The Hummingbird Synopsis

 

Metaphor

 

       Using the famous legend of the Hummingbird, wanting to save the forest from fire with its lone action of  bringing a drop of water to the blaze, the work sets the limits of such an honourable attitude in the face of the danger being faced on our planet.

With the current climatic risks and the state of our Earth pollution, only a collective intelligence will be effective to bring about new ways of acting, new ways of thinking, new ways of dreaming and therefore new utopias. A hummingbird plus a hummingbird,  like a drop of water plus another drop of water makes neither a society nor a river. It is the purpose of what connects them that makes sense.

 

       The work therefore addresses this theme by presenting two characters in evolution: the hummingbird and the drop of water. The chorus asks the questions, and plays the role of the  critic, as in the role of a chorus in the tradition of the ancient tragedies.

The orchestra brings harmony but also the sound of chaos, and the truth of the poetry in the drama.

 

 

N° 1a - Notre Forêt, piece for orchestra and choir

 

        The music here represents the beauty of our land, our forests, our common home.  

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No. 1b - Incendie, piece for orchestra

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        A musical transition where the forest catches fire.

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N° 1c - La Forêt est en feu, piece for choir and baritone

 

         The dialogue between the choir and the bird. A presentation of the legend but also of all the hesitations before the solitary action of the hummingbird. The choir broadcasts society's mockery of individual initiatives. The hummingbird expresses the full meaning of its decision to act and presents a flame of hope in the precarious but real situation.

 

N° 2 - Drop of water, soprano aria

         The drop of water, like the hummingbird in No. 1, wants to keep what she is good and beautiful.

She doesn't want to be a tear drop of the melting glaciers, a splash of dirty rain, or an impure droplet that can no longer be tasted...

The atmosphere of this tune is therefore one of poetry and rejection of what she is made of it; that she's not responsible for the situation, and she doesn't understand why.

 

N° 3 – Tristesse, piece for choir

         Sadness of the lost balance, of an imaginary Eden; but also the dream of a new world which we need to rebirth and at the same time demand the question of how we will do this as an humanity.

       "we have not been able to cherish and honour and protect the beauty of our Earth - that is evident"

       Where is our Eden, where are our enchanting gardens, our iridescent seas...”

Will we still feel the caresses of the future summer breeze?

 

 

No. 4 -  Duo de la Conscience, Colibri / Goutte d'eau – baritone and soprano

 

           We are all too frail, too small, too lonely.

If everyone took their drop of water to the forest, maybe...

but a drop of water placed next to another drop of water do not meet together, do not

create the great river; she saves the leaf but the tree burns.

A hummingbird right next to a hummingbird who don't talk to each other means that the ogre can always devour.

A black cloud of burnt wood, oceans invaded by piled up detritus,  flowing glaciers little by little eroded, nothing is kept anymore-

the drop evaporates before it touches the leaf and the relentless ogre brings chaos to the world.
 

N° 5 – Chaos, piece for choir and orchestra

 

          This is the middle of the work, where hope itself is destroyed. Action alone is meaningless.      Chaos is therefore inevitable; it is this idea that the choir and the orchestra will communicate - the destruction of words, melodies, sounds.

N° 6 – Colibri, recitative, baritone voice

 

          Alone I can do nothing. But I remain alone to try

Faced with two small wings, the ogre and the chaos won.
I lost my strength, my utopia. I have therefore lost hope

 

          This recitative is close to recto tono, rather in the bass. The idea is that of an exhaustion, until you no longer have the strength of the interval between two notes.            

 
N° 7 – Finale, choir, orchestra and soloists

 

          A distant melody, initially by voices in unison, which grows in
alternating with the soloists. This ending is  a piece that ends in
apotheosis, a kind of all-powerful and efficient machine in
the "all together" action.

The voices in unison represent what has been inscribed in our consciences since the beginning. They start from a pianissimo unison, distant because the memory is ancient.

  In the beginning the humanity was in nature an animal among others. Naked and lost, he quickly finds his fellows. Together they learn to live together. They create the first dances, the first songs, the first words. Without each other they could not survive.

It's a look towards another face, a hand joined with another hand, a song echoing another song, a dance around each other - together.

The drop of water is the essence of life; there is no world without it; from the smallest to the tallest creature - everyone feels its power.

The crowd is powerful, not when it shouts but when it is united in intelligence, in brotherhood.

Not the utopia of a new world, but rather that of a rediscovered memory to overcome an otherwise inevitable chaos.