A DROP AND ROSSINI

For this piece on the music of Rossini, Carles Santos has arranged all his aesthetic and musical universe around a single item: a drop of water.

Water reveals the bodies' material, organic nature.

Water is a recurring theme in the theatre of Carles Santos… In The composer, the singer, the chef and the sinner however there is even more! Fluids flowing through the body (in our veins, our organs), leaving the body (its secretions): for Carles Santos, water embodies this very physical, very organic aspect of body and matter.

Music carries everything its wake towards the image of the storm: in its flood one does not exactly see the forms of the bodies - their outlines - rather their organic nature: stirring, fluctuating in all the magma of matter and form.

Bodies are permeated by fluids. They are revealed to be living bodies when secretions seep out of them: the body is an organism in which that enters, that goes round and that leaves. The most explicit of these secretions is delight - the ejaculations of the chef in the hands of the sinner… there are also the spurts of the piano from the composer hitting the pedal: the piano is also a living organism; caressed, touched by the composer, from it, emanate sounds, notes, music… and water: living. Water makes the body alive: making it visible, palpable.

Water retained on the body, in the body. From the precision of the drop in the hand of the singer, to the spurts of water like showers in the mouth of the chef via the most frivolous pelvis of the sinner, the drop strolls over the bodies, drawing a different anatomy. In theatre by Carles Santos, the bodies of the singers are permeated by the sounds they are making. In these solos, each drop embodies the point in the body that is the engine, driving the song: from where the singing is disseminated.

Water is never a cold element. It is the contact with heat and the effect that this has, is what is exaggerated - from the fire that dwells in the body, to making the water in the pans tremble: the kitchen - like the bed - is the place for this alchemy.

The drop of water to make the note, the rhythm visible

The point of departure for the piece's creation process has been the drop of water: from this minute item - what is a drop? a few cubic millimetres of water! - Carles Santos has chosen the music, imagined the sequences.

Why use the drop of water in particular - a minimalist item - to approach Rossini? The music of Rossini is marked by its andante, its abundance, its generosity rather than by its minimalism… Perhaps if one touches the infinitesimal, one can then enlarge or reduce everything (the music, the images) at will. With this image of the drop, Carles Santos brings us a little of the essence of Rossini: his rhythm, from which he wrote all his notes.
Drops are the scenic equivalent of the note. They fall like a metronome: the singers nestle below. One drop, another and a third: that makes a tempo. One could even be amused by hearing the drops in the singing: the word games, the speech games and onomatopoeias are like drops in the lyrics, exaggerating the material nature of the body and also its sounds.

Drop by drop the piece unfolds. According to the flow, one goes from very concentrated scenes to very expansive scenes. A trickle of Barbiere, a dash of Stabat Mater, a few operatic duets and arias, a string sonata that Rossini wrote at the age of 12... from the first image of the drop of water to the end (it is also the last piece written by the composer), Carles Santos makes us taste to the rhythm of Rossini.

Fragments by Rossini and the compositions by Carles Santos are bound by one musical logic. From the single drop, to the trickle of water, or to the spurt of water, to the shower and to the storm, the different water flows allow the tempo of the music to be visualised. The theatrical and musical writings are intrinsically linked around the rhythm.

Logic of the drop of water: where it is a matter of letting oneself be carried away by the flow of the music

A story? Yes, of course, stories: about love, couples, passion! The composer, the singer, the chef and the sinner: from these fixed points all combinations are possible. The relationships between the four characters fluctuate; they never stop ravelling and unravelling like a spiral, to the point where one no longer is aware who is with who, who is deceiving who, who is the mother, the sister, the father of who… In the end the thread of the plot - if there is one - matters little: what is important here is the music, that unfolds with the drops.

Water - music - overflows all these little anecdotes. where it is a matter of letting oneself be carried away by the flow of the music which carries everything in its wake, like a storm. A storm that is not devastating, but which transmits its energy, its flood, its delight: it takes one into a particular state.

Carles Santos tells another story that cuts across all of Rossini's music. Around this obsession about a drop of water, he makes us see and feel the rhythm, the tempo of his music… how it beats. The drops are like pulses, palpitations: going straight into the body.

Clémence Coconnier