Magdalena - Athénée

20h Estimated running time 1h45 Music Jean-Baptiste Cognet, Joséphine Stephenson Direction Ambre Kahan Musical composition Jean-Baptiste Cognet, Joséphine Stephenson Dramaturgy Jean Aloïs Belbachir…

20h

Estimated running time 1h45

Music Jean-Baptiste Cognet, Joséphine Stephenson

Direction Ambre Kahan

Musical composition Jean-Baptiste Cognet, Joséphine Stephenson

Dramaturgy Jean Aloïs Belbachir

Set design Anne-Sophie Grac

Costumes Mathieu Trappler

Wigs Judith Scotto

Lighting Zélie Champeau

Sound Mathieu Plantevin

Video Nicolas Morgan

Choreography Johanna Faye

Assistant director Romain Tamisier

Choirmaster Alphonse Cemin

Cast: Kourosh Alaj, Florent Favier, Julie Fuchs, Dounia Kouyaté, Séline and Jean-Baptiste Cognet (musical direction, guitar and synthesisers), Clotilde Lacroix (cello and bass), Nolwenn Le Guern (lute, viola da gamba and lirone), Carole Marque-Bouaret (duduk, clarinet and saz), Cinna Peyghamy (percussion), Romain Thorel (horn and piano)

Who was Mary Magdalene, really? In a musical show on the borderlands of the baroque, Middle Eastern and electronic music, director Ambre Kahan and soprano Julie Fuchs honour the Mystery surrounding this major figure of Christian mysticism, while firmly setting aside the confusions that still persist.

On stage, soprano Julie Fuchs embodies the figure of Mary Magdalene in a sound world with abolished frontiers: baroque strings, analogue synthesisers and Armenian percussion compose a hybrid, immersive universe in which Julie Fuchs's voice becomes the thread of a quest both intimate and universal. Around her, the performers work to preserve the Mystery that surrounds her story, just as much as they work to affirm the truths that have been silenced.

For Mary Magdalene, also called Mary of Magdala, was never the repentant prostitute that centuries of confusion, with Mary of Bethany and Mary the Egyptian, sought to make of her: she was the apostle of the apostles, and in certain gospels, Jesus's very companion.