Le Condamné à mort

On 25 March 1944, Jean Genet left the Paris prison Les Tourelles, thus closing the list of lock-ups, voluntary or imposed, that he has been to: orphanage, penal colony, barrack, then various prisons for theft, until this last liberation. It was in these institutions that he discovered Ronsard and his sonnets. This encounter had a dramatic effect on him and drove him to write. He was in prison when he took the plunge and wrote The Man Sentenced to Death, which the actress Jeanne Moreau and the author-composer-interpreter Étienne Daho, surrounded by five musicians, will make ring out in the Cour d'honneur du Palais des papes. Made up of about 60 alexandrine quatrains, this poem is a tribute to Maurice Pilorge, a young man guillotined for the murder of his lover, as beautiful and graceful as "an Apollo" and with whom Jean Genet pretended he shared a short period of incarceration. It matters little that we know today he never actually met him but only saw his photo in a newspaper. Because this little arrangement with reality permitted him to write an incredible poem, in a purely classical French, with Racinian versification, but peppered with slang. A text between perfection of style and crudeness of words, to recount transfiguration through desire. It is this both violent and gentle language that made Étienne Daho want to make an album from it, and then a concert. Rearranging for bass, drums, violin and guitars the music Hélène Martin had composed for this poem in 1964, he asked Jeanne Moreau to join him in this adventure. Together, they will present this work that, even today, is a powerful weapon against Puritanism, a hymn to sanctification of sex, an incendiary ode to the beauty of bodies, a fascinating blend of romanticism and brutality, unclassifiable but still as dazzling, audacious and disturbing. On the bare stage of the Cour d'honneur, Étienne Daho sings, while Jeanne Moreau recites "with a cold voice and a burning heart," as the director Klaus Michael Grüber phrased it. JFP

A committed writer and playwright, Jean Genet (1910-1986) would have celebrated his 100th birthday last year. Le Condamné à mort (The Man Sentenced to Death) is his first work, written in Fresnes prison, where he was serving time for stealing books. Published in 1942, this long poem in alexandrine verse is a sublime and profane declaration of love to a young murderer, supposedly met in prison. Twenty years later, it would be put to music by Hélène Martin, then sung by Marc Orgeret, before being revisited by Jeanne Moreau and Étienne Daho, brought together by their love of this poetry that reconciles beauty and crudeness, gentleness and violence.

JFP

music Hélène Martin
arranging Étienne Daho

interpreted by Jeanne Moreau and Étienne Daho
and musicians Franck M'Boueke (drums), Marcello Giuliani (bass), Édith Fambuena, François Poggio (guitars), Dominique Pinto (cello)

production TS3