Hercule, dernier acte

“The work is written for six singers on stage whose guide acts as the leader of the ceremony. A screen becoming sometimes a (false) mirror that reflects what is happening on stage or a beautiful landscape all in color degrading slowly from the beginning to the end of the opera to coal black. The world is waiting for Hercules, the Saviour, the world is crying out for him, but his appearance is the beginning of a terrible bewilderment since his muted voice is only expressed through a muted and dense subtitling, and will finally reveal itself, embodied by a frightening synthetic sound. This cold and inhuman voice “god machine” will fight against its own condition, trying to move us with its deeply desperate singing. Through this, our six protagonists will understand that salvation and the quest for a rescuer hero resides within each one of us, in the deepness of the human.” Zad Moultaka

“… We think we know Hercules and we immediately think of his twelve labours. Coming back to it today, the temptation would be to transpose the exploits he did to those that must be done, urgently, in particular to save the earth: Hercules ecologist hero, hero of the new era.

But what seems simple, defined, drawn like Hercules statue at the entrance to the palaces, is much less so as we become interested in this subject. The image transforms, changes, and we lose ourselves following it. What work to stop at? The twelve known ones or all the others, those which are added and which we discover as soon as we progress in the texts, the arts, the traditions, the references, the translations and the transpositions… What a feat to remember and what for to add more? There are so many other feats, so many other battles than those we tell children about… To which Hercules should we refer? The strong, the slave, the good, the bloodthirsty, the gentle at the foot of Omphale, the rapist of the Pyrenees, the powerful, the brutal, the men lover or the women lover or both, but also the human or the divine, the Greek or the Roman, etc. Hercules is made up of a quantity of images that everyone could decide to choose according to what they like, to what they hear. It is strange to discover Hercules as an empty shell. He submits, he allows himself to be guided, his initiatives are rare, his strength can do nothing about it. Unlike Ulysses, master of his destiny despite the ups and downs along the way. Have we ever seen such a famous and documented character incapable of being associated with a choice or an idea? Hercules is a toy, a comforter that looks like a child, an image whose strength reassures, an icon in which we pretend to believe, a being who when awakened would wonder what he did and why he did it. And if, finally, the only thing important to him – to ourselves – the only thing which was not imposed on him had been his quest for love… The last act of the title – Hercule, dernier acte – would then be an act of love…” Bruno Messina