Lemoine Levinas - La Métamorphose - Soli et Ensemble

Summary of This Score

This score presents the sound world of the opera "The Metamorphosis," where Gregor Samsa's story shifts from the everyday to the nightmare: upon waking, he finds himself transformed into a huge cockroach. While Kafka's novella belongs to the collective imagination, its operatic transposition requires writing capable of making the unrepresentable perceptible, of scenically embodying strangeness and horror without ever losing the precision of the drama.

Michaël Levinas relies on a genuine linguistic work, carried out with Valère Novarina and Emmanuel Moses, to bring forth an intensely theatrical vocality. The vocal dimension is enhanced by hybridization techniques and computer processing, which extend timbres, blur the boundaries between voice and instruments, and open the music toward the fantastic. The work is preceded by "Je, tu, il," a prologue to "The Metamorphosis" based on a text by Valère Novarina, further reinforcing the dramaturgy and the trajectory toward the unsettling.

Commissioned by the Opéra de Lille and the Ministry of Culture and Communication, the premiere took place on 07/03/2011 in Lille (Opéra), featuring notably Fabrice Di Falco (Gregor) and the Ensemble Ictus under the direction of Georges-Elie Octors. This edition constitutes a reference resource for conductors, performers, and musicologists wishing to study a demanding contemporary opera score that is narrative, timbral, and resolutely current.

Technical specifications

Musical Genre

Opera

Publication

Sheet music

Composer	Michaël Levinas	Genre	Contemporary
Publisher	Lemoine	Pages	178 (A3)
Instrumentation	Scoring: 1.0.0.0 / 2.1.1.0 / perc / hp / guit / cel / pno / 2clav / 2.1.1.0 + electr.	Year of Publication	2010