FROM MACKIE MESSER TO MAC-THE-KNIFE: THE CHALLENGES OF TRANSLATION IN OPERA

This year's production of The Threepenny Opera by the Comédie-Française troupe was an opportunity to commission a new translation of the Weill, Brecht and Hauptmann masterpiece; conceived by Alexandre Pateau in close collaboration with the artistic team – in particular the musical director Maxime Pascal –, it radically renews the approach, preluding a reissue of Brecht's entire work in French. Picture a day like this is the fourth collaboration between two exceptional artists whose chemistry commands admiration: George Benjamin for the music and Martin Crimp for the text. These are all invitations to reexamine the relationship between text and music from different angles, from writing to translation and from interpretation to surtitling (The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions).

WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF : Alexandre Pateau (translator, author of the new translation of The Threepenny Opera, L'Arche éditeur), Élisabeth Angel-Perez (professor of contemporary British theatre at Sorbonne University, translator of texts by Martin Crimp - Picture a day like this) and Béatrice Arnal (translator - productions of the Festival d’Aix).