'PARIS OPERA'. A 3-part performance by Jadran Sturm & Åsa Lie with invited guest artist Djeff Babcock in part 1. At a Bureau du Rhok event, PLATFORMe/RHoK - Academie Beeldende Kunsten, Brussels, Belgium. September 2005. Mixed media. Group
The film PARIS OPERA by Jadran Sturm & Åsa Lie was screened as a backdrop to the two performances also titled PARIS OPERA.
The PARIS OPERA I performance included the film, Jadran on trumpet + voice, Åsa on organ, harmonica + singscreaming: USED, ABUSED AND FINALLY REFUSED, and Djeff on violin, followed by an extension exit & streetperformance .
The PARIS OPERA II performance included the film and Åsa Lie reading 'PERFORMANCE TEXT PARIS OPERA part II'
PARIS OPERA is a film by Sturm & Lie, with a sound improvisation clip from Sturm & Lie's living room. This film also includes an interview by Jadran Sturm & Åsa Lie with Jesus Franco & Lina Romay, as well as clips from the film 'Eugenie De Sade' by Jesus Franco. The rest was filmed by Åsa & Jadran in Paris, France.
The film PARIS OPERA is built as a pyramid in 6 parts with:
1. Sequences from Jesus Franco’s film 'Eugenie de Sade'.
2. French, norwegian and english texts in B&W.
3. Sound-performance in Steentraat 27, BXL 2005.
4. Sturm-Lie interview with Jesus Franco & Lina Romay, BXL 2002.
5. 2 scenes from Paris bars September 2005.
6. Skyline shoots from Viet-China-town, 15 arrond., Paris. September 2005.
PERFORMANCE TEXT PARIS OPERA part I
USED, ABUSED AND FINALLY REFUSED
© Jadran Sturm & Åsa Lie
PERFORMANCE TEXT PARIS OPERA part II
WHY WAS THIS FILM & PERFORMANCE BAPTISED 'PARIS OPERA'?
The Paris Opera is strategically placed at a central point in Paris surrounded by the biggest consentration of banks and financial companies in the city. The PARIS-POWER-PLACE. The word OPERA means 'WORKS' in Latin, the plural of opus.
The structure of the opera culture & the structure of 'high art' or 'fine art' is very similar. It is not available for the ‘mob' or the masses, and the middle-classes are fighting within it to get power. However, the lower classes loved (and love?) the opera singers, even if they can not afford a ticket to the opera, they can buy a CD as they can buy a perfume from Chanel or Gucci, and enjoy the scent...
The opera is a classwar, even though mainly between the burgoisie and the aristocracy. About power, elitism & money.
Opera takes singing to the border or beyond the border symbolising ‘BEYOND THE PALE’, but can not be rejected because of it’s status. The structure of opera is so manifolded, that it is difficult to kill it.
It has always been and is a multimedia show. Grand & visionary, captivating all the senses.
"If music has been treasured as the purest of art forms, then music written for opera would have to be some of the most impure, for opera owes its power - its considerable and well-documented power - to its combining the musical and the dramatic, the aural and the visual, the emotional and the intellectual. The opera had and has a commanding ability to overcome realist objections to its artifice, to override purist concerns about its mixed artistic nature, to overrule wary doubts about its financial or narrative excesses, and simply to overwhelm the imagination."
DESIRE, DISEASE, DEATH
"Solo singing / setting of a dramatically conceived melody, designed to express the emotional content of the text it carries, which is accompanied by a relatively simple sequence of chords rather than other polyphonic parts."
SYPHILIS, SUFFERING & THE SOCIAL ORDER: Richard Wagner’s Parsifal.
'Acoustic Contagion': SEXUALITY, SURVEILLANCE & EPIDEMICS.
And finally there is PARIS the PRINCE; handsome, rich, with a prospect of power.
© Jadran Sturm & Åsa Lie
Photos from the PARIS OPERA II performance with the film & Åsa Lie reading text II.
Note:
* Top of page image: photocollage for dvd cover © Sturm & Lie
* Performance text PARIS OPERA part I © Sturm & Lie
* Performance text PARIS OPERA part II © Sturm & Lie
* The film PARIS OPERA was filmed & edited by © Sturm & Lie