Dusapin - Antigone (Paris, 2025)

Pascal Dusapin - Antigone

Philharmonie de Paris, 2025

Klaus Mäkelä, Netia Jones, Christel Loetzsch, Anna Prohaska, Tómas Tómasson, Jarrett Ott, Thomas Atkins, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Serge Kakudji, Natalia Cellier, Cosma Moïssakis

Philharmonie Live streaming - October 2025

The themes and presentation of the ancient Greek dramas of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus remain just as important a foundation for opera as it does for contemporary theatre. Even more so in opera which was originally conceived in the belief that Greek drama was sung. Medea, Orpheus, Elektra, and Oedipus have inspired some of the greatest works of opera from early baroque to modern times, which is not surprising, as the subjects and treatments are inherently dynamic and dramatic in their grappling with always relevant human and moral questions. Filled with death and destruction on a cataclysmic scale, the tragedies present dark tales about the price to be paid for contravention of moral laws and defiance of the gods, but there is more than one kind of god and the dramas still have something important and vital to tell us today about humanity and moral imperatives today. Especially today in our troubled times, when the rule of law is in danger of being disregarded, when what should be unthinkable atrocities are committed and permitted before our eyes.

It's in these febrile and dangerous times that Pascal Dusapin produces his latest work based on Sophocles' Antigone. Dealing with one woman's stand against injustice and belief in a higher law than that of corrupt or foolish rulers, it's a timely reflection on the horrors that we are seeing around us today and the potential consequences for us all if authoritarianism is not resisted - and even if it is. Created for the Philharmonie in Paris, Dusapin presents the work as an "opératorio", partly in concession to it being performed in the Grande salle Pierre Boulez concert hall rather than on an opera stage, but more to give it the concentrated force that the work merits.

Seen as a typically moral question of holding to individual beliefs or divine order above those of man-made laws of the state and resorting to activism when they are wrongfully employed, the subject of Antigone however raises many complex questions and ambiguities when viewed in a modern light. This is another reason why Dusapin chooses to work with Friedrich Hölderlin's 1804 German translation of the work, a reduction to a concentrated form of text. As an 'Opératorio in Five Acts', reduced to an hour and a half performance, the composer uses his always powerful musical expression to provide weight and subtext to explore the ambiguity within that version, and Dusapin's score for his Antigone indeed imbues the work with all the force and meaning that its subject merits.

The essence of the drama is retained and remains simple enough in outline, where as a background to what unfolds in Antigone, Eteocles and Polynices, the sons of Oedipus and brothers to Antigone and Ismene, have both been killed in a dispute over the rule of the city of Thebes. As a punishment for having gathered an army to march against the great city, Creon, their uncle and now ruler of Thebes (and uncle of Antigone) refuses a burial for Polynices, denying even any funeral rites to be said over his body. Antigone is horrified by the order, as much from human decency as for the fact that Polynices was her brother and, against the advice of her sister Ismene, defies Creon's proclamation and performs a burial rite, throwing soil and praying for her fallen brother where he lays.

The drama of Antigone is certainly is adaptable to the times and political events. I recall the segment 'The Postponed Antigone' by Volker Schlöndorff from a script by Heinrich Böll in the 1978 film Deutschland im Herbst, where the public TV executives pull a filmed theatre performance of Antigone from the schedules at a time of high tensions in Germany around the activities of the RAF/Baader-Meinhof terrorist group. That is an indication of the potential of the original work to inspire activism, while at the same time showing how the authorities can control and prevent such controversial views from being aired - but Dusapin's choice of Hölderlin's translation and his own efforts to take a neutral position calculatedly avoid any contemporary political interpretation of the work.

In terms of what is the just and moral action to take, the message of Antigone's defiance and her stance in standing up for what she believes is right may seem fairly self-evidently and difficult to challenge, but as is often the case in Greek drama, all actions - even doing what seems to be the right and just thing in the circumstances - can have unintended consequences that reverberate down the line. You could even see the fate of the children of the incestuous marriage of Oedipus and Jocasta as being cursed by the time of Seven against Thebes and Antigone. In Antigone itself, Antigone's actions have immediate consequences for her when she is condemned to death, takes her own life and a series of other deaths follow in her wake.

