IRCAM/Centre Pompidou-Grande salle-Paris
France
Allison Cook soprano, the marquise de Merteuil
Robin Adams baryton, the vicomte de Valmont
Ensemble intercontemporain
Conductor Susanna Mälkki
IRCAM computer music design Serge Lemouton
Recording of the choir and orchestra at La Scala in Milan Julien Aléonard
Carried by the music of Luca Francesconi and the words of Heiner Müller that reinvent the Dangerous Liaisons, the opera Quartett interpenetrates three worlds.
The interior, a post-apocalyptic space where two solitary monsters caught up in a delirium of masks, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, collide; the exterior, the thoughts and conspiracies of the protagonists; and outside, a space of metaphysical forces like attraction and magnetism, the only space capable of absorbing the psychological tension in Quartett.
IRCAM's technology was called upon to create this spatial staging for the work’s premiere at la Scala in Milan, directed by La Fura Dels Bauls: passage from a microscopic dimension to the occupation of almost the entire theater-world, vocal grafts that incarnate the feminine side of de Valmont and the masculinity of de Merteuil, the founding and sonorous ambiguities of a "quartet" for two.Luca Francesconi : Quartett
