Tuesday 29, July - 20h - Opéra Berlioz / Le Corum

Le Roi David
Arthur Honegger

In 1907, René Morax built a wooden theatre in Mézières, near Lausanne, thereby giving concrete expression to an ideal of folk art in a rural setting. Thus the village’s population supplied the actors, supernumeraries, musicians, costumers and set designers. After the war, for the reopening of his theatre, he wrote Le roi David and asked Arthur Honegger, a young composer unknown in Switzerland, to write the music that would accompany the acting.
Taking its inspiration from the Old Testament as well as from the Huguenot Psalter, the text retraces the life of David in three parts. The first is devoted to David the shepherd then conqueror of Goliath. In the second part, King David enters a Jerusalem in celebration. The work ends with the triumph of hope after the coronation of Solomon and the death of old King David.
Honegger accepted the challenge of writing for a hundred amateur choristers and an ensemble of 17 instruments including only a single stringed instrument, forces that will be respected for this concert. He conducted the premiere of this work that put the village in a festive mood. But its 1923 revival elsewhere called for a revised oratorio version, this time with symphony orchestra. Whilst a narrator summarises the action, the chorus becomes the main actor, taking on several roles: the crowd, the wise men, the daughters of Israel, soldiers, etc. It also expresses all the human feelings of Man’s relationship with God: confidence, jubilation, repentance, love... The shorter solo arias are reserved for the characters including David.

Catherine Michaud