Malinche

Au rayon des grands écarts, celui proposé par Feu! Chatterton est des plus étonnants. Derrière cet improbable blase se cache un jeune quintet parisien, lettré et ambitieux, qui bondit de style en style, d’influence en influence. Il y a de la chanson française, garantie pièces et main d’œuvre, héritée de Gainsbourg, Ferré et Bashung, de la poésie chipée à Lautréamont, Baudelaire, Aragon et Eluard, du rock biscornu à la Radiohead mais aussi un brin d’electro et des effluves de slam dans leur premier album Ici le jour (a tout enseveli), un disque Qobuzissime !

After his Neapolitan training Gaspare Spontini settled in Paris for a few years, where he was nominated “compositeur particulier de la chambre” of Empress Josephine, Napoleon’s wife. It was indeed Napoleon who, in 1808, commissioned him the opera, Fernand Cortez, ou La conquete du Mexique, of which he attended the 28th November 1809 premiere. The strongly idealized figure of Cortez, presented as a brave, wise and merciful general, predestined to victory, was to be an image of Napoleon. His fight against Spanish “obscurantism” was Cortez’s fight against the cruelty, superstition and dark power intrigues of the Aztec sacerdotal class. Cortez frees the Mexicans from their “evil god”, and only the High Priest refuses his clemency. Like in a piece a sauvetage, at the last moment Montezuma’s niece, Amazily, who had offered her life in exchange of that of her beloved Cortez’s brother Alvar, is rescued. The Mexican chief Telasco promotes the cessation of hostilities: the marriage between Cortez and Amazily sanctions the peace between two peoples.