Awen

As everyone knows, Avignon is the place to dance. But beyond the ritornello, the city that Martin Harriague discovered when he took over the direction of the Ballet dazzled him with the majestic power of its heritage. Paying homage to the city that welcomed him was an obvious choice. Beneath the vaulted ceiling of the Palais des Papes chapel, designed for songs and souls to soar, Harriague invites us to an intimate and poetic contemporary ceremony, a luminous offering to the history of this Avignon sanctuary. The stone casket that has absorbed centuries of splendor, tears and prayers, becomes the refuge of an immersive sensory experience. The choreography, at times aerial, at times tormented, attempts to awaken the soul of the place, to give shape to the impalpable presence, to the fulgurance of the miracle. At the heart of this creation, music shines through with The Sacred Veil by American composer Eric Whitacre, written in collaboration with poet Charles Anthony "Tony" Silvestri. This twelve-movement choral work of rare intensity explores love, loss and the persistence of connection beyond absence. Whitacre's chiselled writing for mixed choir, cello and piano deploys a harmonic language of great expressive power: luminous and suspended in the surges of love, darker and more fragmented when trials arise. The Chœur de l'Opéra Grand Avignon, conducted by Allan Woodbridge, finds here a profound terrain of incarnation, where the flesh of the voices joins that of the bodies. In the singular resonance of the Chapelle, choral breath and choreographic gesture respond to each other, weaving a vibrant dialogue between spirituality, memory and presence. The meeting of Ballet and Chorus in this space steeped in history reveals Avignon's most precious asset: its ability to bring together heritage and creation, stone and flesh, silence and fervor. A timeless moment of poetry, emotion and contemplation.