Le Balcon

What are the specificities and originality of the orchestra and collective Le Balcon?

Maxime Pascal – As the founder, I can talk about Le Balcon from the inside. It's a group of very different artists: instrumentalists, singer/songwriters, directors, videographers, sound engineers—because we work a lot with new technologies for amplification, sound reinforcement, and electronic music—in short, it's one big family!

Arthur Lavandier – I've worked with Le Balcon since its inception. For me, who didn't take any composition classes, the ensemble has been like a training center from the very beginning, and we've grown together to the collective creation of an opera today: it's fantastic! We're very close friends, and I believe that's what an orchestra should always be like!

Why did you choose to integrate sound reinforcement and video techniques into your collective?

MP – From the outset, we wanted to create a sound orchestra. I had this dream of letting people hear the works as close as possible to the sound sources, so that the concert experience would be completely encompassing. As a listener, I wanted to be ever more at the heart of the sound: that's probably why I became a conductor! Hence the idea of designing a whole system around the orchestra to bring the audience as close as possible to the sound. Electronic music and video present themselves to us through the works and composers we explore: we are open to all possibilities! In fact, we also perform purely acoustic concerts.

AL – With Le Balcon, the question of sound is taken into account from the very beginning. As a composer, I prioritize orchestration and instrumentation; I imagine sound textures, like vast, moving landscapes. It's a real blessing to be able to work with a sound engineer, a computer producer, and to design with them how to push the research on color or sound texture even further. In my work, I don't use musical electronics much, which I know very little about. I like to use it as an archetypal object of what it can represent. For example, in the arrangement of the Symphonie fantastique, the electronic sounds aren't very pretty, not very clean: they are deliberately present as electronic sounds. On the other hand, I work a lot with electric instruments. For example, in The First Murder, we hear electric guitar and an 80s analog synthesizer. I like to be able to directly touch the sound emission with these instruments, and to have the same relationship that a performer has with an acoustic instrument, when creating "their" sound.

Does technology allow us to push the boundaries of creation?

MP – Artists have always drawn heavily from science! For example, technologies for networking individuals are beginning to influence creators.

AL – Inevitably, the composer is very in touch with the way music distribution is evolving; this ultimately influences his creative work. I like to think that technology must serve the enhancement of human gesture. The whole point is to successfully mask it to create illusions, to push a kind of pseudo-realism as far as possible. In my compositions, technology isn't necessarily visible, and today, technological advances allow us to make it almost invisible. In The First Murder, we don't clearly perceive the technology, yet it allows us to perform musical gestures that would be absolutely impossible without its use.

MP – The 20th century truly rediscovered sound as a physical object. This gives us access to new ways of thinking about music. Not just for composers: for performers too. Many tools allow us to go further in the way we play and produce music. [After a first opera, De la Terreur des hommes, in 2011 and a chamber opera, Bobba, in 2015, Le Premier Meurtre is Arthur Lavandier's third opera.]

What attracts you to opera, to the voice?

AL – I've always wanted to tell stories. Even in my instrumental pieces, there's always text, a bit of staging, a form of interplay between the musicians. That's what I strive for, and that's why I love working with Le Balcon. What unites us all at Le Balcon is this unconditional love of performance, of live art, of art on stage, and opera is a form of total fulfillment of the performing arts. I love writing operas, even if it's exhausting! Pushing collaboration to the point of creation, with Le Balcon, is exciting. It brings terrible constraints; you have to find balances, fight a little for your ideas within the collective: that's how you motivate creation!

MP – I’ve known Alphonse [Cemin, the production’s vocal coach] since I was 11. He immediately gravitated toward singers. So I was quickly surrounded by opera singers, and I wrote for them. I love the relationship with the text and the work of producing sound, which is so special when it comes to the voice, since it’s the body, the human being, that produces the sound and becomes the instrument. It fascinates me completely. Opera brings together everything that fascinates me!

You are both a composer and an arranger. What is the difference between these two activities?

AL – Arranging is a form of collaboration, since you have to adapt to a pre-existing object. To write an opera from scratch, I also have to adapt, to the libretto, for example. For The First Murder, given the way Le Balcon works, I had to adapt to the ideas of the director and those of the conductor. A back-and-forth process was involved. Of course, when it comes to writing an arrangement of the Symphonie Fantastique, since Berlioz is dead, I'm less able to ask him questions! However, the relationship with the score when writing an arrangement is similar to the relationship one has with the text when writing a new opera: how much freedom do you allow yourself, how much distance do you put between yourself and the score or libretto? That's the real question! It's about organizing our reflection on the distance we can have from a work and on the way we view it today. Obviously, this reflection is different in composition when we write everything. We start from the principle that freedom is total, yet that's not entirely true. There are always constraints, and if Berlioz doesn't impose them, I impose them on myself. I have to collaborate with myself, in a way! I have to define what I want to write and what I don't want to write, what I allow myself, what I dare, where I direct my research. Ultimately, the work can seem similar. For me, it's almost strange to say that I'm a composer and an arranger, so close are these two activities in my conception and in my daily life. You have to play with the boundaries between the two genres.

What was the creative process for The First Murder?

AL – First, we had to choose a subject with the librettist Federico Flamminio: find out what we wanted to tell and show on stage, while remaining connected to the composition work and my research in this field. I like a story to lead me to push, to explore new compositional ideas. Then, there was the creative work. While Federico writes, I work on certain ideas, things I would like to hear on stage: it could be a chord, a sound texture, a melody. I specify the musical places where I want to go. Then there is the work on the text. You have to think about the form, because an opera is long: make sure you bring the narration where you want to go. This work continues today and will continue until the first performance. Finally, there is the writing itself. Personally, I like to get straight into the score, write, and start again as many times as necessary. Experiment, fumble, listen a lot to what I've already done, with the computer or the piano or with the musicians. To develop a very concrete relationship with the music, as quickly as possible. And if necessary, throw everything away when it doesn't work. And time passes, and we end up with an hour and a half of music!

Was there any co-creation involved in this opera?

MP – At Le Balcon, we work on the works of composers who have been dead for 200 years, as well as those of today. For me, it's the same thing: I believe I have the same type of dialogue with their respective works. Of course, I can question a living composer when there are things that still need to be clarified in the score. For older works, that's not possible, especially from periods when very few details were noted in the scores. Important information passes from the composer to the performer via this specific medium of the score's text, and that's what's interesting. Ultimately, what I receive when reading a score of Arthur, I receive in the same way with a score of Berlioz. Surprisingly, when we talk about the opera The First Murder with Arthur, we often talk about the narration and the staging, but ultimately very little about the musical notation or the music. I rarely ask the composer questions about musical language. I do all the work of reception in my own, very personal way, whether it's Lavandier or Berlioz. What we receive as performers needs to grow within us through a form of introspection...

AL – ...in fact, it even seems necessary to me that the score passes through the interpretation of the conductor and the performers. I need to lose control of the music I write, because that's how it lives! We don't talk at length about an agreement or a nuance with Maxime; it has to happen in a very personal way for the performers. At least, that's how it works between us! There are two orchestras in The First Murder, one with sound and one without, one on stage and the other in the pit, or even in the audience.