Vibrations and interiority of the music.

Tues Nov 11th Manon Lescaut Dress rehearsal.`
Intermezzo. Puccini. Cond. L. Accocella.
Marseilles Opera House.

That tuesday afternoon when the ("click") cello started its long modulation which inevitably makes my shoulders shake and even if the neighbours were heavily coughing (which I know now because of my poor recording, at 1.18), all I keep in mind is the vibration of the entire packed house on the verge of tears, because every one knows what is emplied in this intermezzo, the fate of Manon and the sufferings of Lescaut who will never be loved by this futile woman. So what comes from the pitt at that precise moment is unique. What I get from the music before the singing starts is physical pain, because the vibrations of the cords melt in the general emotional upheaval of the audience.
I can see the three horn players and the cellist, I know where they sit and what they look like but now it is the curves and vibrations of their sounds which feel the air I can breathe and this is interacting with what I think of the story and what I have also in mind. Deeply inside we all interiorate this musical language and get ready for the voices. Five minutes of deep emotions which last long in mind after the performance.
Then the clapping to release the tensions the entire house went through.
The power of live music within a drama, live music and your active part in it at the opera .
Not when you are confronted to pictures and synthetic music. This power has gone for ever because you are lost in the materiality of images.
Although opera stars have taken part in film operas for quite a while now, there is now an acceleration of this fashion with less and less performances in ordinary opera houses in Europe , 'crisis' being the scapegoat of all kind of shortages in cultutal fields. I really feel privileged to have been able to go to the opera early in my life, just because my parents happened to be singers and tried to make a living out of it. They never became famous. But they gave me a real love for music and singers, and the singing voice, in the opera house, nowhere else!