Off Avignon 2022. Damei-Klingler, Dalida, the Callas of varieties
July 22, 2022, 95-Au Verbe fou, Avignon, Lionel Damei, Alain Klingler, Dalida on the couch
Dalida on the couch, funny title for a show. For a book, in fact. “The most marvelous trip is not the one that Man makes by going to the Moon. It’s the inner journey,” Dalida told Denise Glaser in 1972. This is how psychoanalyst Joseph Agostini presents the book he wrote in 2017 on the person and career of Dalida.
Pianist Alain Klingler and singer Lionel Damei, actors, singers, dancer for Damei – the opportunity to dance on Lambeth Walk, Tico Tico we Besa me mucho – gives life on stage to this psychoanalytical introspection, as long as we no longer know if it is Damei or Klingler who are Dalida. Certainly Klingler plays the role of the psychoanalyst, and Damei IS Dalida, without a wig, suggesting the diva more by the soul he puts into interpreting her than by any disguise. We therefore stick to a suit between tailcoat and toga, a line of kohl on the eyelids, an ear clip for femininity. The gaze dances for a moment, furtively suggests the slight strabismus that remained in Dalida, following an infantile eye infection. The rest is in the imagination, the boa is only figurative. We got into the game of the one who was Barbara, we plunge back with him from the first second into the soul of Dalida.
The two actors have fun taking over Dalida’s songs, answering each other, swapping their roles in a way, and whether it’s one or the other, it’s always Dalida who speaks to us, in this stick conversation. broken, almost that of two friends.
With restraint at Klingler, toddler; Speak lower ” The world isn’t ready for us / It just looks like we’re crazy”; To not live alone…
Content, for a few excerpts punctuating his confidences, or all in lyricism, when Damei recounts his tragic loves. Ciao amore, ciao, “La solita strada”, the song that brings bad luck to his great love Luigi Tenco, who committed suicide for a lost competition. Or the one who inspires He had just turned eighteen, and the unborn child.
The opportunity to approach the artist with unsuspected literary and philosophical references, to discover several lesser-known songs and the immense diversity of his talent, from light song to poetry, from disco to glamorous show. And above all the incredible destiny of women, the “Callas of varieties”. Who shares with her the passion, the work, the perfectionism, the tragedy of a life of thwarted loves, Italy and the Orient…
We only hear Dalida fleetingly for a brief interview excerpt at the end of the show, and in music introductory With time, de Ferré, no stranger to Joseph Agostini’s vocation as a psychoanalyst. In front of her mirror Damei makes the artist sing, wondering about what she really is “To this reflection that replaces me / You’d swear I’m here. » The song discreetly evokes Van Gogh and his wheat field ” [Où] I have crossed eagles / And I believed their apparent » (Nights away, Caussimon / Ferré ) and returns as a leimotiv in the show.
The psychoanalyst’s consultation begins when Youssef Chahine offers Dalida the main role of the film The sixth day, in 1986 based on the novel by Andrée Chedid. A character very different from the one she embodies on stage, since it is a courageous (grand) mother, a woman of tradition confronted with an epidemic of cholera. “After the sixth day, either one dies or one resurrects”. Chahine suggested that she look in her memories for the hardships she experienced in order to transcribe them into her game.
The psychoanalyst helps her find herself while warning her against the danger of reliving the most painful moments. It’s because the authors of Dalida seemed to read her with an open heart, a premonitory vision or a self-fulfilling prophecy… When Klingler will sing “The night I leave, I will do it my way”, with her beautiful deep voice, in nuances, without the orchestrations of the 80s but with her deep and expressive piano, the song takes on a new power…
The puzzle is being pieced together little by little. Three of his loves will commit suicide, the first almost in his arms. The ambitious young actress who first signed Dalila, like the femme fatale of the Bible, then the singer, must fight, always fight, resist the yéyés. “To be a star, you have to give your life.” Success and bad times. The death that strikes repeatedly, that refuses her during her attempts to end it. Despite herself, Dalida plays the tragedy of her life. His last role in Chahine’s film was rewarded by critics…
Damei dedicated this magnificent ash sun which depicts so intimately all his destiny “Show must go on…in the cosmos”.
“After the sixth day, I will rest from everything…”
The page facebook of Lionel Damei, it’s here. What NosEnchanteurs has already said, there. The profile Alain Klingler’s facebook is here. What Our Enchanters has already said about Klingler, there.