Solo Opera – Sunbathing in my tears

Thursday April 6th at 12pm
SG Building Hall

Baroque, contemporary repertoire

  • Concept, creation and direction : Julie Beauvais
  • Creation and performance : Lisa Tatin
  • Composition and electronic accompaniment : Olga Neuwirth, Blaise Ubaldini, Barbara Strozzi, Dragos Tara
  • Costumes : Gwendolyn Jenkins, Horace LunddConcept, création et direction: Julie Beauvais

Sunbathing In My Tears is a solo opera in which all characters are played and sung by one only soprano. Julie Beauvais creates for EPFL a lighter version adapted for unusual places where people pass by.

An opera in which dramatic art is not written based on human passions which usually imply the relations between lyrical characters and which refuse the theatrical interpretation of music. During its conception, Julie Beauvais and Lisa Tatin get rid of opera features, voluntary, imposed on music, of the arbitrary stage set. Like minimalism in plastic arts, the desire is to limit all traces of intervention on the piece of work. The simplicity of the plan of action and the working drawing of the space management are essentials so that the singer does not step between the audience and the composer. The goal is to transmit in the most direct and sensible manner the emotions, the spaces, that are present in the partitions of baroque and contemporary music.

The multiple women and men played by the singer are not the result of classic production where there is the will to interpret. Their supports, theirs motions, theirs dynamics are transpositions that are absolutely representative of the supports, motions and dynamics present in the musical sheet. Thus, the soprano and the producer write together a vocabulary of motions before working together through music. Always together, they develop together a system of observation and writing of the body affections while singing. They configure a framework where each micro-motion of tissues, the skeleton, muscles, organs that are necessary for the production of sound are listed. Lisa Tatin and Julie Beauvais draw and then affirm this new partition of movements in space to discover the dramatic art which will underlie the entente between characters.

→ Julie Beauvais website