After performances throughout Europe O Mensch! by Pascal Dusapin will have its Canadian premiere this year. The performance will take place in Montréal on February 7, 2014, featuring baritone Vincent Ranallo and pianist Mathieu Fortin. O Mensch! was premiered by Georg Nigl (baritone) and Vanessa Wagner (piano) with the stage direction by the composer himself at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris on November 15, 2011.

In Pascal Dusapin’s words:
“It was not so much a question of staging a piece as of writing a piece. Rather, of continuing to write after the music. When I write music for a scene, images of another scene often appear in the same movement of thought. I hear music, I write and see. Thus, I think images. For me everything comes from the music, but the desire of music does not always come through music. I see forms, it’s vague, it’s almost hazy, it’s blurred.
The space of singing needs to be close to listening, eyes half shut. To hear, one needs to become a little short sighted. It is in this indistinct area that listening opens up. And soon I’ve «seen/heard» the man who walks. It has to be a man who strays in the mist.

Nietzsche is a walker. He is alone. Always. He always stayed alone to walk alone. But this is not a piece about Nietzsche’s solitude; it is primarily a score about Nietzsche’s passions that a spectator should be led to «hear/see». He constantly changes his mood—he is gay, sad, melancholy, suddenly furious, he is amused, he cries, he shouts, he groans, he mocks. Himself too. He is never the same. At the beginning he has a heavy sound. It comes from afar, almost from before the music. This sound becomes a nature. One smells the forest, the birds, further away water singing. It is night. All these images and sounds in O Mensch! come from the night. The night, the real one, but also the other night, the invented one, the one made up of memories. When one remembers something, it’s as if it came from the night. A memory, even a childhood memory always comes from the night, from one night. This is why we like to remember just before going to sleep, before burying ourselves in the night. So it’s like a dream, it’s imprecise, one does not always understand what it says, but it says everything. This is exactly what happens when he sees all these images floating at his feet. These images come from within me, from my memories and also from everywhere. O Mensch! is somewhat like a dream of indistinct images that just float by, that’s all there is, that’s all that’s needed.

There is also an eagle. It is an eagle that observes but that listens above all. For Nietzsche (one always finds animals in Nietzsche’s writings, it’s a real zoo), the eagle represents untamed pride. Not easy to portray. I also wanted a lion, but a choice had to be made. There is also lighting. I wished it very soft, gloomy, almost opaque, but not always. The light is very close to sounds that appear from under the music. It’s like yet another secret. I heard sounds other than that of the singing and the piano, other sounds were needed, like yet another scene. They were built slowly, one had to listen for a very long time because an exact sound was needed. So, there are sounds that appear just like that, very simply and they are fragile, they are the real sounds of the world, the sound from before the man. At the far end of the stage there is a statue. It is a very ancient statue, it comes from a far away land, a land where people still know how to contemplate what they know of themselves, in order to never destroy it. So in order to keep this memory alive beyond the times of their lives, they erect such statues all around their villages and never forget what they have learned. These statues are peaceful, they watch out for men, all men, they are watchmen, they just are there. Nietzsche too, never stops being there.

“At the end, there is a hand that caresses a sky of fake stars, it is not the hand of God - Nietzsche is just the contrary of God – it is a hand that tries to touch lightly on another space like when one looks into oneself because, yes, one can also look with a hand…. There, that’s how O Mensch! came about.” (Photo: Jean-Francois LeClercq)