“The Man in the light of the starry vault says:
– Be yourself!
– Be yourself whatever it takes.
The Troll under the earth says: ‘Think only of yourself!‘”
Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt, translated from English to French by Olivier Py
PEER GYNT OR THE QUEST FOR SELF. Peer Gynt is a double masterpiece, literary and musical, whose main themes are familiar to everyone. Blending tragedy and comedy, the grotesque and the sublime, exoticism and folklore, the work was a success right from the moment it was published in 1867. Initially conceived as a lesendrama (a text meant to be read), Peer Gynt became a show in its own right when Henrik Ibsen asked Edvard Grieg to compose the music. Today, there are very few places that bring these two masterpieces together. It is the role of a music theatre such as the Châtelet to combine the entirety of Grieg’s music with Olivier Py’s adaptation of Ibsen’s text.
Through the tribulations of the main character, the embodiment of the anti-hero, Peer Gynt is first and foremost the story of a journey through space and time, from north to south, from youth to maturity. In this original staging, Olivier Py emphasises the initiatory nature of a pilgrimage down the river where Peer Gynt, wanting to put the Trolls’ motto to the test, embarks on a long wander. Leaving his homeland, he takes the winding roads that lead him to preach in the desert as he travels south, the better to understand, on his return to Norway, the emptiness of his own existence.
