I tried to translate the interview for those who don't understand a word of French.
Back to childhood (travels to childhood)
Philippe Jaroussky wanted to meet Eric-Emmanuel Schmidt.
E.E.S. did not hesitate to meet him. They both discovered deep similarities between their arts, and first of all the desire of listening to what they call their “anterior voice”.
E.E.S.
There is nothing more difficult to speak about music or about the impression music leaves on us. This also contributes to keep a distance between the interpreter and the people who worship the interpreter. I think most people do not try to formulate these things. They just say “I love it”, but it is quite difficult to be more specific ….
P.J.
… Or the “fans” (he says “les fidèles”) thank you. What else can you say than “thank you”? Anyway there is a major difference between us, whereas I am an interpreter and you are a creator.
E.E.S.
Maybe, but you are a special interpreter and you have, in my eyes, a different status as other singers. First of all, you re-create some forgotten or put aside works. Finally your voice is also an own creation. This is a voice created by art and work because your real voice is a baritone. This is a creation of oneself and a re-creation of the past. It gives an entirely different picture. Finally there is a characteristic which fascinates me with you, what I call “star quality.
P.J.
Ah yes? (Smiling)
E.E.S.
It is a real paradox. It is like Catherine Deneuve, for example: Why is there such a fascination for this woman ? It’s because her beauty is slow, regular, peaceful, made for photography, but that the way she speaks is one of the most rapid of the French movies, it’s vivacity in itself ! This contradiction is fascinating. By a Cecilia Bartoli the contrast comes on one hand from a kind of warmth, something direct, a charisma, which are coming from Italy itself on the other hand from the biggest refinement and the biggest sophistication. Your paradox is that you have the face of an angel, a kind of shyness which is obvious and a total extravaganza while singing, in the ornaments, in daring.
P.J.
Sometimes, during a concert, I like to surprise the audience and to play with this modest side just to break this particular mood, while singing an encore for example
E.E.S.
A modest appearance with a most shameless repertory
P.J.
Once an English critic said it was totally shameless to sing with my chest voice and if I had removed my trousers during the concert, the effect wouldn’t have been different (laughs).
Maybe the magic of countertenor voices lies in the fact that we always are between the ridiculous and the magnificent. This voice is not perceived the same way by everybody. Recently someone literally burst laughing after three notes while hearing me for he (she) was waiting for everything but this … This discrepancy, this paradox are fascinating in Art. : in one second, one can move to something else.
E.E.S.
It’s a voice which moves you very deep inside. For me, it’s my childhood’s voice I listen to when I hear you. It’s not girl’s voice but my original boy’s voice. And this, along with making me travel in the repertory of the past, takes me very far away. It’s my anterior voice and my inner voice. The voice between adolescence, before the hormones troubles. I am really touched by it. I have the feeling I am away from sexuality.
P.J.
I have myself a very youthful attitude, like a desire not to grow up.
E.E.S
Ah yes ? You know, when I write and take the point of view of a child as in Oscar et la Dame Blanche, or such stories, I write like a countertenor !
P.J.
In L’Enfant de Noé you play a totally unconventional vision because a child doesn’t understand everything. Or he understands, but in a different way. Suddenly he has flashes of lucidity an adult wouldn’t have. But this is the problem of a lot of artists, isn’t it ?
E.E.S.
Absolutely. I believe a great actor must find the childhood in him. We keep putting layers but we must hold on to childhood. You, in your case, it’s childhood and at the same time it’s not childhood…Can you explain your love for virtuosity ?
P.J.
Huge subject !
Initially, I am a violinist, so it always fascinated me, like a kind of thing impossible to reach, like the Himalaya. However, I realized that virtuosity in the voice had a natural dimension at the end.
E.E.S.
Isn’t it a way to escape from the text, from the sense ? And to become again purely instrumental? My dizziness when I listen to you in pure pyrotechnics is that the voice still expresses something while being freed from words. For a writer it’s fascinating, almost frustrating. I well not accept loosing the moorings to such an extent.
