Madame de Sade
A new contemporary opera based on the play by the late, controversial Japanese author Yukio Mishima, Skaala Opera Helsinki’s Madame de Sade is an endless labyrinth of metamorphoses, colours, scents and mental images. Delicate and erotically charged, it embraces the characters’ psychological complexity and suppressed emotions.
YUKIO MISHIMA – JUHA T. KOSKINEN
MADAME DE SADE
Opera in three acts, based on the play by Yukio Mishima
Composed by Juha T. Koskinen
Libretto by the composer and Janne Lehmusvuo, based on the play by Yukio Mishima
Director: Janne Lehmusvuo
Conductor: Eva Ollikainen
Choreography: Thomas Freundlich
Light designer: Tomi Suovankoski
Stage design: Janne Lehmusvuo and Ingvill Fossheim
Costume design: Tyra Therman
Makeup and wigs: Kukka Silius
Makeup assistant: Emma Korosuo
Photographs: Alejandro Lorenzo
Characters:
Renée (Madame de Sade) – mezzo soprano Essi Luttinen
Madame de Montreuil (Renée’s mother) – dramatic soprano Taina Piira
Anne (Renée’s younger sister) – lyric soprano Mari Palo
Baroness de Simiane (virtuous woman) – alto Jeni Packalen
Countess de Saint-Fond (wicked woman) – countertenor Teppo Lampela
Charlotte (Madame de Montreuil’s servant) – soprano Laura Heinonen
Yukio Mishima – dancer Thomas Freundlich
Love and sadism, passion and hate
“If your husband tells you to turn into a dog, will you turn into a dog?? Where is your female pride?”
France, 1772 - Faithful Madame de Sade is waiting for her husband’s long prison sentence to end, only to abandon him the very moment he is free at last. In this story seen through the eyes of a woman, the principal character is, after all, a man. The licentious Marquis de Sade, who remains off-stage throughout the opera, pervades the thoughts and actions of six women of his life. The women undergo transformations, at times coming into painful contact with each other, at times breaking away.
Although the Revolution nears and finally erupts, it seems to have little effect on the lives of the noblewomen isolated in their salon. In the end it nevertheless turns all their relationships upside down, just like the Marquis shattered his prison from within, using the power of his writings.
According to the composer, the opera is an endless labyrinth of metamorphoses, colours, scents and mental images. Extremely delicate and erotically charged, it embraces the characters’ psychological complexity and suppressed emotions.
Juha T. Koskinen on his work:
I have aimed at Rossini-like lightness and quick tempo, in particular in the ensemble parts, though stylistically opting for more contemporary means of expression. In the music, the emphasis is on vocal lines, much in the same way as in the Italian operas of the bel canto period. The orchestra will however have its moments in the foreground whenever necessary. The musical identity of Renée, or Madame de Sade, develops in the course of the work, and it is not until the end of the third act that it reaches its full maturity. By contrast, Renée’s mother, Madame de Montreuil, will find her musical identity gradually cracking and peeling off, and dissolving at the very end into Renée’s ecstatic vision.
Despite his physical absence from the scene, the Marquis de Sade is constantly at the center of events – and of the opera itself. As society and personal illusions crumble, the only vision of the world that remains is one born of the Marquis’ writing in prison. The female characters of the opera join in a haunting chorus: “The world in which we live is the world created by the Marquis de Sade”.
Stylistically, the opera is a blend of decadent rococo and the non-linear forms of an imaginary variant of Noh drama. The polished surface of the musical texture is punctuated and shattered by brutal strikes of the whip. In the epilogue, the Marquis’ “sacred light” breaks out through cracks and fault lines in the social order.
Performed in Finnish
Performance dates:
11.8.2010 19.00 (premiere)
13.8.2010 19.00
14.8.2010 19.00
15.8.2010 19.00
Performed at Korjaamo Culture Factory Streetcar Hall (Vaunuhalli), Helsinki, Finland
