Minuit Montmartre, the four-act rag opera at the Arènes de Montmartre

Montmartre, between the wars.

Mackie le surineur, a notorious figure in the Parisian underworld, is trying to make a clean getaway. After stealing a fortune under the nose of his boss, who watches over the Paris of crime, he plans to escape as quickly as possible, but finds himself trapped between two lovers, each ready to follow him.

The work was inspired by Beggar's Opera, a 17th-century work still very popular in English-speaking countries, in which the composer had played the character of Polly a few years earlier. In the tradition of Beggar's Opera, this Rag-time concentrate takes up the conventions of lyric art in a resolutely satyric tone.

The work was born of a desire to restore lyric art to its political vocation, in the noble sense of the term, and to put an end to the disconnect between our discipline and the general public, a distance due in particular to the lack, or even virtual absence, of creation over the last fifty years.

The choice of Montmartre as the setting for the twenties, with the arrival of jazz in France, was an obvious one. The piano has its place here, a nod to the cabarets and cinemas of the period, and the marriage with tap dancing, used for the first time in an opera, has resulted in some fine choreography.

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