"Mitridate - A triptych" 

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‘No name is more famous than Mithridates’ (Jean Racine)

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 The first words of the prologue in Racine’s Mithridate immediately reveal the distance between today and the period in which Racine, then Mozart represented their Mithridate.

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Today, there are no fewer names less known than Mithridate.

The codes of dramas the codes of opera composition, the importance of the cast and its virtuosity, the kind of audience involved are all proof of the distance there is between Mithridate and us today.

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We aim to fill this distance by focusing above all, as for Racine, on ‘the pleasure of the reader’, or, in our case, the pleasure of the spectator.

 

Transposing into a contemporary world is often a favored solution to bring the audience closer to a performance. But, when capturing Mithridate, it seemed to us that no change of period or action would be enough to understand the multiple aspects of the tragedy and highlight the music.

 

For Mithridate is a political epic, a tragedy of love and personal drama. It is a tragedy with many dramas, built backward, the unity of which is expressed in one moment: the death of Mithridate.

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We consider Mithridate to be a drama about old age, the loss of military power of course, but also the loss of sexual, physical, and psychological power; it is the tale of his encounter with realities that are stronger than his desires.

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We have chosen to widen the stage and represent these multiple aspects in a tryptic.

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The complete project in pdf is available on request.​