Eugène Ionesco
The Bald Soprano
Mr and Mrs Smith are an ordinary married couple. This evening they have invited Mr and Mrs Martin over for a visit.
As they wait, they talk about a certain Bobby Watson, who, as it turns out, died several years ago. The doorbell rings and the hosts go to change. Mary, the maid, scolds the guests for being late. While they wait, Mr and Mrs Martin realise that they have seen each other before; that they are both from Manchester, that they travelled to London secondclass, and that they have a daughter called Alice – which makes them come to the conclusion that they are husband and wife. The conversation between the hosts and the guests leads nowhere, and the doorbell keeps ringing, but there is no-one at the door. Mr Smith answers the door after the fourth ringing and sees the fire chief at the door, who is disappointed that there is no fire. As nothing happens, those who are present start telling each other stories with little or no meaning.
La Cantatrice chauve/The Bald Soprano, 1948
Absurdist comedy
Premiere: 15. September 2023
Performance length is 1 hour and 25 minutes and has no pause.
Creators
Translator
Srečko Fišer
Director, set designer and music selector
Diego de Brea
Dramaturg
Eva Mahkovic
Costume designer
Leo Kulaš
Language consultant
Barbara Rogelj
Lighting designer
Boštjan Kos
Sound designer
Sašo Dragaš
Assistant to costume designer
Lara Kulaš
Actors
Mrs. Smith
Iva Krajnc Bagola
Mr. Smith
Uroš Smolej
Mrs. Martin
Lena Hribar Škrlec
Mr. Martin
Jaka Lah
The Fire Chief
Matic Lukšič
Mary, the maid (video)
Jana Zupančič
Before Eugène Ionesco wrote The Bald Soprano in 1948, he had no serious ambition to become a playwright. As
he stated in his 1962 book Notes et contre-notes, his only desire was to learn English, so he acquired a French-English conversation textbook for beginners and set about studying colloquial phrases and clichés. It was in this textbook that he came across the English couple Smith, their maid Mary and family friends Mrs and Mr Martin. This was the basis for a play that is considered one of the noblest examples of absurdist drama and one of the most popular models of comedy of all time.
The Bald Soprano, labelled anti-play, is a satire on petty bourgeois society. It reveals to the author how to speak and say nothing: »The Smiths and the Martins can no longer speak, because they can no longer think; and they can no longer think, because they no longer know the meaning of emotions, because they no longer have any passions in them; they can no longer be and therefore they ›become‹ anyone, anything; as they are not themselves, they are nothing but other people, they belong to an impersonal world, they are interchangeable.«
