What interests us in the story of Antigone is that it contains everything. It is kind of a psychoanalytic matrix. It can be read from many directions: from the Freudian point of view on Oedipus; in terms of a woman standing against the Law as per Judith Buter's writings, etc. It's a pile of stories that have been played and discussed again and again.

Penny Martin: Had you worked in opera before?

M/M (Paris): We've been working with Éric Vigner for almost ten years. He had been appointed as the director of the CDDB - Théâtre de Lorient; a tiny theatre in Brittany. It was in the mid '90s, when the Ministry of Culture had decided to place a younger generation of directors in these kinds of places to encourage creation. Theatres were made more lively and this was one of them. Éric had seen a business card that we had designed. So he came up to meet us and said 'I'm going to try and initiate some projects with you.' The rules were that we should all feel free. It was not like being asked to do a communications project. Éric said, 'If I'm going to do creation. Then you should do creation too'. So every time they staged a new play, we were asked to do a poster but not like an illustration of what would happen on stage, more like our version of the text.

Penny Martin: Had Éric worked with opera before?

M/M (Paris): Since he had become a prominent director in France, he was approached several times by this conductor Christophe Rousset, to work on some operas. He had done a couple before, like La Didone and L'Empio Punito. Then last year Christophe asked Éric to create the scenography for Antigone. Our relationship with Éric had developed to the extent that he invited us to take part in the project. He said, 'ok, maybe it's now time for you to move on and come on stage'. Previously, we'd been working outside of the theatre.

Penny Martin: The Antigone myth might be read as having relevance to contemporary events. Does it have any ideological importance for you?

M/M (Paris): What interests us in the story of Antigone is that it contains everything. It is kind of a psychoanalytic matrix. It can be read from many directions: from the Freudian point of view on Oedipus; in terms of a woman standing against the Law as per Judith Buter's writings, etc. It's a pile of stories that have been played and discussed again and again. That's why the stages were all constructed from the same complex image. For us, that's a metaphor for Antigone: it's always the same story and it can be viewed in many different ways.

Penny Martin: Can you describe the working dynamic between you, Éric and Christophe?

M/M (Paris): We know each other's space. Eric invited us to do something for the set, allowed us some time and then we showed him some models of the set. They were obviously very directive, but this was part of the working situation that had preceded the project. We didn't speak about any visual references together. Those more came from us. He's very generous. He said 'right, you've given me a toy box, now I'm going to play in it.'

Penny Martin: Were you at all anxious about turning your design into 3-D terms; architecture, almost?

M/M (Paris): For us, it was interesting because the set combined many elements that came from other contexts: for instance, the carpet was originally designed for the café (Etienne Marcel) in Paris. That carpet mixed a typeface from us with the work of artists Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno. In a similare way, we used in the sets some posters from our 'Alphabet' series that were made together with Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin. So the work was connected to us and the experiences we have had during other previous projects. For many other designers, it is important to approach each design problem afresh. 
For us, this is a mistake. It's like parentheses in history. The Modernists believed that design was about the message. It had to be transparent and objective. The pretension of objectivity failed for us. For our generation, it is impossible to pretend that we are soulless. It is interesting how Modernist aesthetics have been reappropriated through post modernity. It became kitsch in a way. If we step back and look at the history of signs, it is clear that being an author, someone who has a point of view, has always endured. We believe in having a point of view and being able to distort the message. Either you do it consciously, or unconsciously, but you do it anyway.

Penny Martin: My first interpretation of Antigone Under Hypnosis was that it was a Brechtian staging, but presumably you would refute this if you aim to reject the late Modernist project?

M/M (Paris): I think what Traetta was trying to achieve through opera seria was to create a more emotional experience. Two hundred or so years later, the whole of opera seems very anachronistic to us. It's a weird thing because opera was about mixing all the artists together, the most elite creators, but now it's becoming like an isolated island. To see all the efforts of a production created for a show that would only play six or seven times made it feel unreal. More extreme than haute couture. So for us, it was like an experiment because we hadn't undertaken such things before. Without any rules to follow or work against, it was like a new landscape. Because we have been creating all these signs, we tried to fill the landscape with these. There are few elements within the set that are original. Most are taken from our previous work.

Penny Martin: Is it important to you that an audience recognises the hallmarks of an M/M product?

M/M (Paris): It's up to them. The language is becoming more and more complex. The more people look at it, the more they will be able to converse with it.

Penny Martin: How does it feel to receive negative reviews, like those of Antigone in the conservative press?

M/M (Paris): The more serious, conservative opera reviewers all read very obvious references in the production. They all missed the point and focused on art historical allusions, drawn from between 1930 and 49. None of them registered the details or could understand them. Some would say the designs looked like Miro, others said Jean Dubuffet. There was in there elements that are perhaps closer to Hockney's fax art than Dubuffet. But if they want to see that, it's fine. We are just part of a big chain.

