Creation 21 September 2018, Festival Musica, Strasbourg
Musicians: 8 opera singers, orchestra, choir, rock band, 6 percussionists
Duration: 110′
In 1971, Franck Zappa composed and filmed 200 Motels, a scathing critique of superficial entertainment, consumer society and its invasion by the media. Five years ago, Esa-Pekka Salonen created a new edition of the pop-rock oratorio in Los Angeles: 200 Motels – The Suites. Now transposed to the stage by Antoine Gindt, with video by Philippe Béziat, this scathing music, with its ever-topical themes, renews the concept of total art.
Two hundred: that’s roughly the number of concerts Zappa and the Mothers of Invention toured in the first five years of the band’s existence. Two hundred concerts and at least 200 Motels to stave off boredom. The original film, a “fake documentary” co-directed by Tony Palmer and now replaced by Phillipe Béziat’s live video, told the story of a local TV station’s invitation to a rock band. This self-deprecating mise en abyme slides syrupy songs and ecstatic choruses into the world of pop and rock, peppering the whole with nods to Berg, Varèse and the European avant-garde. A veritable Ali Baba’s cave, where treasures pile up in joyous disorder, the work calls on an extraordinary cast: a symphony orchestra, numerous percussionists, a rock band, a mixed choir and eight solo singers. At the dawn of the Seventies, it was unusual to throw these ingredients into the same pot! In 1970, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta played a few excerpts from 200 Motels without understanding Zappa’s intentions: “The orchestra didn’t really want to play my music. What they really wanted was an event, something unique, how shall I say, uh…, like a meeting between a rock band and uh… a real symphony orchestra – you know, to ‘rock together’. They didn’t care about the music itself. If today 200 Motels has lost none of its corrosive energy, the Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg under the direction of Léo Warynski will prove that the attitude of the musicians has changed.