Interview with Diana Wądołowska – Maria Sartova

Interview (excerpts)

Diana Wądołowska: Some say that Puccini is the most cinematographic composer. The great Italian opera composer would sytematically introduce innovations and initiate musical techniques that were later adopted by Hollywood composers. Visually speaking, your direction refers to classic French films of the 1930s.

Maria Sartova: Claude Debussy once said he could think of no one who could convey the atmosphere of Paris and its time like Puccini. I’m personally attached to a cinematographic vision and I am very fond of the films of Marcel Carné and Jacques Becker which show the Paris of that time. This is Paris at the end of World War I, at the beginning of the années folles, a time where there was great joy but where the upcoming tragedy was already looming large.

The biographies of the protagonists are steeped in this atmosphere as they are on the doorstep of death. In Act III, I’ve tried to build an atmosphere similar to the one produced by the great master of French cinema Marcel Carné. The street is covered with snow, the lighting is dim, there is a faint streetlight on the corner and the windows of the Café Momus where the counterpoint takes place between Musette and Marcello.

The scene is overwhelming, not unlike the tiredness you feel the day after a bad party. Inside the café, you can see the shadows of the last patrons sipping on their last drinks. It is the harrowing, almost suicidal, atmosphere of a night that is coming to an end. The action in Act IV unfolds in a closed place, under a hostile and disquieting light. The black backdrop and the lack of nuance in the colours suggest there is no hope whatsoever. The light gradually shrinks and merely casts specific points, until the death of Mimi in total darkness.

D.W.: Love in La Boheme spans a wondrous array of colours that include sensitivity, romanticism and declarations of love between Mimi and Rodolfo, as well as passion, sensuality and irrepressible anger between Musette and Marcello. The relationships are different but they both end up in separation.

M.S.: The libretto is an adaptation of Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger, which he wrote in 1849. The French have a typical way of considering their love life, as though it were fleeting – they know it doesn’t last forever. Our conception of love is quite different – we consider it as a fundamental and lasting feeling.

We are convinced that love should last a lifetime. I do not aim to destroy the vision of the Slav soul, on the contrary, but while preserving a sense of lightness I aim to show great emotions, those that do not appear at the surface and to which people react in different ways. That is why my conception of love is particularly close to the artistic universe.

Rodolphe and Mimi meet at a time when they are expecting love. They experience love at first sight. They are the reflection of other mythical couples who were overcome by tragic fate, such as Tristan and Iseult, or Manon Lescaut and the Chevalier des Grieux. The feelings of Mimi and Rodolfo are a counterpoint to those of Musette and Marcello.

These lovers are incredibly similar, they need to be independent, they want to be together and yet they can’t commit. Their love is bound to be stormy, full of doubt, sensuality and sex.

D.W.: Maybe the two female characters are such that they cannot be understood by men, who see them as having masks that change all the time. Rodolfo would like to leave Mimi because he cannot afford to support his ailing mistress and Marcello constantly suspects Musette of betrayal; Colline never comes close to women and prefers “his pipe and a good read in Greek” while Schaunard speaks of love with nothing but irony. What are men like in Puccini’s work?

M.S.: In Act III, the male characters, Rodolfo and Marcello, admit they cannot face up to existential issues. The women, Mimi and Musette, decide to break up from their partners and Rodolfo and Marcello are at a loss. In Act IV, the inevitable death of Mimi transforms all the protagonists; they start becoming mature and possibly responsible for themselves. The death of their youth coincides with Mimi’s and insouciance vanishes forever.

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