Paris (AFP)

Whether it is by interpreting "Gloire à l'Egypte" in Aida or "Immortal Glory of our ancestors" in Faust, the image is unique: at the Paris Opera, the masked choirs take up the challenge of singing in unison despite this "sound barrier".

Nearly 70 of them participate in a new version of "Faust" by Gounod which will be broadcast on Friday on France 5. Either, after "La Flûte enchantée" and "Aida", the third audiovisual recording of a lyrical work within of the institution, since the theaters were closed at the end of October due to a pandemic.

Deprived of spectators for a year, the choir artists are happy to be on stage.

But singing in times of coronavirus remains a challenge because, unlike soloists, they must be masked due to their proximity and are tested once a week (soloists are tested every day of performance or rehearsal without a mask) .

- Distant group sound -

Singing with a mask "greatly disturbs the singing broadcast (...) there is a barrier in front of your sound," Sylvie Delaunay, choir artist, told AFP.

"When we sing opera, we have big inhales, big exhalations, so if the breathing is disturbed, we tire a lot".

Exit the FFP2 masks - "as soon as you take a breath, you + swallow them!" -;

they favor stiff surgical masks (and black for show).

During rehearsals in the studio, they are distanced, one more difficulty.

"We get along less well: we hear the neighbor on the right, the neighbor on the left who are 1.50 m away, the one behind but the sound of the group is much further away (...) the resonance of the volume n ' is not at all the same ", adds Ms. Delaunay, who has worked at the Opera for 23 years.

If there is nevertheless a nightclub scene in Faust that brings to mind the world before in the very modern version of the German Tobias Kratzer, the settings have been adapted to limit contact.

But no extreme distancing to respect the cohesion of the choirs.

"Lyrical artists are exuberant, so we are limited in expression," says Ms. Delaunay.

Artists voluntarily comply with these rules, "in order to be able to work".

And the result may be surprising, given the resonance of their voices at the Opera Bastille during the dress rehearsal which AFP attended last week.

A standardization mission that is not obvious for José Luis Basso, choir director at the Opera since 2014 and who will soon be replaced by Ching-Lien Wu, the first woman to hold this position.

With the mask, "we lost a little in the articulation, the diction (...) the work of the choir artists is precisely to exaggerate the pronunciation of the words, but the results are not bad", smiles the Italo-Argentinian.

- Polyglot -

If they often have an accompanying role, the choirs are sometimes a character apart and sing famous pieces from the repertoire, in particular at Verdi (the famous "Va pensiero" by Nabucco, the gypsy choir in Le Trouvère) or still at Wagner.

In "Faust", one of the most famous French operas with "Carmen", they notably perform the famous arias "Wine or beer" and "Immortal glory of our ancestors".

Mr. Basso recalls their importance but also the complexity of their work.

The cliché that annoys him the most?

"To think that a choir artist is someone who hasn't had a great career as a soloist, so for a living he sings in a choir. It's not like that at all!"

"The exams to enter the Opera are very demanding," he says, citing mastery of several languages, different musical styles, musicality, sight reading.

For Alexander Neef, general manager of the Opera, the important thing is to ensure a safe sanitary environment for staff and artists, but also to continue working.

"We don't exist if we don't play," he said.

© 2021 AFP