Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria

Faculty

Mariame Clément stage director

Mariame Clément made her directing debut in 2004 with Rossini’s Il Signor Bruschino and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi in Lausanne, with sets and costumes by Julia Hansen. Their second production, Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims in Bern, Oviedo and Tel-Aviv, was revived several years later in Antwerp under the direction of Alberto Zedda.

She has worked in Athens (Le Comte Ory), Bern (La Traviata, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Bohème), Nancy (Rigoletto), Strasbourg (La Belle Hélène, Werther, Platée, Der Rosenkavalier, Die Zauberflöte, La Calisto), Antwerp/ Ghent (Giasone, Agrippina), at the Theater an der Wien (Castor et Pollux and The Fairy Queen, both times under the direction of Christophe Rousset), in Graz (Faust, Die Zauberflöte), in Dortmund (Le Nozze di Figaro), in Nuremberg (Platée, Le Nozze di Figaro, Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria), in Glyndebourne (Don Pasquale, Poliuto), at the Opéra national de Paris (Hänsel und Gretel), in Essen (Le Grand Macabre, Salome), at the Royal Opera House (L’Etoile), at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria), in Santiago de Chile (Lulu), at the Semperoper Dresden (The Bartered Bride), at the Bregenz Festival (Don Quichotte), and in Seville (Agrippina).
Further projects will take her, among other places, to Madrid, Paris, Glyndebourne and Geneva.

Benoît Hartoin vocal coach

He graduated in 2000, and since then his interest for the vocal repertoire has lead him to perform as a repetiteur, continuo player or musical assistant with La Grande Ecurie (JC. Malgoire), Les Arts Florissants (W. Christie) and Le Concert d’Astrée (E. Haïm), in numerous opera productions at the Opera de Paris Opéra de Lillen Bolchoi, Berlin… but also with Festivals as the Glyndebourne Festival since 2005 (Jules César, L’incoronazione di Poppea, Hippolyte et Aricie, Hipermestra), the Aix-en-Provence Festival since 2004 (Hercules, Don Giovanni, Il trionfo del Tempo), and in 2018, he made his debut at the Salzburg Festival (Poppea)
He also had the opportunity to play with the orchestras of Lyon and Paris Opera, l’Orquesta Nacional de España, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Freiburger Barock Orchester, La Scintilla Zürich, the Hessischer Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester, l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France, the Berliner and the Wiener Philharmoniker, MusicaEterna, under T. Currentzis, L. Langrée, etc.

Students

  • 11 singers
  • 3 hapsichordists
  • 1 lutenist
  • 1 stage assistant

Presentation

“Working on Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria means tackling one of the greatest Western myths and the origins of opera at the same time. How can we give substance to these characters without trivialising them? How can we allow them to move us without completely removing their status as ancient heroes, deities or allegories? How can we reconcile – or balance – realism and abstraction, naturalism and hieraticism? How can we move from the supernatural to the most refined psychology, from tragedy to comedy? By navigating between Antiquity and 17th century Venice, by working on the theatricality of the text and its inextricable relationship to the music, we will attempt to explore the baroque abundance of Monteverdi’s work, which cheerfully mixes genres and juxtaposes the most diverse scenes, and teaches us to be classical and modern at the same time.

After having led a workshop on Handel’s Agrippina in 2021, director Mariame Clément and conductor Benoît Hartoin return to the Abbey for a musical and stage interpretation course on Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria. All the specificities of the stage work and the musical genre will be tackled during this session: the recitar cantando style but also and above all the madrigals in ensemble. The instrumentalists will work on the particularities of the basso continuo in 17th century Italy: accompaniment and recitative.

Schedule

Selection
Selection via application

End of application
October 3rd 2021

Audition
15th and 16th december 2021 in Paris

Sessions
25th july to 6 august 2022
13 days, including 1 day-off – 84 training hours

Public presentation
The 6th of august 2022

La Fondation Bettencourt Schueller est le mécène principal du Pôle Voix et répertoire de la Fondation Royaumont.