SHAWANDY

opera comedy

Shawandy,

is an idea that I have had within me for a long time.
After the war, which was a traumatic experience for the child that I was then, the American cinema of the 1940s, and particularly that of musical comedies, transported me to a world of imaginary conventions where daily problems found their solutions in the detour from a song or a ballet.
Until the end of the 1960s, in Paris where I lived, poverty was not immediately perceptible. There were certainly tramps under the bridges, a few accordion players at the metro entrances, but at the time we did not perceive the beginnings
of the spreading poverty.
   As the years passed, we could, unfortunately, no longer ignore anything.
   In the 90s, the way to my office went through the Chatelet road tunnel. Near was a space where homeless founded refuge. They slept there, in cardboard boxes, and became
more and more every day.
   It was during these journeys that the idea of opera was born, that of departure towards distant horizons, a utopian dream of returning to Paradise Lost.
   The ace ! Things are not that simple.
   Today the poverty is unfortunately still there and
Shawandy is sad reality.
   I undertook the writing and composition of Shawandy from a poetic point of view. Music has an intense emotional power. While using systems not tonal, I tried, in my melodic and harmonic choices, to maintain a perceptible discourse.
The place, it seemed to me, was not suitable for
daring musical experiments.
   So, Shawandy is classical in shape;
division into acts, scenes and tableaux.
   The setting will alternately move from the abandoned metro station (place where the drama takes place) to the imaginary world, from shadow to light, from sadness to joy.
   Finally, the death of the heroine is the necessary sacrifice which allows this passage from shadow to light.
Shawandy couldn't just be a musical. The tragic dimension reinforces the drama of these destitute people and allows them to free themselves from the misery
to which we have confined them.