French conductor Léo Warynski, who revealed Another Look at Harmony, a youthful work by the American composer, last March, will conduct Satyagraha in Nice and Akhnaten at the Philharmonie de Paris in quick succession.
Libération - Eric Dahan - Another Look
His music compels us to rethink our relationship with time: in Paris and Nice, Léo Warynski conducts operas by Philip Glass
It’s the highlight of the new opera season: forty-five years after its world premiere in Rotterdam, the Nice Opera will present the French premiere of Satyagraha, Philip Glass’s second opera, inspired by the figure of Gandhi. A technically ambitious production (the audience will be surrounded by 360° video projections) and a programming choice that might seem bold if we didn’t know that the opera house’s director, Bertrand Rossi, is a fan of the American composer. In 2002, while he was at the helm of the Opéra du Rhin, Rossi presented the French premiere of Akhnaten. Five years ago, he inaugurated his tenure in Nice with a new production of the same work, entrusted to conductor Léo Warynski and actress, choreographer, and director Lucinda Childs, who rose to prominence in 1976 with Einstein on the Beach, the first installment, co-written with Bob Wilson, of Glass’s trilogy of portrait operas.
Although Paris has yet to see their magnificent Akhnaten, Léo Warynski will be staging it again on October 25 at the Philharmonie de Paris in a concert version. As for the promising Satyagraha, it is unlikely to be seen in the capital anytime soon, since another production, directed by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, is scheduled for April 2026 at the Bastille, marking the first time a work by Glass has been added to the Paris Opera’s repertoire. Finally, Léo Warynski will conclude this Glass season in December at the Philharmonie de Paris, where he will reunite with his choir, Les Métaboles, in Another Look at Harmony, a little-known work by the composer dating from 1975, of which he released a superb recording in March.
“Reading the score made me anxious”
Against all odds, it was while attending a lecture by Pascal Dusapin at the Louvre auditorium that Warynski discovered the leading figure of repetitive music, as he told us. “Dusapin had described how deeply moved he was by Einstein on the Beach, the sound of the organ, the choir, the visuals of the performance. Then he played a recording of the opening minutes of the opera. I never could have imagined that, years later, I would be conducting it at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. What an experience! After the performance, I took a short walk to clear my head, but I couldn’t relax. I kept counting, in my head, the complex, haunting rhythms. I had jumped at the chance when it was offered to me, but then, as I read the score, I felt anxious, realizing the colossal task that lay ahead of me.”
Given that the Festival d’Automne invited Glass and his ensemble as early as 1973, and that the Cité de la Musique frequently featured his music in its programs, it is surprising that Warynski was taken aback by the difficulty of his works. “Glass remains unknown in French musical circles,” he replies. “I wasn’t told about him even once during my studies, whereas, in the late 1990s, Steve Reich’s City Life was on the high school graduation exam syllabus.”
“A Nightmare to conduct”
Léo Warynski always knew he would become a professional musician. In Colmar, where he was born on June 29, 1982, his mother, a gynecologist, sang and played the flute. His father, a child psychiatrist, played classical guitar when he came home from work. Noticing that he was fascinated by the sound of the cello, his uncle, a luthier, gave him one for Christmas. Before he was even 5 years old, the child was reading music and playing the instrument. At 6, he joined the Colmar choir, directed by Arlette Steyer. “I’ve fulfilled my desire to lead a group of singers or musicians,” he says, “because it’s a comprehensive profession that involves knowing all the facets of a work, proposing an interpretation, and knowing how to put together a concert program.”
At 18, he has been admitted at Lycée Fénelon, first in the hypokhâgne and then in the khâgne, specializing in music, and Paris dazzled him “with the promise of extraordinary encounters it offered.” There he studied harmony, counterpoint, and music history, alongside literature, Latin, and philosophy. Admitted to the Conservatoire national de musique de Paris, he studied orchestral and choral conducting under François-Xavier Roth and Pierre Cao. At 28, he founded Les Métaboles, an elite choir that collaborates with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, founded by Pierre Boulez. In 2014, he also became music director of the Ensemble Multilatérale, which had been founded nine years earlier by composer Yann Robin.
Having these two ensembles at his disposal allows him to produce high-caliber recordings and concerts, praised in these pages, such as Le Moine et le Voyou (2023), which juxtaposes Bernard Cavanna’s Messe un jour ordinaire with choral works by Francis Poulenc. In 2017, reading Paroles sans musique, Glass’s autobiography, captivated Warynski, who dreamed of conducting his Métaboles in one of his works. After several weeks of research, he commissioned the score for the rare Another Look in Harmony.
"The work foreshadows Einstein on the Beach. It is hellish to conduct and exhausting for the singers, who must train like athletes. It can be confusing if one doesn’t know that Philip Glass invented a new way of making opera in which meaning isn’t imposed: it’s up to the performers to sense the nuances that will allow the music to unfold, and to the listener to establish a connection between text and music, which are entirely independent. While it is no easy task to do justice to Glass’s sound, Akhnaten remains less radical and more romantic than Einstein on the Beach. One of the arias brings to mind a lament by Handel, and in Satyagraha, there is a soprano-alto duet that evokes that of Bach’s Cantata No. 4. What do I take away from the Glass operas I’ve conducted? His music, so rich, more maximalist than minimalist, compels us to push ourselves, physically and mentally, but also to renew our relationship with time, to free ourselves from the current dictatorship of immediacy.”