Penny Martin: Is the development of this internal language an emotional process for you and Mathias?

M/M (Paris): Obviously yes, but we would rather say that we are not there to provide all the subtexts to what we do.

Penny Martin: What is the relevance of the film medium you have used to document Antigone? Is it relevant to read cinematic references into the Antigone Under Hypnosis film?

M/M (Paris): In the beginning, the film was motivated by selfish concerns. The opera played only six or seven times. But with the film, we can show it for the next ten or fifteen years. Before completing the designs for Antigone, we were asked to do an exhibition about the process of creating the opera. We agreed on the premise that it would be the third part of a trilogy. First we would create the show, the performance would be the second part and then it was nice to something at the end. We thought a film would be the perfect achival medium, since it would contain the experiment. Something to show to more people. We had done one or two experiments with film before, two music videos, which had both been essentially single takes. This one is composed from four symmetrical takes. Four camera movements to describe the space. They are unconnected to the action on stage. These are very strict rules to follow. All the sequences start and stop at the same point. Except from the last one. The whole set was constructed around one image, zooming in and out and looking at it again and again and again. We tried to exhaust the image. To erode its history.

Penny Martin: Is where the film is seen important to you? Do you prefer to view it in an art gallery?

M/M (Paris): We wouldn't present it in SHOWstudio if this was the case.There is no separation for us. The commissions determined the different audiences for Antigone: for the opera and then the exhibition. Many of the aspects of our work that fed into the project were created through commercial projects.

Penny Martin: Finally, would you interpret the title of the film, 'Antigone Under Hypnosis'?

M/M (Paris): Because the camera is very slow and descriptive, you are given the impression that almost nothing is happening. But by the end, after twenty minutes, you have seen a lot, so it's like hypnosis. The experience is somewhere into your brain but you don't really know what happened. Being mesmerised by the image, which is finally exhausted.

Penny Martin: This staging of Antigona has been discussed in terms of a renewed interest or 'revival' of its composer Tommaso Traetta. Can you say what which aspects of his work have contemporary appeal?

Christophe Rousset: Traetta, like many other Neapolitan composers, had a peculiar genius for melody, a dazzling dramatic sense, and a remarkable palette in his orchestration. It makes Antigona especially attractive. The aspect that is probably more convincing for contemporary audience is the theme of Antigona: a young lady is fighting against power, illegality and political abuse.

Penny Martin: How does the opera seria genre, which is more consistent with Baroque aesthetics, balance with Traetta's commitment to reform ideals in opera, which one might associate with the Enlightenment?

Christophe Rousset: Antigona is clearly reformed. In comparison with Ifigenia created in Vienna a few years earlier, Antigona is looking towards the future and announces Idomeneo for instance. It is more fluid, using more ensembles, mixing choruses with solo singing, abandoning almost completely Da Capo forms; intensifying the use of accompagnato, Antigona innovates. Written for Catherine II in St Petersburg, illustrating the 'enlighted' king, the opera is certainly a tribute to the general courant of philosophy in Europe.

Penny Martin: In M/M's film version of your opera, the title cards state that Antigona is set in a 2000 AD context of religious violence and social corruption, which might be read as a metaphor for the current political climate. Is this relevant to you?

Christophe Rousset: I didn't choose that vision but I quite agree. There is a strong parallel to find between Thebes of Oedipus and our sinking world.

Penny Martin: Would you describe your motivations behind the way you approached Traetta's original version.

Christophe Rousset: I like discovering forgotten, sleeping beauties. I knew Traetta's work was very high level. Antigona is considered as his masterpiece. The subject of the libretto decided me to recreate this opera.

Penny Martin: Sophocles' original tragedy of Antigone ends in tragedy, with the heroine choosing to die, rather than accepting the new King of Thebes' decree that the former king‹her brother Polynices‹may not be buried since he led an attack against Thebes. Although Traetta proposed a happy ending, where Antigone lives and marries the King's son Haemon, you chose the more tragic ending. Why?

Christophe Rousset: The music and the libretto remain untouched, so you could still believe in a happy ending. The "Happy End" tradition in opera seria was getting less and less observed. Again, it was to serve the image Catherine II was trying to give of herself that this opera ends with a marriage. The turning point between Tragedy and final Feast is so abrupt that the Stage director Éric Vigner couldn't take it as credible. Antigona has lost her two brothers, has fought with her uncle and was condemned to death in the same day. How could she possibly believe she could marry at the end of the same day?

Penny Martin: Some opera historians have suggested that the expressive heights reached in Antigone were owed in part to the availability of the contemporary soprano Caterina Gabrielli. Please describe how you went about casting this version and your reasons for this particular cast.

