Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt and the Mystery of Love

Text: Véronique Gauthier

What is love? Who is it we love when we love? At the heart of Enigma, an operatic adaptation by Patrick Burgan of author Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s play Enigma Variations, two men come face to face in a highly confidential setting and draw us into an uncanny emotional labyrinth.

How do the sensitivity and poignancy of this play translate on the opera stage? What does the Opéra de Montréal have in store for audiences at Théâtre Maisonneuve from April 7 through 13? We spoke with classical music-loving author Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt.

Music: another world within our world

Ever since the day when his aunt Aimée sat down to play Chopin on the family home’s piano, music never ceased to captivate the young Éric-Emmanuel. “That day, I felt the light change, I felt waveforms and mysterious spaces being created. The next day, I asked my parents if I could learn the piano.”

Though he went on to embrace a career in words, music notes are never very far away for this writer who continued his piano studies to the point of completing higher degrees at the Conservatoire. This is reflected in titles like My Life with Mozart and Madame Pylinska and the Secret of Chopin, a play that the author will present in Québec this summer.

“In my plays and novels, when music enters the scene, it’s because words are powerless. When listening to music, we are no longer enduring time, but savouring it. Time doesn’t pass; it pulses. While literature tells us about the world as it is, or as it should be, music is sheer wonder, emergence from an unknown, a palpable mystery. It points to another world within our world. Undeniably, I am a writer, but for me, the ultimate art is music.”

Variations on the same theme

Music is initially what spurred the play Enigma Variations, and it is music to which the opera Enigma returns us today. A logical progression, indeed, for a work inspired by a concert he attended in Paris.

“I was gathering my thoughts for a play I wanted to write about love, with this idea that to love is neither to know, nor to possess the other. Love is instead an assiduous presence given to a mystery, to someone who eludes us, whom we cannot grab hold of in body or in thought.” In the concert in question, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra performed an excerpt from Elgar’s Enigma Variations as an encore. He was immediately captivated.

“In this work, in the exposition of its theme, we are only privy to its harmonies. Variations then follow on this theme, which we never hear, though it exists, it is fundamentally there. I thought to myself ‘that is the very face of love.’ What we are essentially doing when we love, are variations on a melody that we will never hear and never be able to grasp. All at once, the music provided me with an artistic metaphor for what I wanted to say.”

From theatre to opera: a fluid and natural transition

When composer Patrick Burgan approached him with the request to adapt his theatrical work to opera, the playwright had no hesitation. “While it is not the case with all my plays, in Enigma Variations, the space was there for music. There is silence that music could capture, lies and omissions on which music could confer its subtleties, disclose depth to things seemingly light. Music stood to show the full density of the two characters’ encounter.”

On reading the libretto adapted by the composer, his confidence was entirely won over. “I saw just how precise and logical it was. Patrick Burgan had profoundly understood my work.” The opera would have to wait some ten years before reaching audiences, until the Opéra de Metz and Opéra de Montréal joined forces to bring it to life on the stage.

“The composer took it on independently, without the backing of an opera house, which is quite a leap of faith. He was not creating within the safe haven of a commission, but in the uneasiness of passion. I am overcome with admiration and respect or him. Bravo, Montreal and Metz, for making this work come alive!”

Its eventual premiere at the Opéra-Théâtre de Metz, in the fall of 2022, was when the author first got to appreciate the operatic version of his narrative. “I love, love, loved it! Its refined harmonies and refined timbres perfectly align with the French musical tradition. Its orchestration is sumptuous. The music summons both outside space—a remote island on the Norwegian seas—and the inside—the novelist’s fear of living, his life withdrawn from the world. Its use of a female chorus magnificently conjures the presence of the story’s absent woman. Patrick Burgan’s work is rich, sensitive, honest, moving, and profound. It’s absolutely everything that I love.”

Probing the complexity and the pain of Love

Montreal audiences can, in their turn, expect an operatic arrow straight to the heart with the production in April of Enigma. “With contemporary works, there is sometimes concern that they appeal mainly to the intellect, but this is an opera that speaks to feelings, to the heart, to the body. The story is an authentic dive into the human psyche and into the complexity of romantic relationships. Thanks to Patrick Burgan, it is an exceptionally vivid and deep dive.”

To get caught up in this psychological intrigue, featuring the voices of Antoine Bélanger and Jean-Michel Richer, get your tickets here.