Les Châtiments

The Punishments Trilogy: this is the title that Kafka imagined to unite the three works published during his lifetime: The Verdict, The Metamorphosisand The Penal Colony. These three key works disturbingly anticipate the questions we face today. Each in their own, distinct way examine the great Kafkaesque question, in which timid sons are subject to powerful father figures, up to the moment of final reckoning and consummation. 

For this commission from the Dijon Opera, presented here in its world premiere, the composer Brice Pauset has chosen to break from traditional interpretations of Kafka and instead return to the writer’s Germanic-Czech literary roots, notably by restoring a fundamental aspect of his work that is all-too often overlooked or misunderstood: humour. While his works often sound a prophetic note of gloom and doom regarding the future of humanity, they are also rife with ravaging, caustic humour, where slapstick and burlesque helps topple a world already severely off-kilter. 

Conducted by Emilio Pomarico and staged by David Lescot, Les Châtiments takes a musical and dramatic dive into the larger-than-life universe of one of the most fascinating writers of the 20th century — and holds up a mirror to our own contradictions.