La Chaste Vie de Jean Genet

The title of the long poem Lydie Dattas devotes to her friend is a play on the image that is often attributed to the author of The Miracle of the Rose. Used by some to comment on the entirety of Jean Genet's life and work, this too simplistic reputation deprives him of his complexity. The poetess Lydie Dattas chooses to show that complexity, and thus the intricate beauty of the man she knew. Under the name of Rosalie, she appears at the end of a life she tells with light and poetry. The beginnings in the snow, the flights through the fields, the rocks of the Mettray Penal Colony, the roses, too, everywhere; everything is revisited through her eyes, she who knows the influence of a mother, the importance of a child. If this book is written with the precision and exactitude of a biography, the friendship that Jean Genet and Lydie Dattas shared shows through not through indulgence or nostalgia, but through secrecy. False friends say everything, use everything they know to prove that they loved, that they were there. True friends don't need to pretend. So Lydie Dattas, in addition to hiding behind a fake name, keeps her affection for Genet to herself, freeing him of the weight of her gaze. The portrait appears like unsigned and all the more remarkable for it. Without appearing to guide them, Lydie Dattas leads her reader in a voyage of discovery, closer to a simple truth, without any demands.

Musical direction  Samuel Jean
Stage adaptation Dominique Féret

With Guillaume Gallienne de la Comédie-Française

And l'Orchestre régional Avignon Provence 
Violon Solo supersoliste Cordelia Palm 
Violons 1 Sophie Saint-Blancat, Sylvie Bonnay, Jeanne Maizoué, 
Cécile de Rocca Serra, Marc Aidinian, Jean-Luc Amiel, Corinne Puel
Violons 2 Gabriella Kovacs, Patricia Chaylade, Nathalie Caulier, Natalia Madera, Anne-Marie Bernard, Marie Lestrelin 
Altos Fabrice Durand, Laurence Vergez, Michel Tiertant, Marie-Claude Conrad, Véronique Saucier
Violoncelles Emmanuel Lécureuil, Jean-Christophe Bassou, Jean-Victor Bahuaud, William Imbert 
Contrebasses Frédéric Béthune, Jean-Claude Galigné, Émilie Legrand 
Flûtes Tristan Hayoz, Nicole Gonin-Libraire 
Hautbois Frédérique Costantini, David Touveneau 
Clarinettes Didier Breuque, Christophe Hocquet / Bassons Arnaud Coic, Pascal Chabaud 
Cors Eric Sombret, Gaëlle Claudin, Thomas Breuque, Luc Valckenaere 
Trompettes Thierry Aubier, Alain Longearet / Timbales Marie-Françoise Antonini-Bonin 
Percussions Hervé Catil, Isabelle Maurin / Harpe Martine Flaissier

Production Festival d'Avignon in partnership with the Orchestre régional Avignon Provence