Médée

Médée. Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Charpentier's only lyric tragedy, Médée represents its composer's "great work".

Cast: Marie-Nicole Lemieux | Médée; Petr Nekoranec | Jason; Juliette Mey | Créuse; Alex Rosen | Créon; Étienne Bazola | Oronte; Claire Lefilliâtre | Cléone / An Italian Woman; Les Épopées; Stéphane Fuget | direction; Chœur de chambre de Namur.

In a nutshell: Charpentier's Médée plunges us into divergent worlds where every passion clashes in excess and extremism, and where, failing to let reason triumph, they instead destroy one another, drunk on their supposed righteousness.

Médée's possessive love and her fate reveal that love is not so much the business of the gods as that of men, since the being who embodies Love here – Médée – will go so far as to grant herself the right to destroy her own children.

For the librettist Thomas Corneille, as it already was for his elder brother Pierre, the matter is settled: only love makes us human beings live, and it is on that basis that it must hold every right; but if that is so, what gives life to men is also what kills them, for whoever holds every right no longer recognises any duty...

Love is therefore tragic precisely because it is both necessary and impossible. The work magnifies, with splendour and finesse, the tragic and devouring fate of the mythical figure: a true "masterpiece"! Production: Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.