Manuscrit autographe signé sur l'opérette "Die Fledermaus" : "recherche éperdue de notre identité à travers les mensonges d'un rêve de pacotille"

Handwritten manuscript from the choreographer Maurice Béjart, signed with his initials. 
6 leaves, 93 lines written in blue marker.
Magnificent text by Béjart on the power of music and performance, doubled up as a study of Johann Strauss II's operetta Die Fledermaus (La Chauve-Souris – The Bat).
In 1985, Maurice Béjart had produced and choreographed La Chauve-Souris at the Cirque Royal in Brussels. The manuscript constitutes a series of notes and commentaries on the work, highlighting the operetta's high sociological value: “In Fledermaus, the first act is the image of the conjugal bourgeoise prison whose conventional and boring walls will only be demolished by the lies of the spouses who chose their freedom [...] A triangular universe (yes... it's also the husband, the wife and the lover), built around these three prisons: the conjugal prison, the banking prison and the simple prison.”
Taking another look at Rimbaud's famous paradigm (“Paradise... I am another!”), Béjart praises the salutary virtues of the show, of the performance, that make it possible to escape the “heartless and livid ego that we find each morning in the mirror.” His adaptation of Strauss' Chauve-Souris gives an opportunity to dive back into the world of the popular performance, the world of “dressing-up.” In contrast to his plain tights and skirts, Béjart will opt for starched costumes, overrun with feathers, gloves and masks for this ballet: ”the final mask that the protagonists will put on their faces, is it not one of this art's many distortions that sends us to sleep, stimulates us, makes us dream, march in combat, make love, cry over death, sing about life and its Bacchic image?” Attempting a very different genre, he masterfully demonstrates the paradox of the work: “Fledermaus. A piece that is light, shallow, entertaining for the holiday season... or a deep mirror of an era, a society, a way of life...”
Provenance: Maurice Béjart's personal archives.