Christophe Rousset: It's true Gabrieli was a star, singing well but also being an amazing tragedian. She was a lover of Gluck and Traetta, inspiring their compositions. All the best theatres in Europe hired her, so we had to find a very strong personality to defend this role, because it's difficult to sing: Antigona is there on stage more than the half of the time. It also requires a dramatic intensity you rarely find with a 'regular' soprano! Maria Bayo had all these aspects in one, except that she was pregnant!

Penny Martin: How did your creative partnership with Éric Vigner originate?

Christophe Rousset: Antigona is actually our third collaboration. I met Eric in our 20s; he was still an actor and once I saw his work as director of plays I knew he would be very convincing in opera. He is very operatic now in his staging of plays and has given opera in general a new direction that probably a lot of stage directors will take in the future.

Penny Martin: What made you choose M/M (Paris) as collaborators on Antigone?

Christophe Rousset: M/M was Eric's choice, I didn't meet them before the scenery was built. The image was very strong and I liked it right away, although it was rather obsessive.

Penny Martin: The appearance of M/M's art direction evokes Modernist film and design: almost the antithesis of Baroque art. How do you feel about such an audacious visual statement?

Christophe Rousset: I would say it's not antithetical. It's strong, significant and has its Baroque aspects. Audacious, yes, like Antigona was audacious in the 18th century.

Penny Martin: A film edit of an opera is intrinsically a compromise for its conductor, it being a truncated version of their original vision. How did it feel to watch 'Antigona Under Hypnosis'?

Christophe Rousset: I think it kept all the dark aspects of the drama, a hopeless world. I had the feeling of watching a movie of the 30s, which connects perfectly with St Petersburg, don't you think? It's an aesthetic gesture that had to be kept in memory and having filmed it is, I think, a good thing. It would be interesting to watch this film in ten years and see if these aesthetics really will have a future...

What would remain if the world ended up dissolving in space and if, in another time, one rediscovered these fragments of the same signs scattered everywhere?

Penny Martin:  Your association with experimental theatre perhaps makes your choice to undertake the more traditional field of opera a surprising one: particularly the opera seria genre. What interested you in the Antigona project?

Éric Vigner:  Antigone is a distinctive work; it was written and composed for Catherine the Second of Russia, the great patron of art and artists. At the time it was intended to be a contemporary work. This Antigone is remarkable because it ends with the marriage of Hémon and Antigone following the pardon given by Créon to his son, who had wanted to join Antigone in her cave and die with her [footnote].

For Antigone this pardon is not acceptable because it goes against her own plan which is to put an end to the incest and join her two brothers in death. This is what Traetta's music makes you experience. Antigone here is a woman, a sister who takes the law into her own hands to achieve her secret and personal project to finish with the world so that something elsewhere can be reborn differently.

We're in the universe of the cosmos and metaphysics. The visual universe which we have constructed is a universe of cold ashes, the dust of stars, a black hole where one knows only too well whether it's the beginning or the end of the light.

What would remain if the world ended up dissolving in space and if, in another time, one rediscovered these fragments of the same signs scattered everywhere? What meaning would those logos have, that we see everywhere on sports clothes, the brands of the big global, industrial and commercial enterprises, the logos of Nike or Nestlé?

The black and white colour scheme imposed itself straight away as well as a form of abstraction in the sense where you can no longer tell what the images or fragments of signs might originally have represented. The only wavering and persistant colour had to be that of the skin of the singers and actors, as if drained of blood. In our interpretation the Antigone project was a terrorist project; secretly and with an extreme elegance, she was silently going to put an end the world. The violent reaction of some of the audience to the design derived from this initial concept. It could no longer recognise itself in these signs that were put forward and attempted to find a known system of reference. However the work was open in the sense that it resonates or creates an echo for individual interpretation. A talented and respected journalist wrote that there was nothing to see and tried in vain to attach to this work a number of references which we hadn't inscribed in the initial concept. Our work was to bring the music to the fore.

Penny Martin:  How did your relationship with the conductor Christophe Rousset begin?

Éric Vigner:  Christophe Rousset saw my theatre work and liked it. For a long time I resisted the offers to do opera and then finally in 2000 we did Didone by Cavalli at the Lausanne Opera and l'Empio Punito at the Bach festival in Leipzig.

Penny Martin:  What made you select the art directors M/M (Paris) to work with you on the set and costume design?

Éric Vigner:  I've been directing a theatre since 1996 and we've worked together since the beginning. They create all the visual material, posters, fliers etc. We know eacho ther and we appreciate each other. Most often I design the theatre and opera spaces myself but I told Mathias and Michael about my plans for Antigone and they immediately came up with a design that corresponded with what I was looking for. I thought it was also interesting to introduce the work of contemporary artists into the field of opera.