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FULL L’Écume des jours (Denisov) Lille 2025 Josefin Feiler, Cameron Becker, Katia Ledoux, lmar Gilbertsson
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: L’Écume des jours
- Composer: Denisov Edison
- Libretto: based on the novel by Boris Vian (1920-1959) Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Opera de Lille, France
- Recorded: November 12, 2025
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Josefin Feiler, Cameron Becker, Katia Ledoux, lmar Gilbertsson, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Natasha Te Rupe, Robin Neck, Maurel Endong Jésus, Matthieu Lécroart, Małgorzata Gorol
- Conductor: Bassem Akiki
- Orchestra: Orchestre National de Lille
- Chorus: Chœur de l’Opéra de Lille
- Chorus Master: Virginie Déjos
- Choreographer: Paweł Sakowicz
- Stage Director: Anna Smolar
- Stage Designer: Anna Met
- Costume Designer: Julia Kornacka
- Lighting Designer: Felice Ross
Information about the Recording
- Published by: mezzo
- Date Published: 2025
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: yessubs, frsubs
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Colin delights his friends with dishes prepared by his cook, Nicolas, invents a pianocktail to match drinks to melodies, and dreams of true love. When Chloé enters his life, happiness seems complete. But a sinister water lily slowly grows in the young woman’s lung.
Boris Vian wrote *L’Écume des jours* (Froth on the Daydream) in just a few weeks, at the age of 26. Behind the enigmatic and luminous title of the novel, published in postwar Paris, lies an ambiguous tale. Infused with surrealist poetry, where mice speak and lovers hide in a pink cloud, the whimsical story gradually transforms into a drama about the ephemeral and elusive nature of happiness.
The book, which became a cult classic in the 1960s, has been adapted numerous times for the stage and screen, and later for opera by the Soviet composer Edison Denisov. Fascinated by French culture and Western European music, Denisov found in the narrative freedom of L’Écume a fertile ground for expanding his musical horizons beyond the canons of socialist realism prevalent during the Iron Curtain era. A proponent of polystylism, he deploys motifs from jazz (one thinks of Duke Ellington), grand liturgical choirs of Russian inspiration, references to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and even a tribute to the sound of Orthodox bells.
A composer himself, a specialist in contemporary repertoire, and sensitive to the fusion of musical languages, the Lebanese-Polish conductor Bassem Akiki embraces this blend of styles with agility. He breathes new life into this lyrical drama, which has not been performed in France since its creation in 1986. In the theater, the Franco-Polish director Anna Smolar is sought after for her world that combines poetry, humor, and depth. For her operatic debut, she chose to place Chloé at the heart of the plot. The character who, in the original work, seems reduced to a fantasy figure, destined to arouse desire and then die, here becomes a sincere and fully embodied narrator. She speaks not only of the complexity of illness, but also of the freedom to live and die according to one’s own rules.