RUY BLAS de Victor Hugo

Love, power, ambition and revolt run through Ruy Blas, a masterpiece of Romantic theatre. Through a performance combining acting and music, the students explore the many dimensions of this emblematic work and invite audiences to rediscover Victor Hugo's passionate writing through a sensitive and vivid lens.

Students from the theatre cycles and terminal-year S2TMD investigate the Bibliothèque Valeyre and the Maison Victor Hugo for an encounter between theatre and music around Ruy Blas, one of Victor Hugo's great Romantic dramas.

First staged in 1838, Ruy Blas belongs to the movement to renew theatre led by Victor Hugo. After the famous battle of Hernani, Romantic theatre sought to free itself from classical rules in order to blend registers, passions, and historical and political stakes.

The action takes place in late seventeenth-century Spain, at the court of Charles II. Hugo traces the meteoric rise of Ruy Blas, a man of the people in love with the queen, whom his master pushes to become the instrument of a revenge. Beyond the passionate intrigue, Hugo examines the relations of power and gives voice to a scorned people, in a work where love, ambition, tragedy and poetic breath intermingle.

For this production, the theatre students engage in dialogue with the traverso students from Johanne Favre-Engel's class. The sounds of this historical instrument punctuate the spoken word and create a dialogue between music and theatre.

Coordination: Elsa Saladin-Benattar