The Bordeaux Opera presents this Friday the premiere of a world creation, the ballet
Mythologies
signed Angelin Preljocaj and Thomas Bangalter, ex-Daft Punk.
The young conductor Romain Dumas, who will conduct the Bordeaux-Aquitaine National Orchestra during the eight performances on the Bordeaux stage, looks back on the creative process with Bangalter.
He warns that his composition is "neither Daft Punk nor electronic", even if "his experience obviously fed his inspiration".
It's a world creation that everyone in culture is waiting for with impatience and feverishness.
This Friday, the Bordeaux Opera will premiere
Mythologies
, a ballet by Angelin Preljocaj, one of the greatest contemporary French choreographers, and… Thomas Bangalter, one of the two founders of the ex-electro duo Daft Punk.
This creation will bring together ten dancers from the Bordeaux Opera Ballet and ten dancers from the Ballet Preljocaj, in a choreographic approach to different ancient and contemporary mythologies.
In terms of music, this is Thomas Bangalter's first creation since Daft Punk stopped in 2021. Angelin Preljocaj thought of the Frenchman because he had already used Daft Punk in a previous creation.
Preljocaj then imagined “a mixture of classical and electronic, but Thomas Bangalter wanted to break with electro, and he preferred to compose for the orchestra, with its organic side”.
20 Minutes
met the young - 36 - composer and conductor Romain Dumas, who accompanied Thomas Bangalter in his creation, and who will conduct the national orchestra Bordeaux-Aquitaine during the eight performances on the Bordeaux stage.
Tell us about your meeting with Thomas Bangalter.
The meeting took place in November 2020, knowing that the genesis of the project dates back to 2018. It took him a year to compose for a work of around 1h30, then there were several months of exchanges between us, and shuttles around its score.
My role was to discuss a lot with him, to take up what was not necessarily suitable for a symphony orchestra.
It was the first time he had written for such a formation, so he had to be fed with the functioning of an orchestra, whether at the technical, human, psychological level... A whole host of areas with which he was not confronted , since he worked in the electronic field, therefore machines.
He wrote things that were impossible, but my challenge was to try to keep as much as possible anyway, I didn't want to distort his gesture.
Then from March, Angelin entered the dance, and the music continued to evolve on its formal aspect.
Finally, for fifteen days, we have been finishing the final adjustments to the score.
We are in a tense work dynamic until the show.
A show not easy to set to music, in fact?
No, but that was the richness of this project.
We each arrived with different sensitivities, intuitions and expertise, and our aim was to add up these riches, to make something bigger than ourselves.
We had time, and the whole house got involved: the editing of the score was done by the librarian of the Opera, the orchestra took part in a music test lab in February to have a first idea of how it sounded.
The secret is well kept around this creation, what can you say?
There has been a culture of secrecy around Thomas Bangalter for twenty years… What I can say is that it's not Daft Punk, it's not electronics, it's is acoustics.
Obviously his experience fed his inspiration: in electronics, there are a lot of repetitive gestures, loops, which irrigated his orchestral writing.
This challenged the musicians on certain aspects, because the rigor of this repetition was difficult to obtain.
What did you know of the Daft Punk universe before your meeting with Thomas Bangalter?
Not much.
I knew the myth, a little about the music, maybe three pieces… Well, after that I went to listen to the rest anyway!
Above all, I adhered to the approach of accompanying him in what he wanted to do.
It was a challenge to bring my experience to this guy who had a completely different approach to mine, knowing that I could benefit from it for my own work as a composer.
Did he insist on particular aspects?
He was very sensitive to the balance within the orchestra, that each group is well detailed and well mixed at the same time, a subtle alchemy which is very difficult to obtain at the Opéra de Bordeaux, because the acoustics are complicated , it's dry.
“There is no natural binder, we have to create it ourselves.
We sometimes tend to want to prioritize the music, how did you apprehend to work with a musician from another world than that of the classical?
For years we have been looking for solutions so that the label of elitism disappears from the pediment of the opera.
It is complicated.
This kind of project allows it, and moreover the public responds present.
Afterwards, with regard to supposedly great or less great music, for me what counts is the care and intensity that a performer will put into a musical gesture.
Whether his inspiration is popular, electronic or otherwise, it is the intensity he will put into making this gesture that will inevitably resonate with people.
The grade doesn't really matter.
Afterwards, we are more or less sensitive to sounds or others.
Mythologies, by Angelin Preljocaj and Thomas Bangalter, from July 1 to 10 at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, duration: around 1h30, from 8 to 60 euros. The show will then go on tour for more than 35 dates.
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