So there is a lot to take in and consider in Antigone, and you have to say, based on the premiere performances of the work in October 2025 at the Philharmonie de Paris, Dusapin handles the subject impressively, finding the opposing contrasting forces within the drama and letting them assert their own power without imposing any heavy-handed contemporary reading on the work. More than Antigone, who is single minded and certain of her position - and who inevitably cuts an impressive figure as performed here by mezzo-soprano Christel Loetzsch - Creon has perhaps the more decisive and conflicted role. He knows a ruler cannot appear weak, that Antigone represents a challenge to his authority, but even knowing what will follow when the soothsayer Tiresias makes an appearance, he is unable to do anything to prevent the tragedy that is unfolding.

Dusapin obviously depicts this clash between Antigone and Creon in all its intensity, but despite the concentrated focus of this version, the other conflicts and views are all similarly well expressed and have a vital role to play in the overall balance of the drama, as well as introducing other perspectives that the individual viewer can relate to without being swayed to take one side or another. Ismene's advice to her sister to keep a lower profile and know their place as women, while Antigone wants to shout 'injustice!' from the rooftops introduces the inequality of women's views; Creon's son Haemon brings love into the equation, for Antigone, as well as between father and son. Fraternal love is there too of course in Antigone's conducting an unauthorised dignified burial of sorts for Polynices. Moral questions are agonised over, there are questions of self-sacrifice, honour and respect, both sides believing they have authority, creating a conflict the wisdom of age and holding to old ways over youthful impetuousness and new beliefs.

The dominant tone of the work however is one of unfolding tragedy and that is reflected in the orchestration of low dark sustained notes and lines on strings and brass. At times - as in Dusapin's more recent operas Macbeth Underworld (2019) and Penthesilea (2015) - there are occasional Reimann-like blasts from a large orchestra, although without quite the same sustained battery of seismic eruptions. The anger of Creon in pronouncement of the fate of Polynices is accompanied by a fusillade of rattling violent percussion crashes followed by ominous, rumbling mournful music. It's a musical language more in the line of Richard Strauss' Salome by way of Wagner, and under the direction of conductor Klaus Mäkelä it's every bit as expressive, operatic and dramatically visceral as that implies. Harp, bells and flute can stir up just as much menace and even while Creon brays out his threats, the music can hint at his words being empty; of compassion, of authority perhaps, moral and regal.

Directed by Netia Jones, who sees it as a kind of performance-installation for the concert hall of the Grande salle Pierre Boulez at the Philharmonie in Paris. the Antigone opératorio is nonetheless also fully operatic in performance. Jones can tend towards maximalism in her productions, but here settles for a monochrome minimalist set design that lets the singers take centre stage - figuratively speaking. The majority of the stage is taken up by tall imposing grey-white freestanding monolithic pillars (can it be a monolith if there is more than one?) which are reactive to lighting and effects created by Lightmap, projecting shadows, abstract markings, lines, swirling mists, clouds and gathering darkness, leaving only a corner for an array of microphone stands which are not used for oratorio purposes, but pleas and proclamations. Two video screens occasionally show time-delayed overlaid distorted images of the singers adding to the mood of a distorted reality, while the appearance of Tiresias seeing an enhanced reality wearing a VR-type headset is a good touch. The direction of the video recording of the performance by the Philharmonie de Paris for ARTE Concert makes creative use of movement and angles to capture the drama.

The singing performances are exceptional, and a fully rounded range of voice types just add to the characterisation and the feel of this being fully operatic. It's certainly more declamatory by its very nature, less action-oriented, but deeply operatic in the presentation of the themes and the range of expression in the music and singing. Mezzo-soprano Christel Loetzsch sings Antigone with all the sense of a 'true believer' (whether of the will of Gods or of her own sense of moral certainty), but you can feel the deep emotional sense of loss at the tragedy of her brother's/brothers' fate. Soprano Anna Prohaska's timidity as Ismene can also be seen suggesting a more cautious response, a wiser one even. Creon is of course a bass, and Tómas Tómasson's performance makes you feel deeply involved in his predicament as one bad decision sets off a chain of horrific events. There are solid performances here to from baritone, Jarrett Ott (a Messenger), tenor Thomas Atkins (Haemon), bass Edwin Crossley-Mercer (Tiresias) and even an unearthly sounding counter-tenor Serge Kakudji appropriately as the Greek Chorus.

