From Maid to Mistress Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

La servante maîtresse Akadêmia

Program

  • Giovanni Battista Pergolesi  (1710-1736)
    La Servante Maîtresse
    Intermezzo en deux parties

Pandolpho is overwhelmed with work: between the automatons that have to be adjusted, the holy pictures the Bishop will send for soon, the puppets to be restored for the new music season, Pandolpho no longer has time to sleep. Scapin is taking an inventory of a trunk, lining up the characters, paying attention to his master’s work… awaiting his instructions.
In the chaos of the workshop, Pandolpho is expecting a consolatory chocolate…
Alas, the only creature he has counted on for the last ten years is being totally rebellious… She is growing up, becoming a woman and is beginning to assert her power… Does she have to compete with all these characters and all these allegories?
She has to push her insolence to the limits for Pygmalion, who is as much of a misogynist as Ovid’s* character, to finally pay her some attention!

So she will play the shrew, the harpy, without missing a beat, one moment she is Alcina or Angelica then something like Armida, before she turns into Agrippina! Oh, its all instinctive, as she knows nothing of these heroines,…
Our Pygmalion will be taken by surprise. He had never seen youth and his own flesh as potential dangers.
No one can resist reality.
Scapin unfurls a few titles on the cloth board, to serve as a warning “The Forced Marriage” or “The Magnificent Cuckold”, “
Journey to the Moon”, he trots out Othello and King Mark.
To no avail… Scapin tidies up the workshop while the lovers coo.
Pink, plump loves cross the space and accompany the lovers’ departure…
Maybe the creative activity will resume later, in the meanwhile, THE DEVIL TAKES OVER!

Akadêmia

Compagnie Emilie Valantin (puppets)
Zerbine : Harmonie Deschamps
Pandolfe : Matthieu Heim
Scapin : Jean Sclavis

Orchestra (12 instrumentalists)

Françoise Lasserre, conductor

Press

  • Anaclase (24/02/16)
  • Anaclase (24/02/16)

    ” Et si La servante maîtresse faisait soudain sensation, sur les traces de sa grande demi-sœur italienne, La serva padrona, qui a tant bouleversé l’art lyrique national en son temps ? Présentée à Reims avec modestie, pour un seul mardi soir d’hiver, la nouvelle production du célèbre intermezzo de Pergolèse adapté, en français par Pierre Baurans en 1754, ressemble, sur l’échelle historique de l’opéra français, à un simple petit barreau léger mais qui, original et ambitieux, se brise par surprise et nous entraîne tout en bas ou tout en haut, enfin dans cet ailleurs si familier, paradis terrestre ou horizon perdu, qu’est une vraie réussite artistique.”

    François Cavaillès (Anaclase, 24/02/16)