Da Camera Sarah Rothenberg artistic and general director

A Proust Sonata 7 tableaux en musique Conceived and Directed by Sarah Rothenberg

Texts from Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and the memoirs of Céleste Albaret, Monsieur Proust

with

Narrator Tenor Henry Stram Nicholas Phan

Céleste/Francoise String Quartet Nancy Hume Jackson Guillen**, violin Jae-Won Bang**, violin Violinist Jill Valentine**, viola Boson Mo* Sonya Matoussova**, cello

Pianist Sarah Rothenberg

Scenic and Costume Design Text Adaptation Marina Draghici Sarah Rothenberg

Lighting Design Production Manager Jennifer Tipton C. Townsend Olcott, II

Projection Design Projection Programmer and Engineer Hannah Wasileski Chongren Fan

Sound Design Stage Manager Bart Fasbender Mary Susan Gregson

A Proust Sonata was developed in part at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College and 3-Legged Dog Art & Technology Center in New York.

* Da Camera Young Artist Alumnus ** Member of Da Camera Young Artists program

@ 1 3 I. Combray Claude Debussy Préludes, Book 1 (1909-10) (1862-1918) Des pas sur la neige Robert Schumann Fantasiestücke, Op. 12 (1837) (1810-1856) Des Abends Gabriel Fauré Ici-bas! (1874) (1845-1924)

II. Chez Madame Lemaire Reynaldo Hahn Rêverie (1888) (1874-1947) Mai (1889) Si mes vers avaient des ailes (1888) from Portraits de peintres: Antoine Watteau (1894) Léon Delafosse from Chauves-souris (pub. 1895) (1874-1955) Chauves-souris Baisers Mensonges Reynaldo Hahn Fêtes galantes (1892)

III. The Vinteuil Sonata Gabriel Fauré Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Major, Op. 13 (1875-76) (1845-1924) Allegro molto Andante Allegro vivo Allegro quasi presto

intermission IV. Balbec Maurice Ravel Une barque sur l’océan (1904-05) (1875-1937)

V. Time Regained Frédéric Chopin Berceuse, Op. 57 (1843-44) (1810-1849) Claude Debussy Harmonie du soir (1887-89) (1862-1918)

VI. A View of Delft Ludwig van Beethoven from String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Op. 135 (1826) (1770-1827) Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo

