Bernard, do you miss it????... YES I DO…
Four years ago, I retired from the opera world, and I stop directing operas… I had been a theater director since 1962, and then starting in 1981 to direct Opera… I have directed more than 100 plays ( Sartre, Camus, Beckett, Moliere, Racine, Marivaux, Ionesco, Arrabal, Corneille, Shakespeare, Chekhov, etc.….) and 463 operas all over the world… Sometimes an assistant director was on location, and I was going only for a few days...
So, at the age of 74 , 4 years ago, I said goodbye to the passion of my life, and I decided to concentrate to my other passions , writing and acting… So the past 4 years I have been writing libretti and I am finishing my next novel, also I have been acting in commercials and television series ( very small roles ). The passion of writing is very satisfactory , the passion of acting has highs and lows, sometimes the role given to me was simply ridiculous and unfortunately the experience has been VERY RARELY satisfactory… I must have appeared in a dozen of roles, and not once I have met the director who always talked to me through a mike, when he was finally talking to me…. The only time I really met a director was for a commercial about Dementia and Alzheimer disease, I was an old man in a wheelchair, I could not really talk, and I had trembling hands…Suddenly the director appears on the set just in front of me and screamed: “Bernard do not act, be yourself, you are perfect for the role”…
And I
thought that my ways of thinking were still impressive…A lesson of life and for
life…ENFIN!!!!! IT IS WHAT IT IS!!!!!
During
these four years I stayed in contact with many , many of my friends of the
opera world…I have to thank them to have kept me in their thoughts, in their
heart, and still showing for me a lot of affection…. Yes, friendship has now a
new definition for me, and it is also a source of memories of the past times.
We have to continue to have affection and to show support for the ones who now
are not in the circles anymore… SO
THANK YOU MY FRIENDS…..
Very
often friends are asking me if I miss the theater and Opera as a director… My
first immediate answer is no, absolutely not… Why should I ? How can I miss it ? Especially
these days with the new rules , the new style, the new ways, and the strange obligations
of approaching actors and singers… I
have been trained by masters like Jean Louis Barrault, Tania Balachova, and
with the reading and studying of Artaud, Jouvet , Stanislavski… Today
these ways of directing from the old generation of geniuses are not accepted, and
sometimes actually considered as a crime… Yes life has changed, rules have
changed, styles have changed, understanding of human behavior has changed.
But
the honest reality is YES I MISS IT A LOT… Directing was for me a way of
living, directing saved my existence in France in the sixties, and directing
showed me the ways to discover myself and to reinvent who I was during each production
for the past fifty year. Yes, directing was for me a way to know where I really was in the world and
giving me possibilities to reinvent myself to continue to be….
YES I
MISS DIRECTING… All the moments of it.
I miss
the period of creativity when with the designers we create a new décor… The
research of the times of the piece, and what it meant for me…. Becoming again a
person of the 16, or 17, or 18 centuries, make some research and have images of
the surroundings of these characters, trying to understand how they lived,
where and with what needs… Yes, to be interested in only their love
stories and their obsession with power was not enough… Rediscovering the life of these heroes was the
result of an intense research of their times, of their customs, of their ways
in a specific country at a give I
learned so much about history and society and religion of so many countries
just by studying the period of the opera…
I miss
the hours spent with the lighting designer in an empty theater, when we were
creating incredible effects to show new situations , new locations, and
recently the use of projections added so much to his creativity.
I miss the work with singers and conductors… I met during these years incredible and amazing personalities, talent for singing was most of the times linked to a real knowledge of life… I learned so much just by talking to them , by being with them in a rehearsal room , by becoming sometimes a real friend…
How can I not think about some of them , they brought so much to me as an artist but also as a man… How can I not keeping in my mind the memories of these great people, I became another Bernard just by going to rehearsals every day for 9 hours and be with these artists… And very often, after rehearsals , we spend some time together talking about family, difficulties of travelling and being alone so often, each of us opening his heart to the new friends . Yes, again I learned so much about human behavior and what loneliness can do for all of us… I had so much admiration for them, enjoying incredibly the trust they had in me when I was directing, when I was bringing them new dimensions of life through the character they were personifying...
So many times, I was telling them, you see what you tell me now has some relation with the character you are performing, do not hesitate when you sing the role to use these memories for being somebody else, use your memories, your own experiences for delivering the music of your character. Use your life every time you can and bring it on stage… By doing it, you will deal with your buried feelings and your character will be so real . I am proud to say that many singers and actors went to the next step of their career after our work together, and I have many assistant directors who now are important in the business and very successful.
Sorry if I am bragging, but I miss doing it again , I miss sharing whatever I know with others thru acting and using directing for that. I do not miss to be important, to hear sudden silence when I entered a rehearsal room, when everybody stopped talking and looked at me whispering : HERE HE IS…AND THEN COMING TO ME TO SALUTE ME…No , I do not miss that !!!! It is not true I miss it; it made me feel existing, it made me feel useful, and it made me feel like a roman emperor when I had been for so long lost in question land… Yes, I miss it…
I miss
the relation you have to have with the administration of the producing company…
I learned how to be open to other suggestions , to other ways to deal with
problems, to different approach of everyday dilemmas… And also, I learned how
to accept other ways of doing things, which for me was the most difficult,
since unfortunately I had the wrong attitude to believe that my ways were the
best and I knew more than anybody else…
I miss
watching performances of my productions and realize with the public reaction
what was good, what was a source of painful emotion or a total abandon of
restraints or…. Bringing
emotion to people, bringing joy, bringing ways of distance with everyday life, bringing
knowledge, bringing…bringing… was for me an engine for the next show…
So
yes, I miss it, but I have to believe it is a normal reaction ….Doing the same
thing 55 years and suddenly stop it is not something easy… I just hope that the
last years of my life will be filled again with a new passion… Obviously acting
is not going to give me that and writing is wonderful but a very lonesome
passion … But I am confident I will find another passion , and this new passion
will be the most important of my entire life… All my life, I have been
reinventing myself, and I have no doubt that I will do it again , I am still
strong enough to do it, I am still full of ideas, still full of thoughts…So be ready all of you for the new Bernard…. AU
REVOIR ET A BIENTOT…
