Before going to the ceremonies of the 2024 Olympic Games, of which he will be the artistic director, Thomas Joly directs: Romeo and Juliet Opéra Bastille and resumed his musical astromania, tour. Sole group trusts.
Thomas Jolly is at the top of all posters. astromaniaa touring musical that will be repeated next year in the capital, Romeo and Juliet de Gouno, at the Opera Bastille and in 2024 at the Olympic Games in Paris, of which he is the master of ceremonies. At the age of 41, the director admits. “I wouldn’t change my life for anything in the world.”
An evening on the balcony
Miss Figaro. –Are you going out? astromania,repeat Romeo and Juliet preparing for the Olympics… Is it difficult to switch from one genre to another??
Thomas Jolly. – This is a stimulating time, an incredible luxury to move from one universe to another. There are different creative logics and traditions. I am a director and these are live performances. Even if the formats are not the same, the goal remains to bring the story live to an audience.
Origin of the project Romeo and Juliet romantic… Can you tell??
This story is amazing. In March 2020, I had just arrived as head of CDN in Angeri at the time of the arrest. The theater was closed. And me, I’m someone who can’t be stopped. I stumble in the corridors… We couldn’t do theater either, but I saw the windows of my house. And my apartment had a balcony. I thought we could have a joint art moment… Why not, the balcony scene? Romeo and Juliet ?
Did it go by quickly?
One afternoon! We rehearsed with my companion at the time. I put a sign on the building and at 9 pm we started with Gounod’s music. I played for ten minutes. This is the fastest show, lowest budget and smallest gauge, with about fifteen people at the windows and a courier or two stopping to watch.
This performance, however, had a reaction…
One of the neighbors filmed the scene, which was broadcast on the news… After two or three weeks, I got a call from Alexandre Neef (director of the Paris Opera, editor’s note). “I saw that you played. Romeo and Juliet on your balcony. I suggest staging it in the Bastille in 2023.”
Shakespeare between shadow and light
First time working at Opéra Bastille??
I had already staged it Eliogabalo, By Francesco Cavalli, at Garnier. An incredible room for its history, to be close to the audience. But the Bastille comes first. A wonderful tool, definitely one of the most effective in Europe. Above the stream, as always at the opera, I gave a presentation of the model. From my side, these are 3D images where you can integrate light, decor movements. The good news is that it’s very pretty and above all, it works. It’s still a concern! From the first day of rehearsals, I saw that the singers took it. You need privacy for love duets and space for the chorus to unfold. We can get a hundred people on set.
What were your wishes?
Shakespeare wrote precisely for the architecture of the Elizabethan theatre. Then Gounod created during the period of the Second Empire. Finally, we are at the opera house that is the Bastille. At the beginning of the work, it is about two equally dignified houses that face each other: the Capulets and the Montagues. I thought, why not put Garnier and Bastille, these two places, face to face? What we did, but breaking it down a little bit, simplifying it, redesigning Garnier. It is huge as a decor.
In your post of intent you talk about a figure of speech, an oxymoron… Is this a common theme in acting??
the history of Romeo and Juliet everyone knows about it and no one is going to find out the result. Why does it continue to interest us? I think it is due to its poetic structure. This oxymoron figure that brings together opposites creates tension in our brains. It binds us, hooks us. Once again these lovers will meet, fall in love and die again. “Hate is the cradle of this fatal love.” everywhere in the text hate and love are interconnected… Not to mention that love is born in the heart of death. The city is confined, there is an epidemic of plague, in August, in a heat wave. Which gives Verona a different context than the youth of Italy in the summer.
You are an excellent connoisseur of Shakespeare, which you have demonstrated a lot in the theater. When was this shock??
I discovered it in theater class, then I interned at TNB where I was a student. I had a bit of a “tragic” character and discovered the mixture of genres: melodrama, comedy, fantasy… This poet puts simple words to complex feelings. It conveys emotions in a beautiful and powerful way. I have staged historical plays in the theater, I plan to stage them Hamlet, Macbeth, And Romeo and Juliet. A detour through the opera house allows me to enter this gem through the garden door. But go up Romeo and Juliet the most famous work in the world repertoire is a great pressure.
And the dresses?
A bit like decor, we invent a kind of collection that allows us not to mark the work temporally or geographically. In fact, the curtain rises on a masquerade ball, on a large, colorful stage where a hundred choral artists sing. And all this, scenery and costumes, made in the magnificent workshops of the Paris Opera.
Destination Paris 2024
Talk about what monopolizes your evenings, the Olympics.
I have no right to talk about it. I was chosen as the artistic director of four ceremonies: the opening and closing of the Olympic Games, the opening and closing of the Paralympic Games, the city as a backdrop, the six kilometer river as a playground. I assembled a team to write the history of the ceremonies.
Not long ago, you wrote a daily chronicle of the Avignon festival…
We don’t know where our steps, our paths lead… I am excited and grateful to take on and invent this project. I’m backstage in Paris. ●:
Romeo and JulietBy Charles Gounod, June 17 to July 15 at the Opéra Bastille in Paris.
Source: Le Figaro
