PIERRE BOULEZ AND THE PROJECT OF ‘L'ORESTIE’

Abstract

Among the passengers on the ocean liner Provence, as it disembarked from the Argentine capital Buenos Aires on 30 July 1954 at the outset of its 18-day voyage to Marseilles, were members of the theatre company Renaud-Barrault, returning home after a lengthy tour during the course of which it had performed in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. If there was general fatigue at the end of such a gruelling schedule, during which the Company had given over 80 performances, there must have been an accompanying sense of exhilaration, and for perhaps the first time since leaving France on 24 April, an opportunity to relax. (Even the outward journey on Bretagne, the sister ship of Provence, had been taken up with a full schedule of rehearsals for the coming tour.) The joint directors, Jean-Louis Barrault and his wife Madeleine Renaud, as well as the young musical director, Pierre Boulez, joined their colleagues on board Provence a few days later at the Brazilian port of Salvador de Bahia, having opted to return to Brazil for a few days, during which there was an opportunity to witness a candomblé ceremony. For Jean-Louis Barrault, it was evidently a joyous return to the country which was the scene of the Company's first and perhaps greatest triumphs on a tour which had been as successful in every respect as the Company's first visit to South America in 1950.