Philippe Mion, Philippe Minyana

Léone is an opera by Philippe Mion on a libretto by the playwright Philippe Minyana, for two sopranos, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, bass and stereo fixed medium. Mion asked Minyana for the book in 1984 together with the director Philippe Mercier; after a first sketch in 1987 the work was completed in 1992-93 in the studios of the Ina-GRM in Paris and Grame in Lyon, on a commission from the French State. The 72-minute recording features Irène Jarsky, Liliane Mazeron, Sylvia Vadimova, Stuart Patterson, Pascal Sausy and Christian Tréguier, conducted by Laurent Cuniot.

The plot comes from a true story the composer read in the papers. At Christmas, in a family of grocers in a small town in eastern France, the father has a heart attack over turkey and Riesling. His sterile daughter Léone steals a baby from a maternity ward, is found out, tried and sent to a psychiatric hospital; her husband Dédé, a taxidermist, loses everything, commits two murders and finally finds her again at Strasbourg station. Mion wanted “grandiloquence, tragedy and sublime deaths” and a direct, unadorned text.

The electroacoustic part is the entire orchestra, a phantom ensemble heard through loudspeakers. The voices are unamplified, except for the prosecutor and a mysterious bum, whose slightly distorted voices come from speakers built into the set. In his booklet essay Jean-Christophe Thomas describes the score as a play between smooth layers of sound and the rough material of daily life. The opera was first staged on May 15, 1993 at the Festival Perspectives in Saarbrücken.

Born in Tournan-en-Brie in 1956, Mion studied at the CNSM in Paris and was a permanent collaborator of the Ina-GRM from 1978 to 1989, directing its Cycle acousmatique concerts. He was a resident at the French Academy in Rome from 1989 to 1991.

CD in Opak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 9632, 1996.