P.J.
Virtuosity can be extremely trivial, even completely free.
E.E.S
But it is essential. For me it tells the happiness of being there. Like the joy of Beethoven. It’s a connection with what is compared to what is not.
Sadness is in connection with what doesn’t exist, what you miss, what disappeared, what will never happen.
Virtuosity is : being overjoyed being there, making the most of the time being, intensively existing with brilliancy, passion and panache. There is a philosophy, a way of existing behind virtuosity, a message saying : “Let’s enjoy and make the most (of life). We are alive!
It’s putting oneself at the edge of existence, feeling its preciosity and short-lived character. Sometimes I find some opera singers give a kind of homage with a language they don’t understand. They are in a kind of paradigm of this language.
P.J.
We must be careful with the words we interpret for a singer can very quickly “freeze” the interpretation of a word, and “love”, “death” will always sound the same. But, depending on the context, it is never the same word !
Spending lot of time with “la chanson française” – Brel, Piaf – is fascinating for me from this point of view. The flavour of the word, in accordance with the context varies depending on the meanings of the sentence. In the opera, because we are in the technical nature of voice, sometimes we are going to thing syllable after syllable at the risk of loosing the meaning of the sentence.
E.E.S
You know, being a writer, I almost have something against music for having such an easy access to emotion!
Personally I have to put forward a narrative strategy to create an identification of the reader to the character and finally make the access to emotions possible (after a few pages).
P.J.
A question puzzles me. When you write a play do you physically visualize your characters ?
E.E.S.
No, absolutely not. A character, it’s a voice I am hearing. I feel emotions, its dynamic the way he has to put forward his feelings, his discontinuity. It’s a kind of nebulosity without pictures.
P.J.
When I read you, I can see the pictures…
E.E.S.
Ah, But it’s for you to have the pictures. I come out of the picture, I never describe, I suggest. All my technique is suggestion. You create the pictures. Sometimes my readers tell me: “It’s funny, your books, I don’t forget them.” I answer them: It’s all right, you wrote them while reading them, because I only suggest. With this minimalist technique people will be stimulated. Some writers destroy your imagination because they want to be exhaustive.
PJ.
What do you think ? Do we look like what we do or like what we create?
Some people think that because they are fond of me as an artist, they will like me as a human being. But this is quite different …
E.E.S.
I don’t know … All the same often people look like their work. Others have put their best in their creation and are not up to it. I know some of them. It’s almost a strength for a writer only to be able to write. Only to have roughly this means. Sometimes when I see an artist who cannot do anything but his art I feel almost relieved for him for I know it is the essential base by which he can communicate with others, express himself, speak out.
P.J.
More and more often, I am asked about what I thing concerning everything. I want to be listened to when I sing, it’s basic, but when I speak, it’s surprising we hear my opinion. It’s the danger of media coverage.
E.E.S.
I am also asked my opinion on everything. It’s the problem of media coverage. You are a VIP, all subjects are good. We, we are interested in what is untimely, anachronism, what is out of time and can be “shared universally”. When you sing, you don’t do it for a Parisian member of the audience living in the 6th arrondissement: maybe there are some in the concert hall, but your speech doesn’t limit itself to him. You sing for a German, for Japanese and you express universal things. When I write, I don’t write for a particular audience, not even the one of my language.
P.J.
I am afraid that the more we get media coverage, the more things slip from us. When we begin to sing, it’s because we have pleasure in it. Then come the concerts. And the sharing with the audience which keeps growing. Mediatisation can become an uncontrolled monster, can’t it ?
E.E.S.
But it would be a mistake to turn down mediatisation and particularly for you, for you can make music go even further. It’ marvellous to make people rediscover unknown territories of music and culture with naturalness, easiness, in youth and with the sense of sharing. The singers who just make themselves known in this field are like civil servants of the repertory – It’s the case of a lot of carriers.
But when there is a rarity of the person and a rarity in the way of approaching things, this is extraordinary.