Auden’s poetical work that I have chosen to illustrate on stage is a work on what is lacking.

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What is lacking and so desire itself.

What is lacking in the quest for satisfaction.

What is lackng in loss.

What is lacking in the voluptuous impatience it creates.

What is lacking in the painful waiting it implies.

What is lacking and disappears.

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Representing what is lacking, the emotion and human aspect is the key to the scenic incarnation we hope to convey.

Britten’s music, with the speaking and singing voices answer one another without seeing each other, as if there were a presence of absence, a memory or hope. In the first part, which is mainly spoken with the singing voice answering from behind the door, thus plunging the spectator into absence and want, allowing him or her to hear without seeing, making him or her guess and hope that these two monologues may come together at last.

By seeking inspiration in everyday poetic images, namely that of the photographer Gilbert Garcin, want the audience to discover Auden’s work, from its most universal to its most private, Auden with himself and with his reader. We wish to give the audience the possibility of ‘reading’ inside the man, on hearing the voice of the author. The idea is to invite the spectator to shudder at the universal thought of ‘want’, loss and death, that thunders at the slightest moment like the far off rumbling at a picnic.

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Funeral Blues, The Missing Cabaret, reunites the composer Benjamin Britten and the poet, Wystan Hugh Auden in this poetic performance. It was presented at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, then at the Grand Théâtre du Luxembourg.