A subtle depiction of a complex man, Green Opera’s 555:Verlaine en prison at Grimeborn

Verlaine drinking absinthe in the Café François 1er in 1892, photographed by Paul Marsan Dornac (Photo: Musée Carnavalet)

Logan Lopez Gonzalez, Eleanor Burke – 555:Verlaine en prison; Logan Lopez Gonzalez, Anna Sideris, Stella Marie Lorenz; Green Opera at Grimeborn Festival at Arcola Theatre
Reviewed 6 September 2024

Interweaving settings of Verlaine’s poetry with contemporary narrative, an imaginative evening that sought to illuminate the remarkable interior life of poet Paul Verlaine set against the violence of his everyday existence

Green Opera’s 555:Verlaine en prison is a music theatre piece that combines Verlaine’s poetry and contemporary narrative with settings of Verlaine’s poems by Fauré, Hahn, Debussy, Deodac de Severac, Léo Ferré and others, to explore the poet Verlaine’s remarkable narrative. Verlaine comes over as a rather unpleasant and disreputable character, his relationship with Arthur Rimbaud less of a great love story and more of a giant conflagration of passion and violence. 

Verlaine would die a destitute alcoholic. But in 1873 he was sentenced to two years in prison (in fact 555 days) for shooting his then lover Rimbaud, yet for Verlaine, the residence in prison was a positive experience, he wrote of it ‘I once lived in the best of castles. In the finest land of white water and hills.  Four towers rose up from its four-winged front.  And one was my residence for long long days’. During his tenure he wrote poetry, poems that would change the face of French poetry and which, at first, seem remarkably out of keeping for the drunken sot that Verlaine appeared to be.

It is this dichotomy that Green Opera‘s 555:Verlaine en prison seeks to explore. Conceived by Belgian countertenor Logan Lopez Gonzalez and director Eleanor Burke, the work debuted last year and was performed at the Arcola Theatre in September 2023. 555:Verlaine en prison returned to the Arcola Theatre for further performances at the 2024 Grimeborn Festival, with Logan Lopez Gonzalez and Anna Sideris, plus Stella Marie Lorenz on piano.

The narrative was constructed from contemporary sources, Arthur Rimbaud ‘s Acte de Renonciation made at the 1873 trial, Verlaine’s wife Mathilde’s memoires, Verlaine’s writings and letters to Rimbaud, along with the 2012 book Verlaine emprisonné by Jean-Paul Guéno and Gérard Lhéritier. 

Logan Lopez Gonzalez played Verlaine, looking and sounding far more attractive than the poet ever was. Anna Sideris played everyone else, from Rimbaud and Verlaine’s wife to an anonymous narrator. Best known as a soprano, Sideris was here an actor. With a narrative focused so clearly on Verlaine’s poetry, the entire work was given in French. There were surtitles but by and large it was clear and direct.

The narrative began with Verlaine’s trial and his incarceration, and the set, such as it was, focused on Verlaine and a single chair, but we quickly leapt back to Mathilde Verlaine’s bitter riposte that what had gone wrong with her marriage was Rimbaud and absinthe. What came over strongly was the disparity between Verlaine’s poetry and the dramas of his life. Whereas Rimbaud’s poems to a certain extent reflect the extremes that the young man sought in life, Verlaine’s poetry is elegant and poised, its passion disguised in sophistication, with its use of subtle suggestion and a reliance on the sheer magic of words. His life was anything but, and the dichotomy was reflected in the way the drama interleaved spoken text, referring to events that were often violent and unpleasant, and sung poetry that seemed to evoke a different, magical world.

In several notable encounters, Lopez Gonzalez’ Verlaine responded to Sideris’ Mathilde with a song setting poetry which seemed to suggest the poet living in an entirely fantasy land in his head, the poem’s words suggestive and subtle rather than a direct response.

The songs chosen were all fluid settings of Verlaine’s words, reflecting Fauré’s approach and benefitted from Lopez Gonzalez light yet flexible tone. He and pianist Stella Marie Lorenz gave us a series of beautifully subtle performances of the songs, not attempting to push this work into opera. In fact, this was more staged concert than operatic experience, a drama that interwove words and music for a subtle depiction of a complex man.

There was more to Verlaine’s life than this violent episode, he travelled to England again and worked there for some time, he fell in love with another young man who inspired further poems. We tend however to focus on the soap-opera dramas of his life with Rimbaud. Here, Rimbaud played a relatively small role, and Verlaine’s wife featured far more strongly (albeit via her somewhat unreliable memoirs). 

This was an enchanting evening in the theatre, with the three performers all being mesmerising in their own particular way. Yet whilst I felt we had been encouraged to look at Verlaine from a different angle, we were no closer to resolving the dichotomy, to understanding how the sometimes violent, sometimes drunken and often unpleasant man was able to find the magic of his poetry in him.