Trézène Mélodies (L’Histoire de Phèdre en chansons)

Racine sets the scene of Phèdre in Troezen, in ancient Greece. When her husband Theseus dies, Phaedra declares her love for her stepson Hippolytus. But as it turns out, Theseus is alive. Cécile Garcia Fogel has set Racine’s verse to music to deliver a musical and vocal variation on the tragedy. This adaptation is accompanied by excerpts from works by the great Greek poet Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990).

Twenty years on, Cécile Garcia Fogel invites us to a recreation. Not a return to the origins but instead a desire to let us hear differently these Racine verses whose natural musicality retains a haunting aura. Setting to music Racine’s Phaedra – burning not with a guilty passion but an incandescent love for her stepson – smoothly eases the audience into the tragedy. The Yannis Ritsos excerpts offer a more contemporary perspective on Phaedra’s story. Trézène Mélodies features songs, whispers, hums and dances to Arab-Andalusian tunes, children’s refrains, borrowing from jazz and rebetiko – the popular songs that originated in the slums of Athens in the last century. A tailored score, a musical setting in which Cécile Garcia Fogel’s subdued voice echoes Mélanie Menu’s more somber tone. In a barebones set, vocals and lighting convey a shuttered space quality to this tragedy. Ivan Quintero’s guitar complements this trio where bodies and voices intertwine to embody delightfully the return to Troezen. The story has a bad ending. But that’s what tragedy is all about. Now in Troezen, orange, fig and carob trees grow.