La Belle et La Bête

“Through this shift in point of view, we seek to free Belle from the gaze that has been cast upon her and to restore her power: that of a woman who, having been objectified…

” Anne-Cécile Vandalem Born in 1937, Philip Glass is, alongside Steve Reich and Terry Riley, one of the pioneers of minimalist music, an artistic movement that emerged in the United States in the early 1960s.

Refusing any form of aesthetic or stylistic categorisation, he explores many genres and deplores the distinction between so-called “serious” music and popular music. Yet, despite all the conventions that define him, Philip Glass has not renounced writing opera.

It was thus that he premiered Einstein on the Beach at the Festival d’Avignon in 1976. The fruit of a close collaboration with the director Bob Wilson, this opera broke with tradition, upending the norms of narrative and composition.

Working on a cycle of three works, the composer chose Jean Cocteau’s screenplays as his libretti when he embarked on his new trilogy.

And on 4 June 1994, at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, audiences witnessed an adaptation of La Belle et la Bête in an unprecedented form: an opera-cinema. Of Georges Auric’s original score, nothing remains.

Indeed, Philip Glass decided to synchronise his own composition with the film directed by Jean Cocteau, so that the sung text would be aligned with the actors’ lips during the screening!

In turn appropriating this tale, which became a film and then an opera, the director Anne-Cécile Vandalem did not fail to re-examine the work in general and the character of Belle in particular. From now on, the story is told from the heroine’s point of view.

Thanks to the camera on stage, Anne-Cécile Vandalem devises a setup offering a critical perspective on the history of cinema and literature.