External links: Philharmonie de Paris, ARTE Concert

Dusapin - Macbeth Underworld (Brussels, 2019)

Pascal Dusapin - Macbeth Underworld

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2019

Alain Altinoglu, Thomas Jolly, Magdalena Kožená, Georg Nigl, Ekaterina Lekhina, Lilly Jørstad, Christel Loetzsch, Kristinn Sigmundsson, Graham Clark, Christian Rivet, Elyne Maillard, Naomi Tapiola

La Monnaie MM Channel - October 2019

Shakespeare continues to be a source of inspiration for opera but it still remains a challenge for any composer not just to approach the greater plays but tread in the footsteps of previous opera adaptations as well. To take on King Lear (which Verdi never managed to complete) you not only have to live up to Shakespeare but also Aribert Reimann's thunderous epic opera version, Lear. Brett Dean however was successful in the unenviable task of adapting Hamlet for opera, drawing more intensely from the original than other adaptations. It's hard to imagine how Verdi's Otello or Falstaff could be bettered but arguably Macbeth could be improved with greater fidelity to the source than Verdi, even though his opera is superb in its own right. That's not the approach that Pascal Dusapin takes however in his reworking of Shakespeare for Macbeth Underworld.

What Dusapin attempts is respecting fidelity to the work while also attempting to bring it to life through his own interpretation; a Macbeth Underworld related the events of Shakespeare's Macbeth through a glass darkly, so to speak. In the opera, the ghosts of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Duncan/Banquo and the Weird Sisters are brought back during the prologue by Hecate to relive their crimes and perhaps reflect on them. In order for this not to appear as Shakespeare at a remove, Dusapin employs a similar technique to Reimann in terms of amplification and concentration of the drama. It's a technique that applies to opera in general of course, heightened through music and singing, but there are other means available and Dusapin uses those as well.

There's good justification for this technique of examining Macbeth at a remove and from the grave; the Weird Sisters in a way already have the ability to see what will happen, so to them Macbeth is already a ghost, dead to them, the future laid out and unchangeable. The notion of Time is very much a thing in Macbeth (see the recent RSC theatrical production) and here it's Hecate who controls time, using the witches as a chorus to taunt and torment Macbeth, as their constant chorus of "fair is foul and foul is fair" emphasises. They appear in various guises throughout, a host of holy horrors, the witches the multiple guests at the dinner where Banquo appears, Hecate also playing the Gatekeeper and in a way the Fool, quoting Corinthians 'Death where is thy victory, o death where is thy sting' even though strictly of course there isn't a Fool in this play.

It's proposed in Macbeth Underworld (and of course indicated in Shakespeare's Macbeth) that it's a ghost who also haunts Lady Macbeth and drives her ambition to murder in the play; the ghost of a dead child. Dusapin makes this child one of the agents of the underworld who make them re-enact their crime, and in the same way, Duncan and Banquo are blended together as a ghostly representation of murder and guilt, one that can also stand for all the other deaths that occur under Macbeth's bloody reign, there to present him with a constant reminder of his crimes while he suffers torment in the underworld.

Elsewhere the drama doesn't entirely work, the libretto relying on recital of the most famous lines of the play in a cut-and-paste way without succeeding in tying them together into a fluid through-narrative, even though it largely follows the linear path of the original drama. Arguably it's not the narrative that is important in this version however since it's intended to be a shadow version of the play, the events blending into a dreamlike succession of horror. The emphasis is placed strongly on the iconic scenes which it manages to compress and amplify effectively; the apparition of the Weird Sisters, Lady Macbeth's 'unsex me' monologue, the chilling 'Is this a dagger I see before me?' build-up to the killing of Duncan, the appearance of Banquo's ghost, Lady Macbeth's 'Out damned spot' and 'Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him', and crucially as far as this Underworld version goes, 'What's done cannot be undone'.

