Rising from the ashes: Duo rekindles Notre-Dame’s musical spirit

Who could forget the shocking images of Notre-Dame Cathedral ablaze five years ago? TV footage showed the roof of the world-famous Parisian landmark collapsing and the spire toppling as it was burned almost to the ground.

The loss was particularly devastating for Australian Brandenburg Orchestra artistic director Paul Dyer and playwright Alana Valentine.

The pair, who had met to discuss a collaboration, watched in horrified silence as images of thick black smoke billowing into the air above the 850-year-old cathedral appeared on Dyer’s desktop screen.

Artistic director Paul Dyer and writer-director Alana Valentine channel eight centuries of music in homage to Notre-Dame. Credit: Wayne Taylor

“The Notre-Dame isn’t just a religious building – it has been a crucible for music for almost 1000 years,” says Valentine.

In particular, it has been seminal in the development of choral singing and Gregorian chant.

“Thousands of hands have created extraordinary art, and written poems, and composed and performed sacred music inside its walls,” she says. “It’s not just beloved by the French. It is a symbol of great beauty and history throughout the world.”

So as carpenters began re-building the fire-ravaged roof, Valentine and Dyer set to work on their own revival, a commemoration of eight centuries of music composed and heard among its gargoyles, flying buttresses and bell towers.

Ever since Dyer established the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra 30 years ago, he has become known for resurrecting Baroque and classical works for newer generations.

Some concerts included Ottoman-themed whirling dervishes. A collaboration with the contemporary circus company Circa included a trapeze. One of his recordings of Vivaldi, featuring the German countertenor Andreas Scholl, featured in the James Bond movie Spectre.

From the beginning, Dyer’s mission has been to “loosen the stays” of 16th, 17th and 18th Century music, and Notre-Dame proves to be every bit as liberating.

‘I want people to feel like they’ve got on a plane and have gone to Paris for the evening.’

Paul Dyer

Valentine’s libretto is performed by actors Matilda Ridgway, best known on TV for Bump, and Glenn Hazeldine, of Colin from Accounts and Redfern Now fame. The pair tells the story of a Sydney engineer who arrives to work at the cathedral on the day it becomes engulfed in fire.

The music performed by both orchestra and choir ranges from the haunting O virga ac diadema by Hildegard von Bingen to the Australian premiere of the Introit from 18th-century French composer André Campra’s requiem.

A 90-minute video is also projected onto screens the shape of the cathedral’s stained-glass windows, depicting historical scenes.

Fire engulfs Notre-Dame in 2019. Credit: EPA

Dyer was in his early 20s and a harpsichord student at Paris’s Cite internationale des arts when he was first “overwhelmed with the beauty” of the cathedral on the Ile de la Cite.

He hopes the performance will convey the same intoxication he felt as a young man, falling under the spell of the Marais district, savouring the perfume, the colours and the style of the streets in the lee of the mighty Notre-Dame.

“I want people to feel like they’ve got on a plane and have gone to Paris for the evening,” he says. “If they’ve been introduced to some of the world’s most beautiful music along the way, I’ll be happy, man.”

Notre-Dame, February 27 to March 2, City Recital Hall, Sydney.

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