Céleste’s Interlude

VII. Proust’s Tea

@ 22 3 @ 2 3 A Conversation with Sarah Rothenberg

Q: When and how did your fasci- the book. And so bringing this to life my studies at the Curtis Institute of nation with Marcel Proust and his with a performance in which we hear Music, I lived in Paris for a year and works begin? the musicality of the texts, we experi- studied with French pianist Yvonne ence the music of Proust’s world and Loriod, the wife of noted French com- A: Like many people, my relationship we see vividly the paintings and peo- poser Olivier Messiaen. My husband with Proust developed over many ple that inspired him felt like a natural is French, my children are bi-lingual, years with several starts, stops and re- idea to me. It also felt like a way of and our family lives a bi-national life. starts. At first I read only the first vol- bringing people closer to a work that Yes, the decoration from the French ume. Then I focused on excerpts that they may think is unapproachable; government was a great surprise and related to music -- I was amazed by of trying to find a way to share with felt like official recognition of the role Proust’s ability to capture in words the others these art forms that have been that France has played in my life and elusive experience of listening to mu- deeply meaningful to me. work. sic. And that was my way into Proust. The opportunity to collaborate Q: And you live somewhat of a dual Most readers enter into a relationship with this fantastic team of creative artistic life as a musician and as a with Proust through excerpts of his designers has been a dream. It really writer. writing long before tackling his com- begins to feel like a kind of chamber plete opus. Ultimately, the experience music where instead of combining A: Although my predominant public becomes a very personal one. several instruments, it is the music, profile is definitely as a pianist, writ- In the novel, toward the end of text, images and sounds that interact, ing has always been important to me In Search of Lost Time, the Narrator each like an instrument in and has been part of my professional a quartet, to create a whole. life as well. I write about music, art, That’s what we are working and literature, often within the frame towards. of memoir. These are the same themes Q: Why do you think Proust that appear in A Proust Sonata, and in continues to be relevant? fact creating the scenario of text, im- age and music, and then directing the A: The theme with which piece, is a way of bringing to life the Proust is most associated is same ideas I write about. that of memory, of trying Q: Can you talk about the struc- to recapture the past. For ture of A Proust Sonata? How did Proust, there are magical mo- you come up with seven tableaux or ments where a scent, a taste, scenes? a musical theme suddenly bring back with vivid sensa- A: For A Proust Sonata, I selected spe- tions an experience from the cific scenes and texts that I felt were past; in these moments, there essential to the Proust story and, at is no past and no present. the same time, leant themselves to They exist simultaneously. becoming musically significant. Ev- thinks about his future readers and This is true of human experience and ery line spoken by actor Henry Stram, says: “it seemed to me that they would it is universal. And now we call such in the role of the Narrator, is from In not be ‘my’ readers but the readers of moments “Proustian.” We are made Search of Lost Time. I also wanted to their own selves, my book being mere- of our memories, and in the course of represent the overall arc of In Search ly a sort of magnifying glass… It would one day, our interior lives move fluidly of Lost Time, which is a very musical be my book, but with its help I would between past and present. No matter structure, symphonic in scope. furnish them with the means of read- how much we text, tweet and other- Q: Is In Search of Lost Time autobio- ing what lay inside themselves…” That wise change the way we live, our emo- graphical? is really the experience I have had. tional lives will always be made up of Q: What made you want to create a both past and present. A: Proust very deliberately confuses music theater performance based on Q: It seems that you’re deeply at- the line between fiction and memoir; Proust? tracted to France. And you received the book feels like a true story and yet it is not. The life of the “Narrator” A: Proust is remarkably sensitive to the medal of Chevalier in Arts and Letters in 2001? parallels the life of Marcel Proust in music, but also to painting and to liter- many ways, but in others veers greatly ature. The three arts of music, painting A: France is important to me – both away. One small example: if you visit and writing are tremendous themes in the language and the culture. After @ 24 3 @ 3 3 the childhood home where Proust to hear a thing. His bedroom was Morel, just as the Baron Robert de spent his summers, as I did (and some lined with cork to block out all outside Montesquiou, who writes the poems of my photos end up in the projec- sounds. Celeste would get up, make we hear in Delafosse’s Chauves-souris tions of A Proust Sonata) -- the house coffee and wait for Proust to ring the (Bats), became a model for the fiction- corresponds to the fictional home of bell. There were days when she waited al Baron de Charlus. Proust’s aunt, but when you look out hour after hour in absolute silence. Q: What is the Vinteuil Sonata? the bedroom window and find a dif- Celeste and Proust’s relationship ferent view than what you read, your is a really interesting one. She was A: The Vinteuil Sonata is a fictional immediate response is “the view is completely devoted to Proust. It was chamber work that reoccurs through- wrong.” There is continual confusion far from a love affair, which is why out In Search of Time. It carries sig- about the commingling of fact and fic- their connection is quite moving de- nificant emotional meaning for both tion. Proust was inspired by the peo- spite the servant-master dynamic. It the Narrator and for one of the main ple and places around him, he often was a very reserved relationship on characters, Swann. There’s been a lot creates composite characters based one level and very intimate on anoth- of sleuthing about what the real so- on multiple real life people, but in the er. Although the lines, the boundaries, nata could have been. Proust hints at end it is a work of fiction. are drawn, she was closer to him than many possibilities in his correspon- anybody in the last years of his life. dence. Many scholars think it’s the Q: How is Proust -- his work and his When she was in her 80s, Céleste Saint-Saens sonata, although the Fau- life -- represented in your produc- decided to tell her tale. She dictated ré sonata, Franck string quartet, and tion? the book, Monsieur Proust, which I use Franck sonata, are also mentioned as A: I wanted to try to show both fact to create the character of Céleste in A possible models. and fiction – which is a challenge. Proust Sonata. But I believe there is no “one” Each tableau is like a slice of Proust. But Proust’s writings also include Vinteuil Sonata we can point at. If There are really two things going on a fictional housekeeper – Francoise, Proust’s writing about the work held in this piece: scenes from the novel, who is referred to at one point by the true for only one work, it would be of married to music and images; as well Narrator. That’s why the character is little interest. Proust always aimed for as the story of Proust himself, who listed as Céleste/Francoise, yet the role the universal. The Vinteuil Sonata is started out in his young adult life as remains the same. deliberately fictional and is a compos- a social climber in fashionable salons ite construction, as are the book’s char- Q: How is the music connected to -- like the one we see in Chez Madame acters. The Faure Sonata was an im- either Proust or the literary themes? Lemaire. Proust feared he would nev- portant piece to Proust, as was Fauré er accomplish anything of worth and A: The composers Debussy, Schumann, himself. I feel that it makes a far more lives quite indulgently until, in his late Chopin, Beethoven, Fauré are all men- beautiful partner to Proust’s prose thirties, after the death of his mother, tioned in the book – but I chose the than any of the other candidates; in he withdraws from the world and ded- specific works and placed them within style, phrasing, harmony and musical icates himself entirely to writing. the scenes. What surprised me is my character, for me, it is the best choice. own journey to include Schumann. As Q: Who is the Celeste character? Q: What do you hope is the audi- I was working on the opening move- ence’s reaction to this production? A: To put things in perspective and re- ment of A Proust Sonata, I wanted to late directly to the audience, I decided echo Proust’s desire to recapture the A: Any strong work of art has to have to introduce Celeste Albaret, Proust’s innocence of childhood and I realized multiple interpretive possibilities. I real life housekeeper, as a character. that the composer who best captures feel like we’ve tried to offer different Celeste lived with Proust during the the innocence, fantasy and the anguish entryways into the spirit of Proust by last eight years of his life. She became of childhood in a truly Proustian way creating a complete visual environ- much more than a housekeeper. She is Robert Schumann - but he does it in ment and bringing these different art wrote things down for him, she pasted Germany long before Proust is born! forms together. I’d like to think that his texts together as he kept adding The composers that appear in there is at least a moment where peo- extensive additions to the manuscript, the scene Chez Madame Lemaire cor- ple are transported somewhere else, and she had to live an extremely de- respond to the real life composers somewhere they’ve never been be- voted, strange life with him. Proust met at that very salon. Reynal- fore, and that they leave feeling more Proust would start writing very do Hahn became Proust’s first lover engaged -- with music, with wanting late at night, go to bed at about nine and lifelong friend. Leon Delafosse, to read more Proust or just more en- in the morning and wake up at about completely forgotten today, became gaged within themselves. three in the afternoon. He had strict a model for Proust’s fictional Charles rituals about silence; he did not want

