The Opera is played at the café... On Sunday 18 September at 6pm, on the occasion of the European Heritage Days, the Arcal Lyrique will play «Le Pauvre Matelot» at the Maison Jean Cocteau.
The subject of «Pauvre Matelot», a lyrical lament in 3 acts, written by Jean Cocteau and set to music by Darius Milhaud in 1927, is simple: a woman has been without news for several years from her husband who is a sailor. He comes back unexpectedly, and pretends to his wife to be a friend of her husband, tells her that the unfortunate is still a prisoner, suffering and without money. He asks her to spend the night at home. She accepts and then kills him to «save her husband». The curtain falls before she realizes her mistake and her crime.
Created in 1983, the Arcal Lyrique aims to make opera alive and current for all our contemporaries, including those who think they are the furthest from this art. Come and spend an exceptional moment in the company of the artists of the Arcal, in the garden of Jean Cocteau. Under the writing of Cocteau/Milhaud, realism and poetry are in cahoots; it is by pushing the effect of reality to the maximum that one has the most chances of grasping its poetry.