PASCAL DUSAPIN / NETIA JONES
ORCHESTRE DE PARIS DIRECTION KLAUS MÄKELÄ

In ancient Thebes, a young Antigone rebels against her uncle, Creon, guardian of the city’s legal and social order, by demanding a burial for her brother Polynices, who was killed in battle while attacking the city. This costs Antigone her life. For Pascal Dusapin, grappling with this quintessential tragedy, which has been endlessly commented on, staged, rewritten, and deconstructed over the centuries, furthers an exploration of the opposition between law and love that he first undertook with Medeamaterial (1991), and then continued with Faustus, The Last Night (2006), Penthesilea (2015), and Macbeth Underworld (2019). Dusapin composed “his own” Antigone using Sophocles’ version, as then translated by Hölderlin. He chose it “because it avoids simple ideological or religious interpretations in favour of a political mise-en-abime”. In a stripped-down space that includes a video system, a set designed by director Netia Jones, Associate Director of the London Royal Opera, this operatorio focuses on the mythical and historical aspects of this drama “to talk about our world at every moment of its history”.

Performance with surtitles.