I walk in your hair
Without finding my way
I clamber up your breast
With the aid of the gods
WHERE I GO AT NIGHT
Orpheus is a musician. Eurydice is a nymph. On their wedding day she is bitten by a snake and dies. In despair, Orpheus obtains permission from the gods to go and search for her in the underworld, on the sole condition that their eyes never meet. He fails the challenge and gazes at her. She dies a second time. Gluck took up that myth to compose a powerful and timeless opera.
Jeanne Desoubeaux has lived with Orphée et Eurydice for some time now: “Gluck’s opera has all the essentials: love, mourning, the bewildering pain of loss.” The director shares the power of the music with us by way of a “noble yet not too academic” performance which borrows its title from a song by Philippe Katerine. There is drama and lightness in Où je vais la nuit—the very things that make up our lives.
With her company Maurice et les autres, she brings together on stage a duo of opera and pop singers, and several actor-musicians who play the piano, cello, double bass, ukulele, and percussion. Through music and voice, these brilliant jacks-of-all-trades set out to explore another world that may in fact be ours.
