CULTURE

Trojan virus spreads to Mariinsky

Experimental Catalonian director Carlus Padrissa brings a new production of Berlioz’s ‘Les Troyens’ to the city’s premier theater.

By Galina Stolyarova

Staff Writer

Natasha Razina / The St. Petersburg Times La Fura dels Baus, the troupe of experimental director Carlus Padrissa, is renowned for its innovative approach and juxtaposition of styles.

Warriors come out of a Trojan horse, carrying the eponymous virus; the construction of a Hadron Collider and work on the production of a “divine molecule” are developing at full throttle in Carthage; the survivors of a clash between two civilizations don space suits and fly to Mars to begin a new life.

Experimental Catalonian director Carlus Padrissa, whose Barcelona-based troupe La Fura dels Baus is internationally renowned for its vast extravaganzas, will premiere his unorthodox rendition of Hector Berlioz’s opera “Les Troyens” at the Mariinsky Theater on Dec. 25 and 27.

The opera is a joint production between the Mariinsky Theater, Poland’s Opera Narodowa and Spain’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, where the show had its world premiere on Oct. 31, 2009. The Mariinsky is already very much at home with the score of Berlioz’s titanic work, which the company has performed several times in concert version. The opera, which lasts more than five hours, is very rarely staged. The Mariinsky premiere marks Padrissa’s first collaboration with a Russian company.

Although some of the more conservative members of the audience may find Padrissa’s idea of incorporating a computer virus into a classical Greek myth tough to swallow, this enfant terrible of European theater’s bold artistic experiments have been well-received around the globe. The director’s name has become synonymous with provocation, while the company’s trademark style of acting as an artistic testing ground, juxtaposing cutting edge video-art with acrobatics has earned it worldwide recognition.

In 2005, when the international literary community celebrated the 400th anniversary of Miguel de Cervantes’s epic novel “Don Quixote,” Padrissa produced a sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek take on the romantic tale, turning the courageous yet errant knight and his sidekick Sancho Panza into two Japanese tourists hooked on computer games. The show was bravely titled “I Have Not Read Don Quixote.”

Neither audiences, nor critics took offence to Padrissa for transforming what is arguably Spain’s favorite literary character into an Internet-addict and setting Cervantes’s prose to rap and hip-hop rhythms.

“All tourists, when they visit Spain, talk about Cervantes, but very few of them have actually gone as far as opening the 900-page classic,” Padrissa said. “The production talks about the destructive effects of technocracy, aggressive advertizing and show business on the human consciousness. Yes, I made my point by turning Don Quixote into some sort of zombified mutant, but the point was worth making, and the price was worth paying. Too many people in the modern world have abandoned good old books for computer games and stupid gadgets.”

Padrissa’s take on “Les Troyens” received a rave reception from audiences in Valencia.

Natasha Razina / The St. Petersburg Times ‘Les Troyens’ uses high-tech devices to create striking visual effects.

“Some stick-in-the-muds were displeased, of course, but the lion’s share of the spectators enjoyed the performance,” the director said of the show’s world premiere in October, 2009. “A large group of Berlioz aficionados from Lyon, who arrived on a big bus, made quite a lot of noise, stamping their feet and booing — they particularly hated our idea of presenting Mars as Berlusconi’s Italy — but, apart from that, everything went well.”

The show’s three parts are strikingly different in character, presenting two models of civilization in a state of conflict and a desperate attempt to build a new civilization on another planet. The first part shows a Western European type of society, which means, in this particular rendering at least, capitalism at its worst. The second part, set in Carthage, creates a tropical utopia that bears some resemblance to Cuba back in the 1980s. In this socialist paradise, scientists are busy constructing a Hadron collider and doing environmental studies, but the vicious Trojan virus puts an end to all research work as computers shut down. In the final act, the heroes set out on an expedition to Mars hoping to create a better world.

To Padrissa, the Trojan virus analogy was an obvious one.

“If you go to Google and type the world ‘trojan,’ what comes out first are multiple links to the sites and forums discussing the dreaded virus,” the director explains. “You have to flip through many links until you get to Greek mythology, Homer and Virgil, let alone Berlioz’s opera! In our interpretation, one model of civilization is destroying another, attacking and destroying it just like a deadly virus hits a human body.”

“Computers now control virtually all spheres of our lives,” Padrissa continues. “For example, all the traffic lights in Barcelona could go green with the blink of an eye, causing hundreds of road accidents, if the system suddenly gets hit by a virus. Similarly, if a vicious idea hits the minds of too many people, results can be catastrophic. All wars started with a vicious idea. I would say, for example, Hitler carried a virus of fascism inside him.”

For Padrissa, “Les Troyens” is a war story, an opportunity to explore the mechanisms of human conflict. In the director’s view, the escalation of a war resembles the progress of a virus inside a human body.

Padrissa founded his company in 1979 as a itinerant troupe of five musicians, where he played saxophone, and his fellow musicians played trumpet, trombone, clarinet and percussion. The street actors had no training and scarcely any skills, yet they craved the romanticism of a Medieval-style performing company and hated the idea of going to university.

“I was 19 then,” the director recalls. “We bought a mule and a cart and started wandering around the Catalonian villages entertaining locals with bits and pieces of music, singing and story telling,” he said. “We did not charge for our performances, which made the going tough, but we were never hungry. Grateful spectators would always bring us lots of home-made food.”

Natasha Razina / The St. Petersburg Times Carlus Padrissa founded his company as an itinerant troupe back in 1979.

“La Fura dels Baus” translates into English as “Marmot From Baus.” When asked what marmots have to do with experimental theater, Padrissa said the title was a compromise. As members of the troupe were discussing possible names, one of them insisted on calling the theater “Marmot” — Spain’s third most popular domestic animal, after cats and dogs — while another one lobbied for the title Baus, the name of a tiny Catalonian village where the actors loved to perform and knew of a very useful garbage site — an immense source of tools and props for their performances.

“Spaniards love marmots for their lively and kind character, so this name appealed to us; at the same time we felt very close to Baus and its gorgeous garbage site, so we ended up combining the two into one,” the director explains.

The itinerant troupe developed into a full-blown theater five years later, when it took part in a performing arts festival and became an immediate success. Invitations and commissions were numerous and rewarding in many senses of the word.

During those five years of “street life” the actors mastered the three key elements that Padrissa says form the term “the language of Fura.”

“We learnt to be aware of the fact that the spectators watch us from all sides, and every single member of the audience has to see a good show,” Padrissa explains. “The use of space is also crucial to success. We didn’t limit ourselves to banal entrances from the left or the right. We sought to constantly surprise and amaze the audiences by unorthodox tricks, showing up from the least expected places. When choosing a square for a performance in a village, we would scrutinize every centimeter of it, checking every manhole, every tree, every streetlamp. And, finally, we wanted each and every one of our shows to be a fusion of arts and styles.”

Links: www.mariinsky.ru,

www.lafura.com

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