The composer Pascal Dusapin revisits Kleist's Penthesilea, a drama written in 1808 that explores the Greek myth of the Queen of the Amazons and the hero Achilles. This contemporary "rewriting-variation" presents this opera in a dark and intense light.

In the canonical myth, Penthelesia, Queen of the Amazons, falls in love with Achilles on the battlefield against the law of bronze which forbids her to love a man until she has defeated him in battle. She tries to defeat the hero, who pierces her with his sword as their loving gazes meet. But according to Heinrich von Kleist's 1808 version, the plot is much more barbaric: Achilles pretends to have been beaten to give himself up to Penthesilea, but the Amazons realize the deception. Animated by rage, the queen devours her lover before killing herself.

Fascinated by this monstrous tale, the French composer Pascal Dusapin creates in 2015 a version of this opera at the Monnaie de Bruxelles, hand in hand with the German playwright Beate Haeckl. Here he delivers us this dark, vehement, enigmatic drama that plays on haunting orchestral textures and striking vocal techniques to bring out the violence of the myth at its peak.

Penthésilée was written specifically with spacialization effects restituted by the binaural sound technique requiring listening through headphones. ARTE has privileged an optimum sound restitution for listening on its preferred media. This binaural version is however accessible on the Philharmonie de Paris website.