OLIVIER LEXA
PRESS REVIEW
STAGE DIRECTION
In his first staging, Olivier Lexa succeeds where others have failed through lack of audacity or imagination. […] Without grandiloquence or pedantry, Olivier Lexa frees the bodies of the performers in swirling movement […]. In the intoxicating exhilaration of cross dressing, by turns playful and ambiguous, he restores the carnival spirit inherent in the lyric theatre of the Serenissima.
Mehdi Mahdavi, Diapason, September 2014
Lexa’s work is no less captivating in that it breaks with French philological orthodoxy, neither precious illustrative gestures nor paralysed panoramas in his Eritrea, which is entwined in the commedia dell’arte. By treating the lamenti in a comic fashion, Lexa also reveals the irony and the subtexts often neglected by directors who stage Cavalli.
Eric Dahan, Libération, 1st September 2014
An extraordinary discovery. Olivier Lexa, who signs his first production and a biography of Cavalli, did not lose himslef in this tangle of misunderstandings, reversals and sentimental confusions. He presents a skillful and freely animated spectacle.
Philippe Venturini, Classica, September 2014
While some have accentuated the tragic and sensual side of Cavalli's operas, Lexa, in agreement with conductor Stefano Montanari, relies on irony to underline the marivaudage with which the composer and his librettist amused themselves avant la lettre. And he spices up the baroque body language of movement and dance. The singers, dressed in colours which evoke the radiance of Venice, have a blast; voices of amber and silk and mischief in their eyes. A success.
Ariane Bavelier, Le Figaro, 15 July 2014
Olivier Lexa signs here his first production. But having assisted more than one director, he is far from a beginner. […] Olivier Lexa focuses on the second degree of lamenti and scenes of madness for a jubilant result of irony and poetry. […] A pleasing spectacle, which we hope to see repeated elsewhere.
Thierry Guyenne, Opéra Magazine, September 2014
Olivier Lexa is taking his first steps as a director, but he has clearly developed an intimate understanding of this repertoire. His work, inventive and rhythmic, integrates baroque body language and delivers superb images, but without dogmatism. His direction of actors, sometimes very physical, never renounces the spontaneity of singers whose youthful ardor and freshness he exploits to great effect.
Bernard Schreuders, Forum Opera, 10 July 2014
The valuable directorial work is the responsibility of Olivier Lexa, artistic director of the Venetian Center for Baroque Music, who is a connoisseur of this genre of dramaturgy, of the reasons and times of music, of the job of the singer and, ultimately, of everything that gives the wing stroke to an opera in the eyes of the music addict and which is often closed to a director trained in spoken drama.
Francesco Lora, Il Corriere musicale, 8 August 2014
Olivier Lexa’s staging is sober, elegant as a choreography. [...] A success for all, triumphant as it was correct.
Dino Villatico, La Repubblica, 13 July 2014
Director Olivier Lexa’s audacity added key external elements, in small touches, funny and intelligently weighed, without mannerism, such as a backdrop with a video image embedded in the set, which one believes at first motionless but which comes to life with an improbable role in the human hide-and-seek.
Ph. F., La Provence, 13 March 2016
HIghly theatrical. Olivier Lexa uses light and shadows in a creative and exciting way, draws shapes on the walls, creates a different attention to singers hidden by the dark. It is beautiful.
Gaëlle Moury, Le Soir, 1st October 2019
Olivier Lexa's staging […] never underlines the dramatic framework and leaves a part of the unsaid in the silence of the humble and invisible orders, a vast hold on the imagination of the spectator, for example by a skilful game Chinese shadows […]. The evocation of madness is there alongside that of the most criminal death drive in total opposition to the disturbing and strange sweetness of theatrical action; a "fugato" process which explains the unconscious or repressed violence of the text and of the dramatic situations. […] This production of La Monnaie is thus a total visual, dramatic and musical success, nestled between the enigmatic suggestions of the texts and the unconscious of each spectator, by a keen and immanent sense of the unspoken.
Benedict Hévry, Resmusica, le 5 October 2019
Adapt Maurice Maeterlinck's Three Little Dramas for Marionnettes for a lyrical scene? The idea comes from Olivier Lexa, lover of the language of the Nobel Prize winner and admirer of his triptych. With the Flemish head of La Monnaie Peter de Caluwe, happy to promote his glorious compatriot, the director found at the Villa Medici a young talent capable of putting notes on the disturbing words of the Symbolist writer.
Benoît Fauchet, Diapason,
Le 27 September 2019
Olivier Lexa's staging plays with a unique setting, a wall dressed in lights and projections that transform it into a castle, a warm home or an evil cave and, during the second tale, hosts a film that establishes tenuous links between the three stories, and gives keys to interpretation.
Sophie Bourdais, Télérama, 4 October 2019
Between medievalism and symbolism, Olivier Lexa's staging follows the trail of trapped animals, between dark corridors and stairs leading nowhere. The central melodrama, Interior, allows him to portray the peaceful picture of a family gathered for the vigil, unaware of the drama that is about to knock on their door.
Marie-Aude Roux, Le Monde, le 28 September 2019
On stage, Eric Oberdorff and Olivier Lexa are entrusted with a very successful staging. We are immersed in an indeterminate temporality, which allows us to deepen the symbolic dimension of the work.
Tancrède Lahary, Forum Opera, 22 March 2022
Phaedra is obviously an ancient tragedy, but in this re-interpretation we see it in an absolutely contemporary key, with an avant-garde aesthetic - and this is the success of the production - but in full respect of the text and the original intentions of Seneca. [...] Result of the dynamic contrasts made by working on the text, the singing, the behavior of the bodies, the sound effects, the powerful electronic music (also signed by Lexa), the explosive choreographies by Dario La Ferla and the costumes prepared by Marcella Salvo give the impression of a Seneca never seen before. [...] Unlike the Greek choir, the Seneca choir does not dialogue with the actors: it keeps its distance from the action. It is in these choirs that the talent of the director Olivier Lexa is revealed, who was able to create extraordinarily lively and imaginative scenes. His direction of the actors rarely seeks naturalness, and when he meets it, it is used only to be contrasted by a long silence, a change in dynamics, rhythm, nuance, and timbre of the voice. It reminds us that the vocal ornament was requested by Cicero in his rhetorical treatises. With his Phaedra, Olivier Lexa puts us in front of a theater of possession. The passions are atavistic, the characters are victims and not guilty. The director thus creates a world of depth and secrecy, of ghosts, of a submerged past; it has nothing to do with unconscious, naturalistic or realist psychology. The cry brings out the character of his humanity. The body is the place of passage from one world to another. We are not far from the concept of voodoo and shamanic rituals. We think of Indian, Japanese or Chinese theaters: we are so far from the easy realism and the often unsuccessful attempt to identify with the character that most Italian directors are looking for today.