Getting all that in is one thing, but as an opera it needs a little more to engage with in order to have its own voice. That is partly supplied by the music which is moody and effective, much as it was in Dusapin's 2015 adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's Penthesilea. Reimann certainly comes to mind in moments of loud dark dissonance here but Dusapin also, like Verdi, uses a chorus of Weird Sisters to multiply the horror (albeit pitched at Reimann levels, strikingly so during the Requiem sung at the burial of Duncan/coronation of Macbeth) and in a finale that matches the thunder of Reimann's storm scene in Lear. The combination of means is highly effective. Magdalena Kožená is magnetic in terms of delivery and performance, and as Lady Macbeth she gets all the best Shakespeare lines in this version. Georg Nigl gets the 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow' soliloquy of course but his role appears to have rather more spoken delivery of Shakespearean lines in English, so it's not quite as lyrical.

The other element that certainly contributes to the success of the opera as a whole is the direction of Thomas Jolly. Jolly is known in France for directing Shakespeare in the theatre and, whether you consider it appropriate or not, his characteristic slightly camp dark Gothic feel certainly has style in a colour scheme of predominately black, white and red. A large part of Bruno de Lavenère's impressive set design is a moving tangle of roots, branches and twisted tree-trunks that house the Weird Sisters in wispy costumes. The ghost of Duncan/Banquo walks around with a dagger in his back, the blood jewelled in crystals that down his back and across his head. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are ghostly white, wearing white robes, their hair and faces whitened. Lighting is used effectively, a flash of red in dark from Duncan's room during the killing of the King, an eerie blue light as Birnam Wood closes in. It looks great, visually stunning in fact, and it matches the mood that Dusapin's ominous score evokes, as well as the nightmarish ways that scenes and characters blend together.

In collaboration with Jolly's direction, Dusapin's Macbeth Underworld does look and have the mood of a true Macbeth, even if it doesn't hit the same points as Shakespeare. As a Macbeth Underworld however the intention is clearly to be more of a Macbeth experience, and from a musical, theatrical and operatic viewpoint, with Alain Altinoglu marshalling the forces of the music through the orchestra of La Monnaie, it's a very striking work in its own right.

Links: La Monnaie, La Monnaie Streaming

Dusapin - Penthesilea (La Monnaie, 2015 - Webcast)

Pascal Dusapin - Penthesilea

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2015

Franck Ollu, Pierre Audi, Natascha Petrinsky, Marisol Montalvo, Georg Nigl, Werner Van Mechelen, Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Wiard Witholt, Yaroslava Kozina, Marta Beretta

La Monnaie Web Streaming - April 2015

The story of the Amazonian Queen Penthesilea, who launches her troops into the middle of the epic battle ensuing between Greece and Troy, is one of the stranger and lesser known of characters in Greek mythology. It was the German poet and dramatist Heinrich von Kleist who elaborated on the myth and the particular nature of her love of war and her love for Achilles in a High Romantic manner in 1808, and his version has been the inspiration for a number of operas in the modern age. Like the other composers who have approached the subject Pascal Dusapin's version, newly commissioned by La Monnaie in Brussels and premiered in March/April 2015, finds the dark contradictory sentiments fertile ground for musical exploration.

Long before Richard Wagner's Late Romantic exploration of the Liebestod theme in Tristan und Isolde, and three years before the author shot himself in a double suicide with Henriette Vogel, Heinrich von Kleist explored the same complex Romantic notions conflating love and death in 'Penthesilea'. Here the epic battle between two great warriors, Achilles and the Amazon Queen Penthesilea, is taken to such extremes and all the fears of defeat, capture and hatred become so overpowering that they transform into an almost erotic desire for submission that can only be satisfied in a carnal lust for death. It's the struggle between male and female desires on an epic scale of life and death.

The problem with this is that, quite apart from the warnings of their respective captains - Ulysses on the side of Achilles, Prothoe on the part of Penthsilea - and their duty as leaders over their troops, the desire to be torn apart by the arms of their beloved goes against not only the natural order of things, but it's also complicated by the laws governing their behaviour in war. As somewhat unwelcome forces in the bigger battle between Greece and Troy, not on either side (Kleist introducing a Rose Festival as the rationale for their involvement, where the Amazons capture great warriors to use in the procreation of their race) a love-struck Penthesilea has rescued the supreme figure of Achilles in battle but has then in turn been captured by the Greek warrior.