@ 4 3 @ 27 3 Marcel Proust Marcel Proust was born in 1871, of a Catholic father and a Jewish mother. At the age of 10 he suffered his first asthma attack, and the disease was to recur throughout his life; though he withdrew from an existence of intense social engagement by 1909, living alone with his enormous project and mak- ing notorious forays into the world he was quite conscious of immortalizing, Proust died of asthma at the age of 52. Between 1890 and 1907 he published stories, poems, and essays (some collected in a volume called Les Plaisirs et les Jours, 1896), translated two books by Ruskin, and produced two versions of a vast novel, which, after his mother’s death in 1905, he rewrote altogether, finally calling it In Search Though most readers who approach Proust’s work, of Lost Time, of which a first volume was published in dismayed by the elaborate and intricate nature of his 1913. Although a second volume was then in prepa- prose and the formidable length of his fiction (sentence ration, it was not published until 1919, when it was by sentence as well as volume by volume), seldom awarded the Goncourt Prize; two more volumes were continue past the first book -- that is, past Combray published before Proust died in 1922; the remaining and Swann in Love -- it is crucial to the sense and sig- three volumes were published by 1927. These first nificance of the novel that it be read to the end: for in editions of the novel were editorially uncertain, and this cumulative resolution of themes developed over though there is still no such thing as a definitive ver- 3000 pages and constituting, incidentally, a convinc- sion of the text, all of Proust’s additions, revisions ing portrait of an entire era (which Proust extended and variants have been recuperated in recent years to include the First World War), the narrator Marcel, in a series of major French critical editions. Even the ultimately reconciled to time and to his situation first English translation, by Scott Moncrieff, has been within and outside it, resolves to write the book he has twice revised to conform more closely to what is now borne within himself and for so long evaded: it will perceived as the author’s textual intentions. incarnate his response to time and reveal to his readers, Remarkably responsive to nature, and to the belle quite evangelically, how any life, similarly regarded as époque Paris of his youth, Proust possessed, as well, an the subject of a search for lost time, can triumph over astonishingly wide range (and sharp focus) of cultural mere mortality in the consciousness gained by art (in- passions; his work is a sort of summa of French litera- veterately at the cost of friendship, society and love). ture, with special emphasis on the historical chronicles Structure and significance, in this enormous cre- of Saint-Simon and the novels of Balzac, though stud- ation, are most usefully conceived as “musical”: that ies of Baudelaire and Stendhal which he published is, like works of music they must be experienced in late in his life must not be overlooked as inspirations. But Proust’s command of the creative issues inherent time to be understood and enjoyed; they cannot be not only in writing, but in painting, in theater, and in epitomized in an abstract summary, and they cannot music as well, is apparent in his analysis of characters be perceived as a strictly linear development or logical. (composite figures based on a great many different By performing music to which Proust was devoted, not artistic figures of his own day) -- the writer Bergotte, only an opportunity of listening to pieces which cast the actress Berma, the painter Elstir, the composer a formative spell on the author of In Search of Lost Vinteuil -- who epitomize entire philosophies of art as Time, but a way of reading, of “listening to” Proust’s they are developed in the course of the novel -- like the work itself. other dramatic personages, veritable “giants in time.” Richard Howard

