's like a kind of laboratory where you get lost and feel extremely free. This is what is great with this platform calling on artists of all stripes to try a short film by integrating, near or far, the notion of opera.

► Also read:  The 3rd Digital Scene: "Only the Paris Opera does it"

In Violetta , you tell the story of two women : one is about to go up on the stage of the Bastille Opera to sing the tragic end of La Traviata , the other faces chemotherapy at Gustave hospital- Roussy de Villejuif while also listening to Verdi's opera. Is it a film about universes that connect ?

Yes that's it. It is a kind of mixture of true and false, of the relation of fiction to reality. I often go through reality to finally pay homage to fiction. These are two tragic figures, two figures of actresses who will represent the disease. One via Verdi and an opera repertoire. The other with a more modern representation of today's disease.

Cinema, theater, opera, life ... everything merges in Violetta . Is this “hybridization” of the arts and of life, where we find it increasingly difficult to distinguish borders, a consequence of our increasingly digital and connected lives ?

I don't know, because I don't feel so digital and connected, except that cinema influenced me a lot as a theater director and I make a lot of references to it. What fascinates me in cinema is this idea of ​​capturing reality. Something that I try to do, day after day, in the theater, but in the theater, we have to reproduce it, to re-invoke it, since it is not a question of making a catch and locking it up, but it is to start again the next day.

On the other hand, we have this slightly crazy thing in the theater which makes us as deadly as the spectators opposite and we, for once, we really have a hyper present that we share with people. These two forms of reality fascinate me. And it's true, we no longer do theater today like fifty years ago. There is the influence of other arts, the arts that respond to each other. Today, in the theater, there is a lot of live video. And many film directors return as spectators to the theater. It is a fairly modern era which multiplies writing supports.

Since March 2020, you have been the director of the national stage of the Gérard Philipe Theater in Saint-Denis. After this period of confinement and the experience of closed theaters, has your outlook on the theater changed ?

What is certain, our profession has been really impacted. From the moment we are no longer with each other, our profession is really under attack. So, it was a period of questioning, of great solidarity, and at the same time of hyper concern. This brought us back to this great precariousness, but also to an awareness that we can do theater with not much, if not to be with each other.

There was also this kind of strength to say to ourselves: adapting is the very essence of our profession. Then, as theater director, [early March,] I really took over the management of a closing theater. So, being a director without actors, without rehearsals, without representations, that means that I still don't know what it is to be director, because the very essence of why we come to the theater has been completely exposed. the stop.

Now it is a matter of trying to dream of a return from the public and of trying to approach future projects with a certain carelessness. This carelessness has been attacked the most. And you have to find a place in society. What is our place? What is our mission ? How to find a link with the population? Even if a lot of theaters have done it in a great way with digital tools. There, digital tools really helped.

You spoke of a " cultural emergency " in relation to the population around your theater in Saint-Denis. What is the role of digital in your relationship with the public ?

For example, Violetta  was thought to be a digital tool in itself. And we knew very well that it would also be for public screenings and to be put online for free. I was so happy that Violetta  could go online right now. In addition, the theme also speaks of both our professions and the hospital's professions. So it really made a lot of sense for me.

After, on the very recording of the show, we see that there was really a great work done by teams. In particular, we sometimes see the actors very closely, where we cannot see them when we are at the theater. After, obviously, that does not replace the return to the rooms to find this social bond.

► Violetta , short film (18 min) by Julie Deliquet, put online since May 27, 2020 on the free platform of the 3rd Stage of the Paris Opera.

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