Since this would mean disgrace to Penthesilea, and since Achilles's feelings for the Amazon are no less overwhelming, the Greek warrior allows Penthesilea to think that she has actually captured him, so that they can be together. When Penthesilea finds out the truth however, she is appalled at the situation she finds herself in, and is helped escape by her warriors. Unable to give her up, Achilles has no option but to challenge her to a duel, to which he turns up unarmed and allows himself (in a reversal of the original myth) to be killed by the Amazon Queen. In a bloodlust of fury and hatred mixed with love, Penthesilea even launches herself at Achilles, tearing him apart with her teeth and devouring him along with her hounds.

Heinrich von Kleist's treatment of the Penthesilea myth is a powerful and disturbing one, and clearly tied up in his own complex Romantic notions of the purity of love in death. It's the kind of subject that calls out for a similar High Romantic treatment in an opera, but all the modern versions of the subject that I am familiar with tend to find a more modern musical language essential to the expression of the darkness of the mood and the nature of the subject. By the time Othmar Schoeck came to compose his 1927 one-act opera Penthesilea, he had already moved away from the lush post-Wagnerian symphonic scores towards the more suitably darker expression of Strauss' Elektra. René Koering's faithful setting of Kleist's text in his haunting 2008 opera Scènes de Chasse contrasts the contradictory sentiments with sung German dissonance in the conflict and a more lyrical flow to the spiritual evocations in Penthesilea's softly murmured French dialogue passages.

Dusapin's Penthesilea is very much in the same place as Schoeck and Koering, a dark and menacing place where emotions are laid bare and filled with violent intent. It even comes with an introductory preface note quoting Christa Wolf's warning that it's the beginning of the modern age, and it's not pretty ("Ce n’est pas un beau spectacle, l’ère moderne commence"). Dusapin is not particularly concerned with narrative drive and direction, nor - even though the libretto is in German - in working directly with Kleist's text, but rather it explores the extreme emotional states within the drama. The music is accordingly haunting, slow and steady, holding long sustained notes with occasional flurries and percussive blasts.  The singing is impassioned but rarely strained to wild abandon, supported and lifted rather by the music to a level that indicates the nature of the underlying sentiments, and how disturbing they are to mental stability of the singer. Which is usually Penthesilea, putting one in mind of Elektra.

It's difficult then to find any narrative progression through the work. In line with Kleist's lyric drama, the main action and the battles take place off stage, observed and commented on by the principals. The real battle however is very much a matching of wits between two forces greater than any army, a battle of personalities and two huge personalities at that. What ought to be a romantic interlude in the middle of the Trojan war should perhaps not distract such great warriors from their duty, but consume them it does. Dusapin's Penthesilea explores an intermediate state between two vast forces, striving to find a common denominator between innumerable indeterminate and contradictory impulses; between love and the desire to destroy, the will to dominate and conquer conflicting with the temptation to surrender and find peace. How does one separate the warrior impulse from the human desire to love, acknowledging the inevitability of death at the end of it all? Where does real triumph lie and true fulfilment?

Pierre Audi's stage direction seeks to find a place for these abstract concepts on the stage at La Monnaie. The stage is dark, the landscape one of dust, rocks, shields and armour - solid, bleak and elemental. Combined with Dusapin's score, the mood is heavy and oppressive, with occasional abstract projections offering another dimension above the physical representation. The love of Penthesilea and Achilles however finds no spiritual uplift here, or at most only a brief moment or two of abandonment to those passions. Most of the time their passions torment the two lovers and it comes out in the tortured singing as they attempt express the impossibility of their situation, control, direct and vent the terrible impulses that this gives rise to. It's hugely challenging for the singers not only to push to those limits, but identify with the dark place those sentiments come from, but Natascha Petrinsky is utterly convincing - and terrifying - as Penthesilea, with Georg Nigl a most steadfast and determined Achilles, and Marisol Montalvo the distraught Prothoe.

Pascal Dusapin's Penthesilea is currently available to view for free via La Monnaie's web-streaming service. The next opera to be streamed is Verdi's UN BALLO IN MASCHERA, directed by Àlex Ollé of La Fura dels Baus (reviewed here at Opera Australia), and conducted by Carlo Rizzi. It can be viewed for one month from from 29 May.

Links: La Monnaie streaming, RTBF Musiq 3