Octonaires on the World's Vanity and Inconstancy
« What is the world, then? A wind, a flower, a ripple. » - Antoine de Chandieu
CAST
Opéra de Limoges Chorus - Musical Direction, Edward Ananian-Cooper
Conception, Jean-Philippe Clarac & Olivier Delœuil
Video and Graphic design, Julien Roques & Benjamin Juhel
Artistic collaboration, Lodie Kardouss
Dramaturgy, Luc Bourrousse
PRODUCTION
Opéra de Limoges
ABOUT
Inspired by the Covid-19 sanitary crisis, this book enriched with 12 short films revisits, in a resolutely contemporary style, the art of the spiritual song stemming from Reformation poetry during the French Renaissance. The artists of the Chœur de l’Opéra de Limoges revive a selection ofoctonaires set to music by Claude Le Jeune, Claude Goudimel and Paschal de l’Estocart, all published between 1565 and 1606.
The refined polyphony of these short, eight-verse poems, always sung a cappella, invites us to meditate in music over the vanity of existence, the illusions and deceptive pleasures of everyday life. Their bittersweet poetry inspires a collection of short movies, all shot in Limoges during the second lockdown and sanitary restrictions of the autumn of 2020.
A musical object of a new kind, between poem, short film and musical reverie. A book enriched with spiritual songs, like a poetic machine to question our present times.
