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Katia and Marielle Labèque review – Glass’s Cocteau trilogy perfumes the air, literally
Piano arrangements of Philip Glass’s music for his operas based on the French director’s films come complete with bespoke scents
Regular Barbican concertgoers might have been forgiven for thinking that the fragrances wafting through the auditorium during the Labèques’ recital were part of the latest attempt to disguise the hall’s famously malodorous toilets. The first to be composed, Orphée, is a conventional chamber opera, while in the second, La Belle et la Bête, the spoken words of the film are replaced by Glass’s setting of the same text, lip-synced in live performance to a screening of the film, and Les Enfants Terribles became a dance opera, with the accompaniment of three pianos. In this very carefully contrived concert setting, each suite was preceded by a brief audio recording of Cocteau himself talking about the films, while the fragrances, a different one for each opera and each vividly described in the programme, subtly suffused the hall as the performances went on.
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