@ 5 3 A Proust Sonata Credits

Texts Marcel Proust (1871-1922) A la recherche de temps perdu [In Search of Lost Time] Excerpts from vol. I Swann’s Way, tr. Lydia Davis, New York: Penguin Books, 2002 vol. II In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, tr. Richard Howard for Da Camera of Houston (1995) vol. III The Guermantes Way, tr. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, New York: The Modern Library (1992-93) vol. VI Time Regained [Le temps retrouvé], translated by Andreas Mayor and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, New York: The Modern Library (1993) Painters Portraits [Portraits de Peintres]: Antoine Watteau, translated by Richard Howard for Da Camera of Houston (1995) Excerpts from Celeste Albaret, Monsieur Proust, Paris: Robert Lafont (1973), translated by Sarah Rothenberg

Images Henri Evenepoel Sophie, Charles, Louise and the nanny on a walk (1898); Charles, Sophie and Henriette de Mey with Louise von Mattenburgh on the Place de la Concorde, Paris (1898); C Paul Nadar Reynaldo Hahn (1898), Countess Elisabeth Greffulhe (1896), Count Robert de Montesquiou (1895), Mme. Geneviève Straus (1887), Sarah Bernhardt (1876), Madeleine Lemaire (1891) Nicolas-Henry Tardieu after Antoine Watteau Watteau’s Self-Portrait with Jean de Jullienne (1731) Gustave Moreau The Young Man and Death (1856-65) James Abbott McNeill Whistler Crepuscule in Opal, Trouville (1865); Harmony in Blue and Silver: Trouville (1865) Jan Vermeer View of Delft (1659-60) Additional photographs of Illiers-Combray by Sarah Rothenberg (2015)

Sound Reynaldo Hahn sings and accompanies himself on piano: Offenbach la boulangère à des écus, Columbia Recordings D.2022 (September 1927)

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